How Microsoft Dropped the Ball With Developers

cremou writes "As part of an Ars Technica series on how one developer migrated from Windows to OS X (and why), this second article concentrates on how Microsoft bungled the transition from XP to Vista. The author looks at some unfortunate decisions Microsoft made that have made Windows an unpleasant development platform. 'So Windows is just a disaster to write programs for. It's miserable. It's quite nice if you want to use the same techniques you learned 15 years ago and not bother to change how you do, well, anything, but for anyone else it's all pain... And it's not just third parties who suffer. It causes trouble for Microsoft, too. The code isn't just inconsistent and ugly on the outside; it's that way on the inside, too. There's a lot of software for Windows, a lot of business-critical software, that's not maintained any more. And that software is usually buggy. It passes bad parameters to API calls, uses memory that it has released, assumes that files live in particular hard-coded locations, all sorts of things that it shouldn't do.'"

With those arguements, any platform can suck

[dreamchaser (49529)]

"It passes bad parameters to API calls, uses memory that it has released, assumes that files live in particular hard-coded locations, all sorts of things that it shouldn't do."

Those are basically programming errors, not problems with the API. Don't get me wrong, I find Win32 to be a pain in the ass sometimes, but this article just reeks of flamebait.

Re:With those arguements, any platform can suck

[Ulfalizer (881975)]

I think you missed the point.

The problem is that many major legacy applications depend on undocumented behavior because they make sloppy use of the Windows API (e.g. by assuming that a particular function will not segfault when passed a bad argument). For those to keep working, newer revisions of the API implementation must have the same undocumented behavior, which causes a maintenance nightmare.

Re:With those arguements, any platform can suck

[dreamchaser (49529)]

No I didn't miss the point. Using an undocumented API is another example of bad programming. Yes, even HAVING undocumented API's is bad as well. Like I said, I was not excusing the mess that is Win32, I was just sayin'...

Re:With those arguements, any platform can suck

[fimbulvetr (598306)]

Maybe the point was that MS fosters bad programming by keeping legacy API calls around indefintely, whilst other systems do not. I'm the last guy to ever go pro-apple on /., having "been there, done that", but he really does have a point. MS is afraid to deprecate bad ways in favor of keeping some minor share of customers happy.

While this has short term benefits, the long term imposes a hefty penalty, the same penalty MS (and some of its developers) is paying now.

Re:With those arguements, any platform can suck

[drinkypoo (153816)]

Yes, even HAVING undocumented API's is bad as well.

I thought we discussed this when Apple did it? Undocumented APIs are there for the use of operating system developers and other people who feel the need to tickle the operating system at a low enough level to fool it into doing things that it was never intended to do for you. This is your prerogative; it's possible to sniff through the structure of the binaries to find new functions, and it's possible to debug functions to see what they're calling, so no one can really stop you anyway.

At the same time, being upset when they stop functioning correctly is the mark of a whiny idiot, because let's face it, they're undocumented. If you want that functionality exposed, by all means, cry to the OS vendor. Or, you know, you could support open source and/or free software and work with an environment in which you have all the source code and can at least make relatively responsible use of the undocumented functions, and if you are feeling froggy, even submit patches which express this functionality consistently with a documented API.

Seriously though, undocumented functions are par for the course. If the functions are never intended to be used by anything other than the operating system, and the functionality is expressed through the OS in some fashion (use of undocumented APIs in Win32 has often been done to work around a bug) then there's really no problem. The portions of the OS that need to be changed when the libraries change can be changed in such a situation (and hopefully will fail tests if someone doesn't think to do it beforehand.)

What part of "Undocumented" is hard to understand?

[WED Fan (911325)]

The problem is that many major legacy applications depend on undocumented behavior because they make sloppy use of the Windows API (e.g. by assuming that a particular function will not segfault when passed a bad argument). For those to keep working, newer revisions of the API implementation must have the same undocumented behavior, which causes a maintenance nightmare.

So, you problem is that programmers make use of undocumented API calls. While "undocumented" does not always equal "unsupported", using them is just plain stupid. Whether it is Windows, Linux, MS-DOS, DR-DOS, OSux using the system in an undocumented/unsupported way is well, U N S U P P O R T E D. Don't blame the OS or the those that coded it, blame those that wrote against the API in an unsupported way.

RTFA turns out to be a effort in slogging through another of the author's attempts to explain why anyone on Windows is just benighted. He blames HIS short comings on the OS.

Re:What part of "Undocumented" is hard to understa

[gfxguy (98788)]

Because programmers are, you know, just leaving the Windows platform in droves! Because it's annoying to develop on!

(sarcasm off)

Windows has always been annoying to develop on; when you've got the lions share of the market, and the customers want "windows," that where most programmers are, annoying or not.

So maybe they "dropped the ball," I say they never had the ball to drop, and they don't give a crap because if you want to make money, you work on Windows.

Now... how is this different than last year, or the year before, or ten years ago?

Re:What part of "Undocumented" is hard to understa

[rs79 (71822)]

" They don't give a crap because if you want to make money, you work on Windows"

I learned to live without money instead. It was less painfull.

Re:What part of "Undocumented" is hard to understa

[gmack (197796)]

To make it more amusing those third party APIs slog through the win32 API hell so you don't have to.

I think that's why Microsoft is afraid of breaking the old APIs. Once you have to go through the pain of porting to a new API why not just go cross platform?

Re:With those arguements, any platform can suck

[0123456 (636235)]

"Those are basically programming errors, not problems with the API."

I think you missed the point. For the sake of backwards compatibility, Microsoft supports applications which do all these things, and drags all the associated crap into future versions of Windows so they still run.

For that matter, so do hardware developers: back when I was writing drivers for Windows I had to deliberately put bugs in our code to support applications which only worked because of bugs in the Microsoft versions of the drivers and would crash if we didn't replicate those bugs ourselves. We also spent weeks working around abuse of the API by a certain big computer company that can't program PCs worth a damn (or even, apparently, read API documentation).

Re:With those arguements, any platform can suck

[0123456 (636235)]

Pretty much; if they stop supporting old bugs, a lot of old software will break. I'm sure I found an old Windows 3.1 bug in XP some time back, but I can't remember what it was (something to do with driver installation, I think).

Linux, in comparison, provides a fair amount of backwards compatibility, but doesn't have to overly worry because most software comes in source form and can be fixed when a kernel or library change breaks it. Windows doesn't have that option.

DOS/Windows programming culture

[erroneus (253617)]

The culture of DOS programming was corrupted from the beginning and you can partly blame IBM for a crappy BIOS. Were it not for the crappy BIOS, programmers wouldn't have had to resort to writing directly to hardware to get an acceptable speed on the screen. And it just kept going on from there. And now when a developer wants more "something" from the OS than they can get naturally, they write VxDs to help gain an advantage.

The culture is all about writing code to get past deficiencies and shortcomings in DOS/Windows.

Windows programmers don't respect the rules... and if they do, they write what appears to be crappy software.

Re:DOS/Windows programming culture

[frank_adrian314159 (469671)]

Yes, but making the hardware suck to scrape a couple of pennies off the price didn't help the BIOS. Actually, I blame IBM more for not choosing a better processor than the x86. There were sane architectures out there at the time (e.g., Motorola 68000). A lot of the craptacular nature of the BIOS (not to mention DOS and early Windows programming) came out of that particular decision. But, back then, IBM was a fairly craptacular company anyway. It seems to have improved a bit since then (although, it's hard to tell; with a company the size of IBM, you may be looking at the stern of the oil tanker and everything looks fine, while on the bow, fires are raging).

Re:DOS/Windows programming culture

[MojoStan (776183)]

My understanding was that they didn't expect much of the PC market, so they threw together a bunch of cheap parts from other vendors and stamped their name on it.

Triumph of the Nerds: The Transcripts, Part II [pbs.org]

According to the guys that created the IBM PC (Bill Lowe and Jack Sams), they did it this way because they thought they were running out of time in an important new market (PCs). The Apple II had been introduced in 1977 and was a runaway success. IBM noticed Apple IIs being used in the engineering departments of their clients.

IBM's top management met in August 1979 to discuss their "PC crisis." In another year, the PC industry might be too big for even IBM to take on. IBM chairman Frank Carey knew that it took "four years and three hundred people to do anything" at IBM. Bill Lowe, who would lead the IBM PC development team, claimed that his team could provide their product in a year. Carey gave Lowe two weeks to set up a proposal. Two weeks later, Carey bought it.

From the transcript:

• [Cringely narrating] He knew the company was in a quandary. Wait another year and the PC industry would be too big even for IBM to take on. Chairman Frank Carey turned to the department heads and said HELP!!!

  Bill Lowe: Head, IBM IBM PC Development Team 1980: He kind of said well, what should we do, and I said well, we think we know what we would like to do if we were going to proceed with our own product and he said no, he said at IBM it would take four years and three hundred people to do anything, I mean it's just a fact of life. And I said no sir, we can provide with product in a year. And he abruptly ended the meeting, he said you're on Lowe, come back in two weeks and tell me what you need.

  [Cringely narrating] An IBM product in a year! Ridiculous! Down in the basement Bill still has the plan. To save time, instead of building a computer from scratch, they would buy components off the shelf and assemble them -- what in IBM speak was called 'open architecture.' IBM never did this. Two weeks later Bill proposed his heresy to the Chairman.

  Bill Lowe: And frankly this is it. The key decisions were to go with an open architecture, non IBM technology, non IBM software, non IBM sales and non IBM service. And we probably spent a full half of the presentation carrying the corporate management committee into this concept. Because this was a new concept for IBM at that point.

The documentary goes on to describe how Microsoft (a computer language company at the time) ended up providing the operating system after the company that should have provided the OS (Digital Research) blew it when they met with IBM. Interesting documentary with interviews with the key guys involved.

Re:DOS/Windows programming culture

[rs79 (71822)]

I worked at a computer manufacturor in the late 70's and early 80s in LA and started on 8-bit micros and was there for ther introduction of 16 bit chips.

I was used to PDP-11s keep in mind.

The problem wasn't the 68000 wasn't ready, it was ready. There were just no support chips yet. Intel actually delivered a complete solution: CTC chips, PIC's, serial ports, dma controllers, i/o processors (that nobody but us used).

Motorola had a CPU and that's it. A vastly *superior* CPU, but the hardware guys wanted to build systems not wait for the rest of the stuff they needed. So we all held our noses and went x86. And bought Amigas as soon as they were out (I have serial #11. Still.)

This crap as all in one chip these days, but back then computers had several large black chips inside them.

BIOS was only a small part of the picture

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

In DOS days, there were often 3 ways of doing things. For example, take writing to the screen:
You could call the BIOS interrupt function.
You could call the MSDOS Interrupt function.
You could detect the hardware and write directly to the hardware address.

Both the BIOS and DOS mechanisms were slow and broken and did not follow the conventions of any programming language. For example terminating strings with the $ symbol, FFS.

All commercial programs (and most hobbiest ones) wrote directly to hardware for speed.

DOS was not really an OS at all. It did very rudimentary memory management. About the only thing you'd really use DOS for was disk access and application launching, otherwise DOS applications were basically "bare metal" applications that managed just about everything (screen, keyboard, serial ports, mouse,...) internally.

As a dev who makes his living writing for .Net...

[by Anonymous Coward]

I am 'this' close to jumping ship. I use Ubuntu on machines at home and find it fast and clean, even on older hardware.

I have access to all MS software as our MSDN and Gold Certified Partner plan administrator. I have tried Vista on a couple machines. Even on a brand new Dell dual core laptop with 2 gigs of ram, it was sluggish and still could not use the full aero interface. Yet I installed Ubuntu on a 4 year old 600m with 512MB ram and got a full interface with snappy performance.

I don't need aero to develop code. The features I was most interested in all got cut from Vista... most notably the filesystem upgrades. Now add frequent updates to the framework that require $1200 software packages to use to the fullest extent. Then add the insane cost of a legit SQL Server license on which to deploy it. Plus as a domain admin, I find the administration to be a drag. And I still don't trust them for a second on security. It all adds up to a monumental drag.

I am a frustrated .Net developer. I don't know that it is that much better on the other side of the fence frankly, at least as far of the coding environments go. But I KNOW for a fact that I prefer linux to Windows.

Re:As a dev who makes his living writing for .Net.

[glassware (195317)]

I want to second this concept. Back in 1998, when I started a company of my own, I insisted that my partners and I purchase a $500 MSDN license so we could do current development on Microsoft platforms.

In 2004, when I joined a company that was well funded by venture capitalists, they required that I cost-justify the $2000 MSDN license cost. I argued that we were developing consumer applications and we needed the license.

In 2007, I can no longer justify $3500ish for MSDN. It just doesn't work anymore. They offer reduced versions of MSDN, each of which eliminates all the reasons why a person would subscribe to MSDN. They offer only 10 application installs for your $3500. They offer only a few OS installs. After you've installed a few, they stop letting you install more development copies and insist that you call them for more authorization. It just doesn't work anymore, and I'm sad because I really liked being able to develop code without artificial roadblocks in my path.

Same techniques 15 years ago? Not just Windows...

[Goody (23843)]

It's quite nice if you want to use the same techniques you learned 15 years ago and not bother to change how you do, well, anything

Apparently the author never heard of vi and gcc on Linux...

But give them credit where credit is due...

[crt (44106)]

Microsoft has dropped the ball in a number of areas, particularly with regard to user-interface APIs which this article focuses mostly on, but in other ways it is far and away the easiest platform to develop for - mainly because of the quality of their development tools. Having done lots of development across Windows, Mac, and Linux with all kinds of editors, IDEs and debuggers, nothing comes close to Visual Studio in terms of functionality, quality, and just being solid. It's not perfect, but it's way better than anything else out there. For that reason alone Microsoft deserves some kudos from developers.

"one developer"

[Whitemice (139408)]

"how one developer migrated from Windows to OS X"

That pretty much says it all: "one developer"

The argument about old krufty code in Windows and the Win32 API has been around since.... the Win16 API! It didn't really seem to slow down Win32.

On the flip side is the argument that the need for backwards compatibility is holding back Windows - yet developers complain about the migration from XP to Vista?

All smells like we-will-find-anyway-to-condemn-Windows to me. Note: I do all of my development on LINUX, so I'm not a Windows booster. I think lots about Windows just stinks but there is an issue of credibility here.

If you want a clean new coherent API and you want to develop on Windows Microsoft has provided an option: .NET

Cult of Backward Compatibility

[clintp (5169)]

The False God of Backward Compatibility has Microsoft by the short hairs. Even new programming environments like .Net have Win32, Win16, and DOS lurking right around the corner. There's no fresh start anywhere in the Microsoft environment, everything reeks of DOS.

Which would have been find if DOS (Win16, Win32, etc..) were a multi-platform, extensible OS to begin with -- but it wasn't. It was a quick hack that lives on and on.

I'm a developer that works primarily in Windows, with 15 years of heavy-hitting Unix programming experience behind me.

Re:Cult of Backward Compatibility

[daemonenwind (178848)]

It's not a false god, not when you're coding for a business that has to meet both regulators and profitability expectations.

Code written for Windows 95/NT (back in 1996) still works today on the Windows platform. 12 years later.

Try that with System 7 code on OS X.

Yes, this is part of why writing business-logic code sucks. You seldom get to just re-write anything to be really, truly good instead of something perennially built-upon and increasingly hacked-together. No one will pay for a change that doesn't deliver "business value". (And no, greater stability/performance is almost never enough, as that argument usually demands an associated headcount reduction) But at least the app still works and can continue to deliver. And since some will doubt, yes, I do maintain/enhance such code.

The market speaks - this sort of backwards compatibility is a conscious choice by MS, and it does sell their OS. Not concidentially, it also sells mainframes and *UX systems. And I'm convinced it's one of the big reasons Apple isn't bigger in the corporate world. Steve's demands for newer/better/faster totally supplanting the old are well known, and rightly feared.

Glory days are here

[icepick72 (834363)]

Despite what's underneath Windows, programming it through the .NET platform is very slick. Most of what had to classically be linked to in obscure ways is wrapped in the Framework Class Library. Most people complain it's large but after you learn the basic structure you can find immediately what you need using the documentation. Microsoft has also abstracted away the trickyness of DLLs and you can program against mostly any functionality using your language of choice [dotnetpowered.com].

When articles claim Microsoft dropped the ball I think it's more wishful thinking than anything, because Windows programmers are in their Enterprise glory days right now, no longer restricted to VB and half-assed object models. Not anymore. We now have full OO features and much much more, and Java is playing cathup feature-wise. It's nice for a change.

I don't care how messy Microsoft's underlying code is, as long as they've tested it and ensure it works enough for me to program against it. The Microsoft security updates help a lot too. They're very frequent which means there are a lot of security flaws but they take care of them quickly (I'm sure I will get numerous examples where they didn't take care of security quickly but if you're on Windows update you see them coming thought all the time).

Windows programming

[buss_error (142273)]

Back before my current gig, I was a software developer for companies that hired me to do their work and for several packages I wrote for my own profit. This story comes from the programs I developed for my own profit.

Because the software I wrote was also licensed for source code if the user wanted it, I picked Visual Basic as the platform to use. I wanted to use Visual C, but you could more easly find programmers that could get by in Visual Basic than VC. I should have picked VC rather than VB for a lot of reasons, the main one being that if you had experience in VC, you were at least likely not to be a total idiot. Not so with VB. I found that VB programmers were idiots at the approximate rate of 7:10, while VC programmers were likely to be idiots at an estimated 1:10 ratio... which isn't to say that all VB programmers were idiots, only that they were cheaper labor, and therefore less likely to have a solid background in programming logic.

That said, we'll focus only on my own development problems, just so we are dealing with only one (possible) idiot... me. I started out with VB 2.x. The upgrade to 3.x went fine, with very few problems. When 4.0 came out, I found I had to rewrite about 20% of my code. Sure, there were conversion programs, but they didn't quite fit in with exactly what I wanted the program to do. It'd get it about 90% right, but then I'd have to slog through the rest of the automated code to correct that last 10%. It was faster to discard that code and re-write it.

Then 5.x came out. Only about 50% of my code still worked. And again, the automated process to "ease" transisition left something to be desired. When Visual Studio 6.0 came out, it was a nightmare. only 20% of the code ported. At that point, I sent the 5.x code out to all the people that bought the program (with source or not), and told them that the code was now moribund, I would not be maintaining it, and that I was releaseing the source code to the public domain (5 floppies included). As I recall, that was about 1998-1999 or so.

As late as March 2008, I've been contacted about the code. Of course, it's morphed far past anything I'd written, and I could only help with the general business case logic involved, not the actual code. But having to deal once again with Microsoft development tools, one would have to offer me far, far more money than it would be worth. No, I'm done with Microsoft "development" games. I'm done with school yard bullies trying to take my lunch money. I'm done, PERIOD, with closed source, whenever I have a choice.

The appalling GUI inconsistency

[Coryoth (254751)]

One of the nice things from this article was actually this nice screenshot [arstechnica.com] of a selection of current versions of MS software running on Vista. The thing to notice is that not a single one of those applications has a GUI the same as any of the others. There are different toolkits, completely different look and feel, some have menus, some don't; it's a horrible, horrible mess. And yet despite that, we still get people complaining about GNOME vs. KDE and the clash of different toolkits and how that's what is holding Linux back. You can run GNOME and KDE apps side by side and, while they'll have differences, they'll sit together far more elegantly than the mishmash that is Windows. I think I'll have bookmark that screenshot so I can bring it up the next time a Windows fanboy starts decrying the excessive number of GUI toolkits on Linux.

not sure they have a choice

[abes (82351)]

I'm not big on the M$ love. I'm a mac/linux proponent. However, I think that M$'s current problem with a really horrible API (I'm saying this having programmed for win32, GTK, QT, WX, and Cocoa) isn't an easy to solve problem.

They could pull an Apple, and completely redo their windowing system. Apple benefited from using NeXT's system, which was well thought out, uses a language well suited to windowing systems (objective-c), and could be altered based on previous user experience.

However, in doing so they would lose all compatibility they current have. Keeping compatibility, even if it creates a developer's nightmare, is in the end what keeps them on top of the market.

That is not to say it's not impossible for them to do so. Apple did provide a virtual machine to run old OS9 software with the first releases of OS X. However, since both Mac and Linux machines also have the same options (currently running Parallels on my machine), it would still take the clear advantage M$ has in the market away.

It's not clear whether their bad API spells the eventual doom of the company. The more pragmatic developers will still value making products that more people can use over writing nice looking code. Additionally, wrapper libraries, such as WxWidgets or Qt can help hide much of the ugliness.

Qt (& GNOME)

[scorp1us (235526)]

As someone who had to learn C++/CLI and writes code to allow legacy code to interop with C# at work, I have this to say.

If you are going to learn a new platform for a "modern" app or OS, then let it be one that allows you to target more than one platform. Seriously. Lets take a look at .NET:
- Everything in the library is new.
- You can only officially target one platform. (Mono not withstanding)
- You have to learn a new language to use it effectively.

Now look at Qt:
- New library
- Build onto same C++ compiler you've always used
- No messy COM, COM wrappers needed for introspection
- You can target any platform with a modern C++ compiler (VS6 and higher on win32, gcc on all platforms)
- Ground up C++, clean consistent API.
- Active development with binary compatibility within major releases.
- Python, ECMA scripting, (some C# support too!)
- Java version
- Meta-object compiler adds introspection. (no need to deal with COM)
- ActiveX interop in the commercial version (You can use Qt widgets in Winforms and vice-versa)

I don't know as much about GNOME, but it shares a lot with Qt, so should not be excluded.

About the only thing you miss out on is the automatic garbage collector. Qt emulates this to some degree by allowing every QObject to have a parent. Then the only thing missing is the ability to defragment memory in the heap. I've only heard about this being caused by lots of small memory allocations, but Qt block allocates so this isn't a problem. Also, many types are implicitly shared, meaning they are more like handles to the objects, meaning that 1) they can cross thread boundaries 2) they are references until they are modified.

All in all I see you only lose out on the memory defrag. But you don't need to learn C++/CLI or C#. (My opinion of C# is that if you're going to go that far, you might as well take the goals of the language to completion, in which case you end up with Python, oh yeah, there is a Python wrapper for Qt too)

Re:Long Answer?

[denzacar (181829)]

Actually it is more like:

I hate Windows. It robs me of my creative juices.
Because I am creative, you know... man?
So I "Switched".
Now, I code for OS X and every day is a beautiful rainbow for me.

Re:Long Answer?

[644bd346996 (1012333)]

Exactly. He illustrates it well. That's coming awfully close to being, you know, creative. And creativity is one of the well-known risk factors for becoming a Mac fanboy.

Re:Long Answer?

[OeLeWaPpErKe (412765)]

So let's hear it ... is xcode a real competitor to visual studio ?

Because let's be honest, while I use linux all the time, and I contribute every now and then to a number of linux apps. But I don't kid myself that anything that can run on linux (whether kdevelop or eclipse, or *even* vim) is half as good as visual studio.

And it's still the only real dev platform for smartphones and pda's. I have a maemo device, which is nice. But developing for it is a bitch to say the very least.

Re:Long Answer?

[murdocj (543661)]

He has an axe to grind, but I'm not sure he has a point. For example, he talks about how .Net was supposed to insulate you from the vagaries of the Win32 interface,but failed. Then he talks about how the Win32 API returns the length of a file as two 32 values that have to be combined, instead of a 64 bit value. The part he leaves out is that .Net's system.IO.FileInfo does exactly what he wants... it returns the file length as a long 64 bit value. So why bring up the old 32 bit interface when you don't have to deal with it anymore? If that's the best he can do, his argument is in trouble.

Re:Long Answer?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Then he talks about how the Win32 API returns the length of a file as two 32 values that have to be combined, instead of a 64 bit value. The part he leaves out is that .Net's system.IO.FileInfo does exactly what he wants

This was a complaint about Win64. He had different specific complaints about .NET.

If that's the best he can do, his argument is in trouble.

If you can't even read his argument without getting mixed up, then your future is in trouble. (OTOH you have a bright future as a Slashdot poster. Not reading TFA is henceforth passé; reading it and getting it entirely wrong is the new standard.)

Re:Long Answer?

[DrPizza (558687)]

No, he is saying that the argument is confused because it mixes up Win32 and .NET. That's a problem with TFA.

But the article doesn't do that, except when describing how details of Win32 leak into .NET.

If you want to compare Windows and OS X as modern platforms, you need to compare the modern APIs, that is, .NET against Cocoa, nothing else.

But you can't. MS has added new features to Win32 (and VC++/MFC), and MS is going to continue to do so in Windows Seven. For example, Vista has a new transacted (database-style ACID transactions, not just journalled) filesystem. .NET doesn't support it; you've got to use Win32 to use it. Even though .NET does have transaction support (for COM+ transactions and database transactions) it doesn't support TxNTFS. So you've gotta use Win32. Or how about an MS-supported ribbon control? You've got to use MFC, and in Windows Seven there should be a native code ribbon control as part of the OS proper. In both cases, no managed code.

Having to drop into Win32 to call some legacy thing that no-one should really be doing but which you have to do for backwards compatibility, that I could sort of understand. But having to drop into Win32 to call new features that have only just been added? Anyone saying "stop using Win32, just use .NET" doesn't know what they're talking about.

Re:Long Answer?

[niko9 (315647)]

Yup. But there's still one thing you can't do elegantly when programming for OSX [thebestpag...iverse.net]

Re:Long Answer?

[KutuluWare (791333)]

You must have had access to the sooper sekrit article with all the illustrations in it. The Ars article I read a blatent Mac fanboy bragging about Cocoa, with an extra two tacked-on pages of hyperbole and baseless accusations about how much .NET sucks, backed up with exactly 1 concrete example: that you have to know which Windows Forms operations are thread-safe (hint: none of them). He even finishes that thought by pointing out that most other GUI frameworks have exactly the same problem. I can probably rattle two dozen cases from memory in the old Win32 API where MS made obviously retarded design choices, but he can't even come up with a single actual .NET class method that he doesn't like when he's writing an article about it?

I am in that third group of developers this article was supposedly written for. I absolutely abhor poorly written code, cheap workarounds, etc. And I make a living off .NET and I love it. I usually find that the Framework already does anything I'd expect a base class library to do and a bunch more. The code I write against it is way more elegant than what I typically see from, say, your random GTK app. Is that because .NET is inherently better than gtk, glib, glibc, etc? No, I don't sit around whining about how Microsoft "blew it with developers" because they didn't write all my code for me... I spend my time writing good code.

Re:Long Answer?

[Winckle (870180)]

I have my taskbar at the top, because it effectively reverses the order of the start menu. This makes shutdown the bottom option, which is where it should be, as i use it precisely once per session.

Re:Long Answer?

[xazos79 (931382)]

You use the start menu to shutdown? That's so '95.

Re:Long Answer?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Must not be Vista. Otherwise you would only use the shutdown button roughly 50% of the time, with the other 50% being the reset button. :)

Re:Long Answer?

[thetoadwarrior (1268702)]

Im no programmer but the article seams short on facts & details and high on ms bashing & skimming. Is the article right or is it just well presented trolling?

How can you say it seems to lack info when you're not even a programmer. For anyone who has done programming between good languages and MS languages will know he's spot on and it's been well documented that MS went back on their word to build a .Net based OS that started fresh.

The problem is they know a lot of people aren't happy with Windows but it runs all their programs. Once the scrap that backwards compatibility and build something solid, despite the fact it may be their best OS ever, it's on a level playing field with the rest which means people have to find an alternative to their old programs and they might just pick something that isn't Windows and MS isn't having that.

Re:Long Answer?

[Metasquares (555685)]

Couldn't they even keep backwards compatibility via virtualization? They can have all the new apps run natively, and run the old ones on a virtual OS. It would give new apps a nice degree of isolation from some of the old badness.

Re:Long Answer?

[arkhan_jg (618674)]

This is theoretically the plan with windows 7. A new, clean minimal and modular OS based on the server line, without binary compatibility for old apps, with a new API for the new OS. Instead, there will be a separate backwards compatible API for a set of monolithic libraries providing all the old functions - same principle as Classic on OSX. Old apps will run as before, but through a compatibility layer to the new OS, while apps can be recompiled to talk directly to the new API, and presumably take advantage.

IE's rendering engine can go in the legacy libraries for old apps, for example, while being a modular component that's fully removable in the new OS (thus keeping the EU competition comissioner happy)

That's the theory anyway. Whether MS manage to pull it off is another question.

Re:Long Answer?

[Doctor Faustus (127273)]

For anyone who has done programming between good languages and MS languages will know he's spot on
Well, sort-of. He concentrates way too much on the Win32 API, which not too many people are using directly. His big complaint about Windows Forms was threading, which doesn't seem like a big issue (you may have multiple threads once-in-a-while, but will you have more than one working with the UI?) -- otherwise he just kinda says it sucks without suggesting anything better (SWT might be a possible candidate. Swing is not.).

And the .Net libraries are far from perfect. There are weird versions of a lot of things left over for the VB6-VB.Net porting wizard to use. The selection of functions on the String class has some very strange ommissions (.Right(n) would be nice). The IO libraries need a smooth system to switch between strings and structured objects when dealing with paths and filenames. FTP is still way too difficult. If you don't want to deal with those infernal visual designers, ADO.Net seemed to take several of the bad parts of JDBC without the huge positive that Type 4 drivers let you avoid any local installations. The settings system they push doesn't work with multi-project solutions. Etc. But he lost any credibility trying to hold up Java as a better example.

Re:Long Answer?

[vipw (228)]

Apple IS abandoning Carbon. There will be no 64-bit version of it http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits.ars/2008/04/02/rhapsody-and-blues [arstechnica.com], so no one is going to be using it before long. Compare this to the current state of .NET, where developers have to constantly mix in win32 calls to do anything but the most basic applications. My own personal experience with .NET is only a few months, but I have had to use Win32 API a lot.

And NeXTStep is a magical, shiny, new API compared to Win32, which is the biggest mess I've ever seen. Admittedly, I'm used to simpler systems like UNIX.

Re:Long Answer?

[ldhertert (833408)]

This was modded as funny, but, as a .NET developer, I find it to be exceedingly true. I just made the switch to OSX, because I was unhappy with the stagnancy of windows. But, as we speak, I have windows running in a virtual machine almost solely for the purpose of running visual studio. I find the articles critiques very hard to swallow. The argument that .NET is limited by the attempt to be simplistic is asinine. Just like java, there are high level "simple" functions that may or may not suit your needs. If they don't you have the capability to dig down into much lower level functions to do what you need to do. He states several problems with the UI capabilities of .NET. Before I even get into the technical components of his argument, if he's trying to say that Java is better in this area, then he needs to get his eyes checked. Every single java app I've ever used is ugly as sin, and I've seen a lot. Sure, it's portable across environments, but that's not what .NET development is being used for. Aside from that...not happy with with the windows UI standards? Everyone else seems to be. You can write .NET apps that follow very closely to the common windows UI design standards. Not happy with the limitations on the UI? Write/use another UI implementation like GTK. And how do we not even mention that the UI layer has been completely overhauled with the advent of WCF? I can say with experience that .NET is very powerful and can be very pleasant to work with. The ability to move from desktop apps to web apps to mobile development with very little effort has been great for me and my career. I'm sure that Java does a lot of things right, but as someone who has seen a lot of the terrible things microsoft has done, I honestly think that .NET is a crowning achievement of theirs.

Re:Long Answer?

[CodeBuster (516420)]

The argument that .NET is limited by the attempt to be simplistic is asinine

I agree. It sounds to me like this guy used .NET for a year or so around 2002 when it was brand new and then left and hasn't looked again for the last six (6) years. He is the first person that I have heard accuse .NET of being "too simplistic". The .NET class library (and Java class library as well) is the definition of everything and the kitchen sink. These are extremly powerful languages and libraries that are if anything too complex.

Before I even get into the technical components of his argument, if he's trying to say that Java is better in this area, then he needs to get his eyes checked.

Again, I totally agree. The .NET Framework class libraries and the C# language are the definition of "The Right Way" to organize and structure code. They are technically sophisticated, architecturally beautiful, and make use of all of the best ideas at the culmination of nearly three (3) decades of object oriented programming theory and software engineering. If he is going to criticize .NET for its "lack of capability" then he is basically saying that Java is crap too, because .NET borrowed heavily from Java which in turn borrowed heavily from C++, smalltalk, and all the way back through C to Algol 60.

portable across environments, but that's not what .NET development is being used for

It is supported and in the future it will become more and more common. The great innovation on the part of .NET was the common runtime type description language and metadata in addition to the common language assembly. This is what allows different programming languages to fully share types across libraries compiled from different source languages (including cross langague debugging). This was the feature that Java was missing and this is a major reason why .NET is so popular, it has the potential to end the "my programming language is better than yours" debate because the common types and assembly make the argument irrelevant. Use C# or use VB.NET or use Eiffel or whatever other language you want.

I can say with experience that .NET is very powerful and can be very pleasant to work with.

I have been using .NET for six (6) years now and I can honestly say that it has fulfilled all of my expectations with very few dissapointments and it is improving substantially with each subsequent version. I know that I sound like a hopeless fanboy, but .NET really is a pleasure to work with, especially given the breadth and depth of the libraries and languages with a tool for every job and every job done with the right tool.

I honestly think that .NET is a crowning achievement of theirs.

Although it probably doesn't hold much water with the Slashdot crowd, I think that it is fair to say that .NET is the best thing ever to come out of Microsoft, even though it wasn't a completely original idea (but how many completely original ideas have there been in computer science anyway? Everyone benefits from the work of predecessors and ones who have come before us).

Re:Long Answer?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Short answer?

Windows is bad for developers.

Long answer?

Windows is bad for developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!

(The lameness filter complains about my Ballmer joke -- it must be detecting residual Microsoft lameness.)

Re:Long Answer?

[dcam (615646)]

Everything I have read and heard about Microsoft suggests that they are cowboys.

Code first, design later. For example, I note with interest the amount of pain involved in trying to provide server protocol documentation for the EU. Some of the foot dragging is deliberate but some of it is that they don't have quality internal documentation.

There is a severe lack of direction and leadership at Microsoft. They are just not forward planning. As a result they are tearing themselves to pieces, doing the same work again and again.

Re:how much MS bashing can you fit in?

[Adambomb (118938)]

well, it does indirectly but not as blatantly as the article would have one believe. Don't forget that if the API's were properly designed to begin with, it would have been impossible to give invalid parameters to the function or allow the use memory that has been released.

I have no idea what hes on about with the hard-pathed file references.

The problem is so many corporate coders back in the day (and still) would use whatever shortcuts they could within the api including "undocumented features" like the former two issues. If Microsoft were to fix these issues without compatibility for these "features", it would break tons of legacy applications. Therefore, ongoing developing must include these already-incorrectly-designed portions of the API as well as whatever they really want to be working on.

Just because a company does something poorly to begin with and people adapted to it, doesnt mean the company isnt to blame for the issues.

Course that doesnt make this article NOT a flaming pile of rhetoric, it just makes it slightly less than complete and utter bullshit.

Re:how much MS bashing can you fit in?

[techno-vampire (666512)]

I have no idea what hes on about with the hard-pathed file references.

This goes back even before Windows. I used to have some DOS programs that would only let you save a file to a floppy. Not just games, a poster-creating program had A:> built into the path for saving files, and there was no way to change it. Granted, even the most rabid Microsoft-basher can't blame that on them, but it's part of the way programs used to be written. It's the same type of mindset as caused game designers in the early DOS days to hardcode timing loops because, of course, the PC would always run at 4.77Mhz.