Devs Worried Microsoft Will Dump .NET
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joelholdsworth passes along a story summing up concerns from developers that "Microsoft seems to be set on adopting HTML5 and JavaScript as its main application development tools for Windows 8," and asking, "is this the end of .NET?" The article continues:
"To bet the farm on HTML5 and JavaScript being the next big thing is a good bet, but it's not a bet that Microsoft can easily take and make good. Even if the world does turn to JavaScript and platform-independent apps, this still means that Microsoft loses.
The problem is that Microsoft needs a technology that gives it an edge, and HTML5/JavaScript is everybody's edge. Microsoft developers feel left in the dark and very angry at the way they are being treated. You only have to browse the Microsoft forums to discover how strong the feeling is: forum post 1, forum post 2 and an open letter."
Reader Sla$hPot points out a similar story at OS News.
No. (Score:4, Interesting)
You can't write good direct x code even if they did manage to provide a JS wrapper. .net is here to stay.
Silverlight is not windows in a browser (Score:2, Interesting)
There are no Datasets in Silverlight! How could MS leave that out? Every Ms Programmer loved Ado recordsets and they love Datasets. Adoption would have been higher. Also, all calls to web r service must be non blocking. Bug hurdle for dumber devs. And no right mouse button! Any surprise silverlight flopped?
Then use mono-moonlight (Score:4, Interesting)
It's too easy and too soon to say told ya, it could be a clever MS strategy to instill panic and when hordes of devs cry release a new shiny net for win8, with Ballmer chanting "we care for you!!" in front of some burning chairs sacrificed for the occasion.
If things go wrong... till a couple months ago slashdot was full of people telling .net is good, 'cause there is a free implementation... since it appears to be true, to an extent, .net developers should regroup on mono, at least to keep investments already committed to .net safe for a few years.
It's not like a full free software stack when you run it on windows and MS will make sure that their own stuff runs better than mono on their own OS, but bitching about microsoft is a sign of little attention to their track record.
Spoken like a true web developer (Score:5, Interesting)
"The problem is that Microsoft needs a technology that gives it an edge, and HTML5/JavaScript is everybody's edge."
Pardon the French, but are you fucking kidding me? HTML5/JS isn't anybody's edge. HTML/JS is in no way appropriate for writing an actual application. It may work, barely, in some circumstances, but it's the worst tool for almost any job except where it's required (in the browser).
Fortunately, as stated elsewhere, the concern is with the abandonment of Silverlight (which isn't really that great a loss, except for the people MS tricked into investing time and money in), not .NET as a whole.
Re:On dot-net (not debt) (Score:5, Interesting)
Could I ask for your perspective on why this is the case?
I'm not the person you're replying to, but I'll give you mine:
It's basically Java done one better. Basically it's the version of Java you'd come up with if you'd spent 5 years in the trenches as a Java developer and had a good set of ideas as how you could do a better job if you had it to write over again from scratch, keeping everything that's good about Java (except for the cross-platform action, which in my experience for any practical application was more of an in-theory benefit than actual benefit) and fixing a lot of things that weren't quite right.
(Granted, Java is since then improving, as well.)
I'm sure a lot of people don't think much of Java, either. It's not the right tool for every task, and neither is .NET -- but for several niches (e.g. writing custom applications for a business's internal use) it's a pretty awesome one.
Re:No. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm no fan of DirectX myself, however, I cited it as one of the many SDKs and APIs that Windows devs live and die off of.
Besides, OGL is graphics only. DirectX is a comprehensive suite of APIs that handle input, sound and networking.
SDL would probably be a better analogy.
Re:Its shit like this slashdot.... (Score:4, Interesting)
JavaScript is a great language, but using it for full-blown enterprise app development would be a major setback.
True, but what might make sense is to use a client/server architecture with a Javascript/HTML client and a server written in .Net, Java or lovingly-hand-crafted-C. That gives you a client which could potentially run across iOS, Android, ChromeOS, OS X, Linux and WIndows from substantially the same codebase. That could be a boon if your boss is pestering you for an iPhone app, your managers want a web interface to work from hotel bedrooms or if Google actually manages to produce a thin client that actually costs less than a full PC.
Alternatively, HTML/JS might just be used to provide the "tile" aspect of your software (analogous to a widget in Android or on the OS X Dashboard) with some preview/current doc information but which fires up the "classic mode" app when you need it. You could even imagine "hybrid" laptops with a (maybe ARM-based) tablet in the lid that let you use widgets and only woke up the main computer for serious work.
Remember, Win8 is all about tablets and touchscreens, where Apple and Android are currently eating Microsoft's lunch (the corporates are going to be running Win7, if not XP, for a while yet) - and what Appledroid have shown is that software with a UI custom designed for tablets trumps "legacy" software. So, This could also be Microsoft being strategic, to try and ensure that developers go back to the drawing board and implement proper tablet interfaces, not just make minimal tweaks to their .Net forms UI to make things useable-ish.
Re:Why worry. (Score:2, Interesting)
That they are using it does not mean that VB6 as a tool is still alive. In fact, the Visual Basic 6.0 IDE is no longer supported as of April 8, 2008 [microsoft.com].
That's about the same time they stopped supporting VFP 9.0. We were using VFP 6.0 when MS announced on the UniversalThread (UT) that VFB 6.0 would be the last version of that tool. The 250,000 VFP coders registered at UT were outraged and threatened a mass exodus to a tool MS didn't control. In the end, tens of thousands did migrate to other tools, while Microsoft put VFP on minimal life support to prevent further defections. I saw the handwriting on the wall and I moved my apps to Qt in 2004 and have been well pleased.
Microsoft had their MVP VFP coders, like Kevin McNish (IIRC) and others, start pushing C# and .NET as a replacement for VFP and holding classes on the UT, and many took the leap to .NET. Now it appears that MS screwed them twice in about five years. Will they bend over and take it for a third time?