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Are we still onboard with TC (7.1a) or is it out of favour?

I'm still using 7.1a.

Is there a replacement, yet?

VeraCrypt is supposedly it's replacement, but given that 7.1a was given a pass during analysis, I'm wary of migrating to an unknown.

"VeraCrypt is a free disk encryption software brought to you by IDRIX (https://www.idrix.fr) and that is based on TrueCrypt 7.1a." -- https://veracrypt.codeplex.com.... It says "based on," but it has been around for a while now and nowhere near as vulnerable. Even the TrueCrypt (discontinued) creators say to use TrueCrypt ONLY to decrypt what you have so you can use something else.

Is this really surprising? From the company that just made accepting every update they want to push mandatory? I didn't trust Microsoft before they did that, now it's just blatant in your face "we own your computer". The fact that anyone trusts BitLocker is what astounds me.

Your Windows 10 friends are:
1) Windows Update Mini Tool. Gives you back control of your windows update experience.
2) Windows updates details. A spreadsheet maintained with every patch and what it does. Microsoft gets more and more evasive with their explanations of what their patches do, this is a good site for info. And, for heaven's sake, please please please get...
3) VeraCrypt. Based on TrueCrypt 7.1, development was continued by the community. Security audits have been done on this code base and, while no non-trivial software can ever be proven completely safe, I trust this software far more than BitLocker (which I actively distrust).

My Windows 7 laptop was safe from the whole Windows 10 upgrade debacle and the "we are going to upgrade your OS unless you happen to catch this message in time and say no" nagware because I carefully and meticulously have always gone over every windows update that goes on my computer. It was with literal astonishment that I learned that update is mandatory in Windows 10. I can't believe people stand for it. I've managed to work around it, but that was really the last straw for me. I have finally migrated mostly to Linux. I have used it for my servers and personal cloud services since the days of SLS but never really adopted for my desktop. I kept it for stuff I couldn't do in Windows. Now I've reversed that, using Linux for everything I can and only using Windows for gaming or software I absolutely can't do in Linux.

VeraCrypt is hosted on a Microsoft web site: VeraCrypt at codeplex.com.

That scares me. Consider this Network World article: Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. Quote: "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC."

Veracrypt Iteration Multiplier

If it is a backup then you have at least a second copy. If it is an important document keep multiple copies. USB flash drive are cheap and there are good options for encryption available. So the solution is to just backup the stuff you don't want to loose and if bringing someplace else where others would have access just encrypt it. I have copies of my important data in several places on USB drive, one in my desk at home, one in my pocket, one in the fire chest at home, one in my desk at work. All of the data is encrypted with a strong password.

I thought it came out that the authors basically got sick of supporting it and went all scorched earth. That said people should have moved on from TrueCrypt when this was disclosed last year. The VeraCrypt project has that fix as well as taking care of what was found during the limited TrueCrypt audit.

I work for a Singapore company and was carrying a laptop with full-disk encryption provided by BestCrypt (Specifically BIOS pre-boot authentication with a hardware eToken PRO HSM) but I didn't have the HSM USB device with me to boot into Windows. I was held for 12 hours at LAX. It doesn't stop them, they don't care about excuses. The only thing that works is a full hidden OS (VeraCrypt: Hidden Operating System)

As an user I wouldn't store my data with any kind of encryption that the provider offers, I would turn to only store it in Veracrypt archives or similar.

See here: Newly Found TrueCrypt Flaw Allows Full System Compromise (29 September 2015)

James Forshaw, a member of Google's Project Zero team has found a pair of flaws in the discontinued encryption utility TrueCrypt that could allow attackers to obtain elevated privileges on a system if they have access to a limited user account. 'It's impossible to tell if the new flaws discovered by Forshaw were introduced intentionally or not, but they do show that despite professional code audits, serious bugs can remain undiscovered,' writes Lucian Constantin.

From the linked article:

Since TrueCrypt is no longer actively maintained, the bugs won't be fixed directly in the program's code. However, they have been fixed in VeraCrypt, an open-source program based on the TrueCrypt code that aims to continue and improve the original project.

VeraCrypt 1.15 that was released Saturday, contains patches for the two vulnerabilities, identified as CVE-2015-7358 and CVE-2015-7359, as well as for other bugs. The program's developer only flagged the CVE-2015-7358 flaw as critical and said that it can be exploited by "abusing drive letter handling."

You should use Veracrypt instead, but your question still stands open.

I used Evernote Basic (the free level) for several years but just switched to OneNote a couple of days ago when they announced I could no longer sync between my desktop, laptop, iPad and (Windows) phone.

I used Microsoft's conversion tool and it worked pretty well.

OneNote 2016 on its own is completely free - you don't need the whole of Office to use it. Evernote's tagging is better, but there are addins for OneNote that boost the tagging of OneNote somewhat (such as "OneNote Tagging Kit": https://onenotetaggingkit.code...)

Most of the features are redundant in Windows

Being notified that your warranty is about to expire is a good thing

Perhaps. If you're likely to renew a warranty. Otherwise you only need to know if the warranty has expired after a failure.

Being notified that you haven't done a backup recently is a good thing.

This is built into Windows.

Being informed that the battery in your laptop is degraded is a good thing

This is important. I get a lot of users who notice that their battery doesn't last as long as it used to. I think they expect the battery to just stop working and don't really understand that they degrade slowly. But Lenovo doesn't just warn you that the battery is degraded. They tell you the battery is degraded after (I think) two years whether it is or not. They want you to buy another battery. Besides, true battery monitoring is also built into Windows.

Having something run scheduled tests of basic peripherals is better than not doing so, even though typically you'll know when there's a problem because your system stops working.

This is rarely true. With the exception of the hard drive every component I can think of will either fail or not. Being warned after it happens is not helpful. As for hard drives, they should not be tested. Stress tests, as used in the Lenovo software will accelerate degradation. Users should monitor the S.M.A.R.T. status for warning signs. I prefer to use HDD Guardian. It's licensed MPL-2.0 and the results are easy to understand.

Part of the reason Microsoft is moving this project to github and the MIT license is because people have gotten wise to their old tricks.

Take for example, the Singularity RDK. The license for Singularity RDK can be found here: https://singularity.codeplex.com/license. Microsoft played the game that if they posted it on a site that is titled "Project Hosting for Open Source Software" then it must be open source. However, even the second line of the license of "Non-Commercial Academic Use Only" is a violation of the Open Source Definition.

Microsoft employees had told me that the license issue was still a work in progress and Singularity RDK would eventually be released under a real open source license. However, it has been nearly 8 years now so my guess is the Microsoft will never release Singularity RDK into the open source and is satisfied with using Codeplex to misconstrue their fake licenses as "open source." So, for any project they want to make clear to everyone that they really truly intend to open source, they have stopped using the tainted Codeplex and MS-PL family of licenses.

Bottom line question is, why would we trust a company that hasn't lived up to it previous commitments?

Truecrypt was great in the day, but it has been superseded:

"VeraCrypt is a free disk encryption software brought to you by IDRIX (https://www.idrix.fr) and that is based on TrueCrypt 7.1a."

https://veracrypt.codeplex.com...

TrueCrypt probably triggered their warrant canary and the dev team decided to call it quits, since NSLs are so much fun to fight for people living in the formerly free country known as the US. In the mean time, code forked and picked up here: https://veracrypt.codeplex.com...

Why haven't you moved to VeraCrypt yet?

https://veracrypt.codeplex.com...

This isn''t the first time Microsoft has contributed to "Open Source." It starts each time with Microsoft contributing code which is actually under an OSI approved license. Over time, Microsoft then attempts to gray the lines between what is Open Source and what is not. Take for example Microsoft CodePlex which they misrepresent as "Project Hosting for Open Source Software." Shortly after it's creation, a Microsoft controlled project called Singularity RDK was added which redefines Open Source as being for only "non-commercial academic purpose" which of course violates the Open Source Definition #6 which "prohibit license traps that prevent open source from being used commercially."

Some people have pointed out that SourceForge also has projects that don't honor the open source definition. However, no one has been able to point to such a project where SourceForge itself is the author of the project. Microsoft has both set the rules and breaks the rules for CodePlex.

Microsoft is still following embrace, extend and extinguish. The latest contributions are back at phase 1 but it won't be long until Microsoft is back again at phase 3.

This isn''t the first time Microsoft has contributed to "Open Source." It starts each time with Microsoft contributing code which is actually under an OSI approved license. Over time, Microsoft then attempts to gray the lines between what is Open Source and what is not. Take for example Microsoft CodePlex which they misrepresent as "Project Hosting for Open Source Software." Shortly after it's creation, a Microsoft controlled project called Singularity RDK was added which redefines Open Source as being for only "non-commercial academic purpose" which of course violates the Open Source Definition #6 which "prohibit license traps that prevent open source from being used commercially."

Some people have pointed out that SourceForge also has projects that don't honor the open source definition. However, no one has been able to point to such a project where SourceForge itself is the author of the project. Microsoft has both set the rules and breaks the rules for CodePlex.

Microsoft is still following embrace, extend and extinguish. The latest contributions are back at phase 1 but it won't be long until Microsoft is back again at phase 3.

There is a couple of open source projects doing this already: http://csnative.codeplex.com/ https://github.com/xen2/SharpL...

I'm not convinced its he best designed, nor is the chap in the first link I posted where he complains that in 9 years of using WPF it hasn't gone anywhere and is pretty complex and bloated to use.

The "it hasn't gone anywhere" claim is plain wrong. He gives a very simple "Hello world" sample which hasn't changed (and why would it?), and then contrasts it with the same in ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC - which are of course different, because they are two vastly different frameworks! There were plenty of major incremental improvements in WPF since then, as the changelogs clearly show.

What hasn't changed is the basics of the framework. And yes, I agree that some of it is not too well designed - e.g. XAML syntax is unnecessary verbose, and QML is much better in that regard. But most of those are surface issues. The core design - the notion of element tree, layout engine, layout and render transforms, data binding, styles, triggers etc - is solid, very powerful, and very flexible.

He's also complaining about things which don't have much to do with WPF - for example, MVVM, which is a generic UI design pattern (which I personally find unnecessary in WPF, because its data binding facilities are flexible enough that it can bind directly to a properly designed model, with converters effectively covering the VM layer).

Some of the point-by-point small things that he brings up are plain wrong, e.g. "Allow binding events directly to methods instead of via commands" - you could do it since WPF 1.0, right in XAML. Some are valid, but can be easily extended by third-party libraries, e.g.: "Allow C# expressions like basic boolean logic instead of requiring converters all the time" - as it happens I have implemented this personally. Some points (again, mostly about XAML syntax and verbosity) are valid but are minor. In any case, the only other comparable framework, even taking into account all these idiosyncrasies, is Qt+QML - and it took Qt a few years longer to even ship a first version of that, and then a couple more years to get it to usable shape. I'm not aware of any other viable competitors in this area.

Imagine if Microsoft had done that instead of reinventing the GUI wheel - you'd create a control in WPF and could drop it onto a Winforms dialog. That would have been good.

You can actually do it (and also the other way around).

The problem is that it's very hard to marry a UI framework that uses immediate, resolution-dependent, non-compositing 2D rendering (WinForms) with a transformation- and composition-based pipeline (WPF). It is possible only if you rewrite the former to be like the latter, but that also breaks backwards compatibility. Qt did that during the 3.x -> 4.x transition, and if you remember that, it wasn't exactly a smooth move.

As it is, WPF is just now very well designed, and not vey well implemented. As the other link showed, the chart controls only work for small datasets, if you want something that works well - you use the old winforms one!

WPF grid is slow largely because it uses the WPF layout engine, which is optimized for at most a few hundred widgets on the form, rather than many thousands of small cells. There are plenty of third-party grid controls for WPF that are blazing fast. By the way, the original WinForms grid control was also painfully slow (for some of the same reasons), and it took until .NET 2.0 to make a new one that was fast.

And remember, WPF development began some time in 2003, and the first alphas went public in 2004 - and the first release was in 2006. This was back whe

[...]"It also doesn't solve the problem of, "We've identified these GMail and Facebook accounts as yours. Please login to them or go to jail."

Sorry, I thought people knew about this.

And by the way, my answer to the relevant police is "officer, let me give you the password for that volume, that's where I stored my id/passwords or Gmail and Facebook, bank accounts etc."

Microsoft fully supports Node.js. See e.g. this and this.

The rest of what you said is just nonsense. Children born when the first browsers that had DHTML and allowed generation/manipulation of the DOM with javascript appeared are now graduating high school. Yes there were compatibility issues, but it definitely wasn't Node.js that solved that problem.

Node.js is just the latest virtual machine tied to a specific language. It has about the same potential to make .NET irrelevant as it has to make Java irrelevant: none.

In light of this news it shouldn't be long before we have Java code compiling and running on .NET runtimes.

We had that for many years now, in form of IKVM.

But, outside of a few very narrow interop scenarios, why would you want to? Java already has a perfectly good runtime, what's the point of porting it to another which is not significantly (if at all) better?

What you is, in fact, happening, is Microsoft supporting the existing Java stack as is - like this, or this. And it's not just Java, but also Python, and Node.js, and now R - and there will be more of that to come.

Forgot /. doesn't allow hyperlinks. The link is at http://wudt.codeplex.com/

The upgrade download always has an option to download the email to burn to DVD. Once you have the iso you can turn the iso into a USB stick this from Microsoft if you don't have blank DVDs or a DVD writer. It's open source too, so likely no nefariousness there.

I'd pick VisualBasic over Python as a beginners language.Plus VisualStudio is really good; its a good IDE, good debugger; its stable, its free; its widely used in the 'real world'

And you can use it for Python, with everything that you wrote still being true.

and you can focus 100% on "learning to program" without getting bogged down in configuring your environment or managing your toolchain or phyhon package management, library versions (python 2 vs 3), etc, etc, etc.

For this kind of stuff you really don't need to. I would be extremely surprised if all the tasks that he covers in his class wouldn't be covered even by the base Python install downloaded from http://python.org/ (which PTVS will even tell you to do if it finds that you don't have Python). And if that is not true, then a prepackaged Python distro like Anaconda - again, a single-click install - will surely be enough.

Besides, VB.NET is basically C# with training wheels; so you switch BEGIN and END for curly braces, realize procedures are just functions that return "nothing", and a little bit of other syntax and you are up and running in something that is pretty relevant.

I would argue that the cruft that VB.NET puts on top of C# is mostly useless as training wheels - it's no big difference between IF..END IF and curly braces - and in some cases is actively harmful because it uses its own terminology that is not shared with any other programming language, in lieu of terms that are commonly used throughout the field (like MustOverride/MustInherit instead of abstract).

Basically, if you are teaching people VB, you might as well teach them C# right away. It'll take 1% more effort, but they'll have a more useful skill from the get go, and knowledge of syntax will help them when it'll come to C++, Java, JavaScript etc.

What's the license?

Uh it's right there, in the link under the aptly named "License.txt".

Copyright (c) Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved. Microsoft Open Technologies would like to thank its contributors, a list of whom are at http://aspnetwebstack.codeplex....

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

.NET is all going open source

Several of the ancillary libraries and other projects (Entity Framework, F#, etc.) have been open source for some time, and now .NET core is on GitHub. So far, it's only a handful of the core libraries, but the plan is to flesh out the entire framework.

If your process involves generating Office, documents, it's generally the easiest way. The server automation tools for generation of Office documents are basically scripts and wrappers around.... Office. So if you want to generate some report that spits out an Excel file at the end, you can bet it was generated in Excel the first time around because the reporting tool actually called Excel to fill in the fields.

This may have been correct 5 to 10 years ago, but you should never do this in a modern installation if you can possibly help it. Microsoft's official position is that "Microsoft does not recommend or support server-side Automation of Office."

You should be using the Open XML SDK to create Office documents in your web application. The default classes and methods are somewhat opaque, but fortunately, there are a lot of helper toolkits that run on top of OOXML SDK to make things much easier. I used Simple OOXML, which hasn't been updated for a while and has limited documentation, but works pretty well, and is free. These solutions are not only much more robust in a server-side situation, but you don't have to devote an Office license to the server.

Apparently VeraCrypt also solves also many vulnerabilities found in TrueCrypt (bootloader, kernel, string handling...). The author posted a comment explaining this : https://veracrypt.codeplex.com... Any thoughts about this, especially for TrueCrypt users?

Note that VeraCrypt can't open existing TrueCrypt container files, nor can it create new container files that are backward compatible with TrueCrypt. Instead it suggests you do a clumsy, "un-enecrypt, copy over, re-enecrypt" lock-in process in order to "upgrade". At least the others (truecrypt.ch, Ciphershed, Tcplay / Zulucrypt, et. al.) allow you to keep working with existing TC container files.

Why this isn't in screaming bold text at the top of the VeraCrypt page (which is here, btw), is beyond me.

VeraCrypt's website says it's "based on TrueCrypt", but the licence page says it's released under the Microsoft (!) Public licence (which is a free software licence, incompatible with the GPL.)

But TrueCrypt (now unmaintained) was never released under any free software licence, so VeraCrypt can't be both based on TrueCrypt and be under the Microsoft Public Licence. Anyone know which info is accurate and why they make this conflicting claim?

Of course, using Microsoft's codeplex hosting, and Microsoft's licence raises doubts about the software given that Microsoft has already been caught handing data to the NSA and putting in backdoors for the NSA.

VeraCrypt's website says it's "based on TrueCrypt", but the licence page says it's released under the Microsoft (!) Public licence (which is a free software licence, incompatible with the GPL.)

But TrueCrypt (now unmaintained) was never released under any free software licence, so VeraCrypt can't be both based on TrueCrypt and be under the Microsoft Public Licence. Anyone know which info is accurate and why they make this conflicting claim?

Of course, using Microsoft's codeplex hosting, and Microsoft's licence raises doubts about the software given that Microsoft has already been caught handing data to the NSA and putting in backdoors for the NSA.

So this github project is "lock-in" in your biased POV
http://www.mono-project.com/do...
OR https://roslyn.codeplex.com/
But not Java?

Yes, it is:

Mono
ASP.NET
Entity Framework

Yes, it is:

Mono
ASP.NET
Entity Framework

Roslyn should be considered a flagship product (you know, once it's released). It's open source. http://roslyn.codeplex.com/

Look at this. And this and this and even this.

Raaawrgh. Not the "this, this and this" dance again. ;) Let me FTFY...

"Look at Microsoft Open Technologies. And .NET Foundation and a Computerworld article about Internet of Things and even Codeplex."

A good rule of thumb is that the sentence should be readable even without seeing which URLs the hyperlinks point to.

Look at this. And this and this and even this.

Raaawrgh. Not the "this, this and this" dance again. ;) Let me FTFY...

"Look at Microsoft Open Technologies. And .NET Foundation and a Computerworld article about Internet of Things and even Codeplex."

A good rule of thumb is that the sentence should be readable even without seeing which URLs the hyperlinks point to.

(disclaimer: I have interned at Microsoft for the past three summers; I do not speak for them)

I think your criticism against lock-in is fair, and this is clearly one of Microsoft's strategies, and I suspect that it will continue to be to some degree. But on the language front, you are wrong. Not only are Microsoft's newest languages open-source (F#, TypeScript), but they are also cross-platform and collaboratively developed with open source groups. And, of course, you can run all .NET languages on the Mac, Linux, FreeBSD, etc. with mono.

While it is theoretically possible that all of this is a deadly Microsoft-bait-and-switch just waiting to happen, having worked at Microsoft, I can say that doing so would fly in the face of a lot of hard work by many, many people there. I was as critical about Microsoft as you were (dig into my /. history and you'll see) until I worked there. Not only is it a great place to work, but the company really is committed to changing its culture. Use of open-source tools at Microsoft used to be strictly-prohibited. Now they have a fast-track process for working with them. Open-sourcing of Microsoft software was also a complete non-starter. Now putting Microsoft code up on the web is increasingly routine, and they even have their own open-source hosting ala GitHub that has git bindings.

Microsoft is a big company (the Redmond campus is mind-bogglingly huge to me) and they have a lot of corporate momentum. Despite this, in my opinion, I've seen my daily interactions with people do a complete 180 in the last couple of years. Microsoft knows that the era of selling boxed copies of proprietary software is coming to an end. So you're simply wrong about Microsoft not being able to change.

(disclaimer: I have interned at Microsoft for the past three summers; I do not speak for them)

I think your criticism against lock-in is fair, and this is clearly one of Microsoft's strategies, and I suspect that it will continue to be to some degree. But on the language front, you are wrong. Not only are Microsoft's newest languages open-source (F#, TypeScript), but they are also cross-platform and collaboratively developed with open source groups. And, of course, you can run all .NET languages on the Mac, Linux, FreeBSD, etc. with mono.

While it is theoretically possible that all of this is a deadly Microsoft-bait-and-switch just waiting to happen, having worked at Microsoft, I can say that doing so would fly in the face of a lot of hard work by many, many people there. I was as critical about Microsoft as you were (dig into my /. history and you'll see) until I worked there. Not only is it a great place to work, but the company really is committed to changing its culture. Use of open-source tools at Microsoft used to be strictly-prohibited. Now they have a fast-track process for working with them. Open-sourcing of Microsoft software was also a complete non-starter. Now putting Microsoft code up on the web is increasingly routine, and they even have their own open-source hosting ala GitHub that has git bindings.

Microsoft is a big company (the Redmond campus is mind-bogglingly huge to me) and they have a lot of corporate momentum. Despite this, in my opinion, I've seen my daily interactions with people do a complete 180 in the last couple of years. Microsoft knows that the era of selling boxed copies of proprietary software is coming to an end. So you're simply wrong about Microsoft not being able to change.

(disclaimer: I have interned at Microsoft for the past three summers; I do not speak for them)

I think your criticism against lock-in is fair, and this is clearly one of Microsoft's strategies, and I suspect that it will continue to be to some degree. But on the language front, you are wrong. Not only are Microsoft's newest languages open-source (F#, TypeScript), but they are also cross-platform and collaboratively developed with open source groups. And, of course, you can run all .NET languages on the Mac, Linux, FreeBSD, etc. with mono.

While it is theoretically possible that all of this is a deadly Microsoft-bait-and-switch just waiting to happen, having worked at Microsoft, I can say that doing so would fly in the face of a lot of hard work by many, many people there. I was as critical about Microsoft as you were (dig into my /. history and you'll see) until I worked there. Not only is it a great place to work, but the company really is committed to changing its culture. Use of open-source tools at Microsoft used to be strictly-prohibited. Now they have a fast-track process for working with them. Open-sourcing of Microsoft software was also a complete non-starter. Now putting Microsoft code up on the web is increasingly routine, and they even have their own open-source hosting ala GitHub that has git bindings.

Microsoft is a big company (the Redmond campus is mind-bogglingly huge to me) and they have a lot of corporate momentum. Despite this, in my opinion, I've seen my daily interactions with people do a complete 180 in the last couple of years. Microsoft knows that the era of selling boxed copies of proprietary software is coming to an end. So you're simply wrong about Microsoft not being able to change.

No, no, no. At the very least, if you are a true /.er you will check out trunk here. You will then waste half your life getting to the point where you have a workable IDE. Then, and only then, you will go about solving your original problem. That is the /. way!

Microsoft has been doing Python for over 3 years now. A lot of people "expected them to take it, then try to claim it, and then when they can't, try to make their own, and drag everyone away from it", but it hasn't materialized yet.

Have you considered that your preconceived notions of Microsoft are a decade old, and it's might be a different company run by different people by now? Or that there's no business purpose in anything beyond "embrace", if you can just use it as a selling point to sell a product to people who don't care about all-MS top-to-bottom stack, as has been increasingly common in the last ten years?

Ignoring the issue with "immutable" arrays (which I think is something that will keep tripping both newbies and people switching from other languages), it's pretty decent for a mainstream language with no pretense for any particular innovation. Looks and feels a lot like the other similar languages with same design goals - Kotlin, C# 6.0 (the not-yet-released one that's currently in design) sans legacy cruft, etc. The only sticking point is automatic reference counting over GC, but given Apple's background on the issue, it's not surprising (though based on experience with such in C++/CX, this will also bite them once coders start actively using lambdas for event callbacks).

Definitely much better than Objective-C, which was a hack of a language in too many respects - trying to bolt Smalltalk onto C by forcibly fitting square pegs into round holes with little attempt to reconcile the fundamental differences in design philosophy would inevitably end up like that, though.

It seems that Apple has recognized that Obj-C is both dated and looks and feels very alien to people from practically any other camp, and so they have decided to tackle that to make their platform more attractive to both new developers and people switching from other platforms. If that is indeed the intended goal, they have reached it for sure.

Oh please, you are *completely* full of shit. WP8 has Pocket File Manager, and WP8.1 has added even more support for file access (I don't know if anybody has yet published an app that uses it to make a general-purpose file browser).

Yeah, the apps can't *see* much because they run with excruciatingly low privileges - PFM has a special capability that gives full access to some locations most apps can't access at all - but the SD card and public folders are accessible.

There's also homebrew, like https://wp8webserver.codeplex.... or http://forum.xda-developers.co...

They also open-sourced their new C# compiler:

http://roslyn.codeplex.com/

Reactive Programming (RP) is just flow based programming (FBP) which has been used successfully for 40+ years. Modern RP adds some nice syntactic sugar that makes it more feasable. I have been using RX https://rx.codeplex.com/ some time ago and am pretty happy with it. It combines very well with f# and functional programming. Always try to isolate small autonomous components and test them seperately with http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rxteam... and http://visualrx.codeplex.com/ . Here is a free book about FBP http://www.jpaulmorrison.com/f... You get comparable easy message based concurrency but you have to take care to stay synchron as much as possible because it can get complex pretty easily.