Slashdot Mirror
The Longhorn Dream Reborn
gbjbaanb writes "Early this month, Microsoft dropped something of a bombshell on Windows developers: the new Windows 8 touch-friendly immersive style would use a developer platform not based on .NET. Cue howls of outrage from .NET developers everywhere, but here Ars Technica describes what's more likely to have been going on and why Microsoft is finally getting its act together for developers."
Toss a few chairs and you'll get over it.
RTFA.
Windows developers want to be able to build immersive applications, and they don't want to have to use HTML5 and JavaScript to do it. They won't have to. ... Far from being left behind on the legacy desktop - which was the impression that many took from the presentation - native C++ and managed C# will both be first-class, supported ways of developing immersive, touch-first, tablet-friendly Windows 8-style applications.
DATABASE WOW WOW
If anything, we should be surprised that anyone's surprised. Whether or not TFA's theory is true, one thing is absolutely clear: .NET, like any Microsoft technology, has an expiration date.
Anyone remember COM, VBX, and other MS-Windows technologies of yesteryear? Or the Visual Basic debacle of more recent vintage. For as long as I can remember, there's been a steady churn of Microsoft technologies, coming and going.
Microsoft makes a lot of money from selling its development tools, documentation, etc... to its developer base. Microsoft simply runs the whole show. They are in full control, and call all the shots. And they understand perfectly well that if they keep the same technology platform in place, over time, they lose a good chunk of their revenue stream. That's why they have to obsolete their technology platforms, time and time again. They need revenue. It makes perfect sense. If you are a Microsoft Windows developer, one of your primary job functions is to generate revenue to Microsoft. Perhaps not from you, directly; maybe from your company. Whoever pays the bills for Visual Studio, MSDN, and all the other development tools. Maybe it's not you, personally, but it's going to be someone, that's for sure.
So, perhaps this is the death knell for .NET. Perhaps not. If not this time, maybe next year. But it's inevitable. It's a certainty. If you are a .NET developer, your skills will be obsolete. If you were a COM developer, or a VB6 developer, your skills became obsolete a long time. I see no reason why .NET developers will escape the same fate. It's only a matter of time, but that's ok: all you have to do is invest some time and money to retrain yourself on the replacement Microsoft Windows technology, whatever it's going to be, when its time comes. But, it'll come.
Originally I came from a Unix background. Many, many moons ago I explored the possibility of boning up on the MS-Windows ways of doing things. But, after a bit of some exploratory peeks and pokes, this became painfully clear to me; that whatever I learned, all of it was going go to waste, in its due time. And that was pretty much the end of my venture into the Windows landscape.
Well, I'm happy to report that read(2), write(2), and all the other syscalls that make up POSIX, and its derivatives, still work the same as they did decades ago. Everything I have learned, as the sands of time have rolled on and on, I still put to good use today, and I make a pretty good living using them. Nothing has gone to waste. Honestly, this is more than I could say for my peers who practice their craft on MS-Windows. A lot -- not everything but a lot -- they learned decades ago is now completely and totally worthless to them, and to anyone else.
So, whether Windows 8 is Longhorn reborn, as TFA says, or not, one thing can be said for certain. .NET is dead. It's just a matter of time. Good luck learning its eventual replacement. Of course, you understand that it'll be dead too, some years after that, of course; just keep that in mind, as you make your long term plans.
They're not dropping Silverlight or .NET. Try to pay attention. Nobody with any sense ever thought they were going to, but the usual suspects took every opportunity to make a "Durr hurr, Microsoft screwing over developers" thing out of it when there was no indication whatsoever this would happen.
Nobody sane wants to develop large applications in fucking native JS and HTML5, and Microsoft knows that.
im somewhat of an audophile, and despite i have been using windows xp with extra software like srs audio sandbox (cryztalizes and clears sounds) and a good sound card (original x-fi x-treme music, from the production batch which got the good chips) with crystallizer and so on, on top of an altec lansing fx6021 speaker set (in-concert array microdrives totaling 12, crystal clear) for a long time,
i was dumbstruck with the audio quality pulseaudio + x-fi x-treme music + audacious media player with crystallizer plugin gave, when i switched to linux.
now im switching to linux every time i want to listen to music in high quality.
Read radical news here
You mean that rumor I heard about Steve Ballmer turning tricks in Bellingham are false?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
No, because they looked at Windows 8. And because anybody who's not, literally, mentally defective knows Microsoft isn't going to abandon .NET. You have to be a little smarter (say, 105 IQ) to know they're not going to abandon Silverlight, so I'll cut you a little slack there.
The idea is ridiculous. You seriously think people are going to write complex end user and enterprise apps in JS/HTML5? Seriously?
Unfortunately the article doesn't explain how they arrived at that conclusion other than it being their own opinion and possibly their own wish. That whole Longhorn WinFX finally coming to reality thing is another opinion piece. We heard many similar stories for Cairo many moons ago and that whole object oriented operating system rubbish around Windows 2000.
The article says windows is getting a new API, WinRT, which is a modern version of Win32. .NET and C++ development will both be updated for WinRT and have the same capability as each other so you can work in the environment you choose. Silverlight is supported, updated and renamed (codenamed?) Jupiter. Some other new things were added. In summary, .NET developers, you're getting new functionality. C++ developers, you're getting new functionality. Plus it will be easier than ever to go back and forth between the two because, underlying it all, is a new unified API.
what happened to "developers developers developers" ?
They moved into the "O-cloud-O cloud-O cloud"
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
There are official MS OS Anime personifications, and there have been for quite some time.
I see that although you are not new to the net, you are new to this topic, so I'll link you to one list of the OS-tans. I'm sure you'll have no problem finding the other less NSFW places yourself to see more and better quality pics/fics, if you are so inclined...
There is indeed slash fiction. I read one not too long ago about XP-tan having an affair with Windows7-tan, Vista-tan was quite upset (her abandonment issues surfacing yet again); The always compassionate Linux-tan tried to console her, but it made the needy OSX Leopard-tan very jealous (apparently consoling a rival is a grave transgression on her home planet).
There are OS-kuns (males) as well... My girlfriend told me of the new yaoi slash she was reading where OSX-Kun fell in love with the heroic and savage XP-kun who had rescued him from the lair of the evil scientist Dr. Mac-Defender. In the heat of their passion OSX-kun had unknowingly infected XP-kun with a virus; Thus, both OS-kuns were soon on their way to see the comically bungling Dr. Norton-kun.
Fear not my friends, Rule 34 can not be denied.