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How Microsoft Is Wooing College Kids To Write Apps For Windows 8
SquarePixel writes "Bloomberg has an interesting story about Microsoft's efforts to simultaneously woo younger workers and to get more apps into its Windows Store. Quoting: 'Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, designed Windows 8 for touch-screen technology included in the company's first tablet, Surface, and other devices coming this year. To gain share in tablets, a market expected by DisplaySearch to reach $66.4 billion in 2012, Microsoft needs enough apps to challenge the more than 200,000 available for iPad. Using student recruits is one way Microsoft can woo app developers who are used to building programs for mobile phones and tablets, where the company has little and no share, respectively. Luring programmers before graduation is particularly critical for recruitment in the U.S., which lags behind countries such as India and China in its ability to crank out qualified engineers.'"
And Visual Studio coupled with XNA sure sounds better than how we had it back in the day.
Did you have to program in the snow? Uphill? Both ways?
When I look back at the code I created in college, compared to what I was capable of after a few years of real world development experience... The difference is pretty stark. I understand the get-em-while-they're-young approach, to influence development decisions later in life. But if they're betting the success of their platform on the output of students with limited-to-no real world experience, I fear for the quality of the apps in their store.
How much of Apple's App Store success is brought about by the development tools and niceness of Object-oriented programming / interface design?
I'm biased, since for a long while a NeXT Cube was my primary machine (and for a while, I had access to machines running Windows, Mac OS and NeXTstep all w/ similar processor and memory specs), but some of the nicest applications I've ever used began on NeXTstep, and pretty much all the apps I have a real fondness for were heavily influenced by OO-environments (FutureWave Smartsketch which became Flash, but started on Go Corp.'s PenPoint):
- Altsys Virtusoso (which became FreeHand v4)
- TeXview.app (TeXshop.app was inspired by it)
- Lotus Improv
- Mail.app
- TouchType.app
- a bunch of other apps / utilities which no longer exist / are remembered
- Doom (okay, I'm reaching, but it was initially developed on NeXTstep)
Would there be as many IOS apps if XCode didn't benefit from decades of NeXT/OPENSTEP development and user-interface design work?
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
So effectively what Microsoft has given the world for free is something that barely gets the job done -- and given that model, I would say it would definitely appeal to the same demographic they're advertising Windows 8 development to: college students.
As a college student I take great offense at the thought that pile of kludge is aimed at me. I have only met one person (in meatspace, all others I view with suspicion that it might be Balmer just trolling forums) that tried the windows 8 prerelease and liked it. (before that i thought he was a bit odd anyway but that just cemented it.)
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Your last 3 points are irrelevant for Win8 apps - you don't write them in MFC/ATL, and you don't use Win32 resource files for them. 64-bit is also not needed.
Also, IIRC, there's a basic profiler in 2012 Express.
Well, back in *my* day, we didn't have any of those fancy, dancy Eye Dee Eees. We soldered together wires to our vacuum tubes from instructions sets carved in clay tablets. That's the way is was and we *liked* it!
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
If you read the Microsoft metro app store policy you will start laughing, especially at "3.2 Your app must not stop responding, end unexpectedly, or contain programming errors", I mean look who's freaking talking here. Windows 1 to Windows 7, office 1 to office 2010, all had and have freaking issues(freezing, crashes, bugs, glitches) xbox 360 hardware failure, and yet they got the balls to tell you not to fuck it up. Shit, how many freaking times my windows 7 kept freezing because i did not set the storage(both winodws & amd SB drivers sucked) configuration from ide compatibility to ahci in the bios while the linux distros had no issues with this.
Microsoft also has the right to cancel your account and wipe all your apps off from the store any time if they think you are not conforming to their policy. For students, learning c & c++ would make it easier for them to adapt other languages much quicker. Writing efficient and inventive Algorithm's is the most important aspect of any programming language.
When I was 13/14 and used win9x and wanted to learn to program, there was no visual studio express at all. Only paid tools costing hundreds of dollars.
So you know what I did?
Switched to Linux.
Even today, I have no idea how to write a Windows program (managed to write a DLL I needed a few years ago though.. using Visual studio express C++).. but I've been writing Linux/BSD software in C for 15 years.
Point is, Visual Studio express may be crap.. but if they had it 15 years ago.. I'm sure I would have learned to program in Windows instead. Might never have switched to Linux at all.
So IMO, it's a smart/critical piece of software from MS. It's a bit much to expect people who are learning to program to immediately spend hundreds of dollars.