Windows 8 And End Of .net

[mahesh2k 0]

There is a lot of talk going on between developers these days about .NET and it's future. Most of the desktop development was dependent on C++, C#,VB and other languages on windows. But it seems that new windows is likely to close .NET for developers only to restrict them to HTML+JS+CSS3 based application. At first this may be good news for some web developers but to be strict on desktop development, building audio, video and photography applications that take more system resources are hard to develop with HTML+JS. Not to forget there are other heavy and production level apps as well. So by making apps dependent on browser there seems to be some big issue for application developers those who don't use or connect their apps to HTML+CSS. Take example of mathamatica or matlabs for example, they have nothing to gain from web browser based apps as the app itself is big enough take loads for calculation and graphing stuff. But by making it HTML+CSS based app there is going to be a lot of clutter going to be in it. Microsoft has plans for adding C++ to this API as well. But it is quite clear that they're going to dump .NET and dependent apps on it. Officially they are not making any comment about future of developers on .NET platform. It is something like attracting developers to this platform then making that platform part of OS and suddenly drop the whole project for nothing. So it looks like microsoft is thinking about moving to Azure platform and going to make OS similar to chrome OS (which is internet dependent and browser only). Not sure if developers and other investors will agree with it. But it seems that there is hardly anything they are going to show developers to make any final conclusion. But if this happens then chances are there that desktop publishers will find linux or other platform for their apps and business as not all apps are worthy of being browser dependent or CSS+HTML5fish.
You can read countless rants about this on ars.technica and many other developer news sites. Even silverlight official forum is writing open letter to microsoft to keep .NET alive which you can read on their official forum.
You can read more about this news here and here and here. I'm not sure if many people will stop from upgrading to windows 8 or will keep with win 7 for next few more years. But assuming azure and web based OS as solution makes me think like this could be one bad move from microsoft. I'm of opinion that desktop apps have more use than online apps. So not sure why every tech giant is beating for online os and services even though they know that carriers like AT&T, SPICE and Orange are literally charging per byte and cloud OS or apps makes it harder for them to use computer. So any .NET developer here ? what do you think about windows 8 and it's future for developers ?

[mahesh2k 0]

I checked some of the silverlight developers blog and found this. I dont know what are the technologies that are going to be removed from new version of windows. But simply relying on WPF or HTML5 for operating system and for windows forms seems to be the worst idea of this year or decade. I mean there are some seriously resource heavy applications that need some more support from the languages in which they're built. I have seen that vb, c sharp and c++ are good languages and killing them for the sake of new OS is just not right. Not sure what they finalized this time. but you can see map of disconitnued programs and languages here. Some more interesting things to read are here. You'll observe that this is going to be more worst for developers. I don't know what is the future of visual studio and other respective programs. I just hope that they keep all those languages and .NET framework alive on their side. Or maybe developers have to move to better operating system for the coding.

[yordan 10]

If Crosoft wants to continue fighting against Linux, they will have to ket C++ alive.

[mahesh2k 0]

Herb stutter from C++ Committee is working with microsoft so it is obvious that they're keeping atleast c++ alive with their windows 8. Only issue is that rest of the languages will either depend on HTML+CSS based framework and .NET will be dumped for developers. This is what causing the issue between developers and the team. I don't know what could be result of all this. But considering the pressure they're getting from developers, they're likely to keep some part of the .net or other languages alive. Not sure what could be that reason. But if most of the languages which are supported and nurished on win are removed then surely it is victory for linux desktop. They're going to keep users on linux desktop because linux is also internet dependent OS and considering microsoft's movement of cloud and tablets, they're ignoring desktop market.

[yordan 10]

considering microsoft's movement of cloud and tablets, they're ignoring desktop market.

Desktops are part of the cloud environment (each user needs to have local power and remote services) so desktops cannot really be ignored, the reason is probably somewhere else.

[mahesh2k 0]

I checked chrome OS to test if that is the path on which MS wants to go. Basically chrome OS is stripped down version of linux. There is only one application running that is browser all the time. All the google services are seen on the browser most of the time and they want users to access the services. I initially thought this is the way microsoft was heading. But i guess there are too many things that MS as platform carrying and they can't unplug this burden just like that. So considering c++ and HTML5/CSS as future choice for them for desktop development. I think many resource hungry yet important applications like say photoshop, matlab and other stuff is simply beyond capability of HTML5/CSS. Considering C++ as future language of .NET for MS platform. I wonder if the old win32 prog days are coming back with new api ? I mean the reason C# was making sense was because language like C# is much easy to maintain in case of memory management for apps. I don't know what is going on with them. There are not much of workshops or announcement for the new release either. It is totally mystery for me to see the way with this is going on. Just going to keep tab at it until they release the final version.

[mahesh2k 0]

As i said earlier, there are some internal developer spoilers coming out from the MS lounge. I found that .NET is likely to be supported to some extent. But considering the involvement on XAML, HTML5 and CSS, it is not much. There are some developers who got internal hint frm the MSDN community found that MS is going to support C++, C#, XAML, JS/HTML and VB for their jupiter framework. This framework was reborn after the failure of longhorn. Now they're allowing developers from all three sides to develop on this framework. You'll see that that they're allowing web developers and desktop developers to use this framework to code for their Windows 8 OS. It is good move in my opinion but not sure how long .NET and C# are going to move with it. You can read about this here. There was also QA session for CNET team by microsoft and they answered many questions recently. You can read more about that here. You'll find that most of the doubts related to the windows 8 developers are covered. Not sure upto what extent, but i got some satisfactory hints from it knowing that C# will be there for some time. Other than all this there is also one more spoiler blog post that answers most of the questions raised in this thread. You can read about that spoiler on new dev system here. I'm also keeping in touch with some of the developer threads and PDC2011 event to know what is coming next. So i'll update based on the answers from these sources. Let's see till then i guess there is nothing to worry for the C# developers.

[H.O.D 0]

I may not be able to go deep into the technical stuff, but from the early look of WIndows 8, it does look as if it is encouraging more users to start using tablets instead of PCs! Although for the developers there might not be much difference because behind the new visual appeal there will still be the same old Windows framework, right? MS has always rallied strongly for developers to prefer .NET to other platforms, and at the moment it looks like MS just wants users to continue using Windows instead of looking for other alternatives. Chrome OS isn't even close to giving Windows a fight, but it does look like MS has taken up the challenge and is bringing out a whole new Windows to increase the visual appeal for its users. As for developers, this might only make their work more challenging, yet interesting.

[mahesh2k 0]

Check my last posts because there are some interesting links about this new platform. As PDC2011 is in September i can't comment much on the platform. But spoilers from some bloggers say that this platform is not .NET only. it accepts HTML5/CSS/JS into it. Also they're adding XAML and WPF directly to this platform along with .NET so. It is partial death for COM/WIND32 and .NET. Because web developers now can code apps easily from their knowledge of the current skill sets. So it is not just .NET platform on the operating system anymore. The framework will be updated and there are chances of curbing few things. But i got few hints from the developers on the forums that they're not going to cut .NET that easily. Considering java's domination along with other languages that rely on C# these days for platform in other OS. As for visual appeal ? true. they're adding a lot of stuff to attract users from other OS. They're making windows a much better experience. but the issue is that they're thinking more about desktop platform dependent on web than any other. I just hope that traditional languages and the stuff remains on the new desktop because if we move to new desktop like inux then surely the work we do with old apps which are windows dependent are not going to work. So this is the reason i'm still using linux for now. otherwise i don't care about .net removal and i can switch to linux anytime i wish by making changes in my work.

[Quatrux 4]

I also read about this. Thinking in abstract, computers needs to be used as easy as possible, so Today it seems strange how can you use a computer/desktop without .NET, COM/WIND32, but I think it won't be strange after years and years, maybe it's a step forward to the future?But I doubt that things like that die soon, for example most of use programmers doesn't really use assembly anymore, but there are people who use it as they require, and even though html5 css3 is really slow comparing, but it's much easier to use them like a standard of some kind and it seems to work, it's structure is good in theory, time will tell .NET is really good, I personally don't see what's wrong with it to move away from it, frameworks are the way to go, it saves time, it makes the structure better. If I was a serious .NET developer, maybe I would talk differently and would say: "it's not possible" ".NET will be dropped?" "NOO"Microsoft Surface is something what I think will be the future versions of computers with GUI removed and we will be using NUI, I think it will the the next big move forward, as in ~1985 or a bit earlier we moved from Command line to GUI, with time we will move to NUI from GUI, but as today we have people using Console, I think we will stil have people using GUI, but NUI will be for major part of people, store photos, listen to music, browse the net, play games, watch movies and etc.

[yordan 10]

Thinking in abstract, computers needs to be used as easy as possible, so Today it seems strange how can you use a computer/desktop without .NET, COM/WIND32, but I think it won't be strange after years and years, maybe it's a step forward to the future?

Simply suppose that all home PC manufacturers stop making that kind of computers, and everybody rushes on tablets?Then, most of communicating things will be like Androids or other such things, able to surf without .net or wind32.
So, I would say, for our own purposes, let's "wait and see". Maybe the far future will see a lot of things disapearing, but the next monthes will probably see us continuing our current job with our current tools.

[8ennett 0]

An open development platform with more possibilities with little expense to resources like the .NET framework and other similar frameworks are responsible for giving birth to great innovations in software and media development. It gave developers around the world the opportunity to create great things and paved the way for companies, including Microsoft, to take these ideas to the next level and produce some of the groundbreaking tools we have at our disposal today.Removing the .NET framework from future versions of Windows is taking away a platform and restricting the possibilities of many unnamed developers who could have used it to continue bringing us innovative and practical solutions. Sure there is always the linux platform and its continuing mission to encourage independant development, but that's not the issue. Instead of taking away Microsoft should be developing and expanding the .NET framework to make it more secure, less constrictive and provide better and more efficient resource management, not removing it completely.I haven't had chance to go through all the replies to this topic but hopefully this has been picked up on. Microsoft can't have it their way when ever they feel like it, independant development is the corner stone to all information technologies.

[mahesh2k 0]

I updated the thread in my last post confirming that microsoft is not closing .NET framework. Yes, they're making it much more clean and secure. They're also adding support for the HTML5 and CSS. So that makes it easy for web developers to communicate with the operating system. So it is not end of the .NET, afterall there are consistent updates from the developers and microsoft has chance to go cross platform only with their .NET framework and C sharp language. So there is no way they're going to close it in anytime soon. What most of us are forgeting here is that, desktop is not about web browser, emails and audio player. There are some other domains where desktop based applications are needed heavily. For those domains to functions there is always need for the local desktop applications for faster processing and data security. For example, imagine running matlab on cloud computing. We're wasting resources of our computers by not using it and relying on cloud for that. Also internet connection speeds are always varying and are not cheap everywhere. So educational computing, scientific computing can't rely on cloud softwares for the compilation of program and storage as they need local medium to store and manipulate the data. Same goes with gaming industry, steam maybe good cloud example for gaming, but many people prefer to have games offline and solo or within family. There are surely benefits for games to have cloud interface but downloading simply isn;t going to cut it for cloud platform and resources for say 120 billion people playing games on cloud without any installation on their operating system is something beyond imagination as it'll need horrible servers and resources. So web only operating systems, tablets are not going to be primary medium of the computing usage. Casual surfing and tasks can be done with tablets and small computers but they can't achieve huge tasks that requires patience, creativity. Coming back to the .NET topic, as i said earlier they're not going to dump it. What made me think on this topic was that there was a lot of talk on this subject and no response frm microsoft. I guess silverlight and some other developer models are going to get affected but .NET as huge platform is not going to get affected with the change. September is going to be the first release month for the windows 8. So let's see how they present the new operating system in conference. Not sure if this will be any good for the some developer types but i can confidently say that .NET is here to stay because not all applications are worthy of cloud platform.