Or real close to it...
Now that we've reached the BUILD event (starting on Tuesday), what do people think/know? I've done a fair amount of searching, and so far I can't find much of anything beyond the potentially-community-dumping "HTML 5-JS is the future" information we've all seen. Everything else is speculation, both educated and otherwise,and quite frankly doesn't really help. Did I miss something?
I'm assuming Rocky is going - is anybody else going? Since MS has provided absolutely zero information about the event, there was no way I would have been able to convince my boss to let me go. I mean, tell me how this is even remotely helpful:
http://www.buildwindows.com/Agenda
While I'm sure MS thinks this is a "hype-inducing" strategy, surely they have to know the unrest they've caused in their developer community... ? Do they even care? Or are they assuming we'll all drink the Kool Aid after the conference? Or are they even going to attempt to assuage people?
I'm presuming Rocky will address how CSLA fits in this all this after the conference, but that's quite frankly because he's consistently shown to be considerate towards his developer community.
A guy who's getting a little p*ssed off about the whole thing right about now...
- Scott
Sadly there's little or nothing to be said until sometime on Sept 13, at least after the keynote (and that ends around 11 AM pacific time).
We do know Win8 has a "dual mode" - the new Metro experience, and the existing Windows desktop experience. It sounds like apps must be specifically written to run in the new lighter-weight Metro mode. Those apps apparently run on ARM and Intel chips, and it isn't clear that existing Windows apps will run on ARM.
Personally I expect to hear the following (I post this so I'm on record when I'm wrong :) ):
Assuming I'm right, we'll be able to make CSLA work in the Win8-Silverlight environment (if it doesn't already). The h5/js world is a whole different ballgame, and I suspect in that world the role of CSLA would be to help you build server-side services to support the h5 client apps.
We know nothing unfortunately. I've been more than a little pissed off about all this for many months now and it's put all our new development on hold and pushed me to take a serious look at Ruby On Rails and contemplate a world where the only client is HTML 5 / Javascript and all our tools are open source which I have been actively engaged in for the last few weeks instead of working on the new Silverlight / WPF / CSLA 4 app I had planned to be working on.
If Microsoft abandons .NET then I'm probably done with development.
I'm not going to leave a slick, uniform development environment for the land of HTML 5 (standard coming in 2020), JavaScript (puke), and browser inconsistencies. I'll admit I struggle with the learning curve but so far it has all been very much worth it. Even with my mediorce talents I can produce applications that my users really appreciate. To throw out years of learning on a whim - I won't do it. I'll change professions.
I don't expect a complete abandonment of .NET with BUILD/Win8. They've invested way too much in it. And were Microsoft really going to do that, the amount of business investment in .NET either means Win8 has one of the slowest business-adoption curves MS has seen (or perhaps completely dies on the vine) or they end up having to shim in some kind of .NET support for the foreseeable future.
(As for what they might call the "nuclear option" - that the business community leaves MS in droves - MS has its issues, but I don't think they'd shoot themselves in the foot quite like that...)
What may happen is that .NET ceases to become the primary client-side technology to use. I'm guessing that's where you are, and I would be quite upset if that's where they went as well. While that doesn't kill .NET, it certainly cuts it off at the knees and kicks it in the groin. And, IMHO, is just as bad for Win8 adoption.
I seem to remember a comment from Rocky somewhere that said that were Microsoft to significantly reduce/eliminate .NET as a platform, then he'd probably leave Microsoft work and go do something like Java. I may be remembering incorrectly, but if I'm not, that ought to tell you something.
To be honest, what's more concerning to me than the information that's been provided is MS's response - which seems to be something along the lines of "quit getting your panties in a bunch and just wait." MS does not have a good track record in these areas. They have to realize the problems they've caused, and rather than dismissing it as a tempest in a teapot, I think they'd be better off trying to form a response that does give out some information. I understand the "hype factor", and at this point we'll just wait for BUILD news. But I would hope they realize that the tempest has outgrown the teapot, justified or not...
- Scott
I am not overly worried about Microsoft dropping .NET.
I think they have to support h5, because there's no other client technology that offers a decent cross-platform story to the iPad. And whether we (or Microsoft) like it or not, the iPad is a real force in client-side development strategies at many companies.
But it seems highly unlikely that Microsoft would force us all to abandon a Microsoft-focused dev platform like .NET in favor of something that doesn't encourage (or even need) Microsoft - like h5.
In other words, I think they have to embrace h5 due to market forces beyond their control. And yet I'm reasonably confident that they'll provide great support for ".NET" on Win8 - like I said, I think it will be more like Silverlight for WP7 than full .NET - and the .NET devs will have an easier and more productive time of building Win8 apps vs the h5 devs.
Regardless, we'll know more tomorrow :)
Regardless, we'll know more tomorrow :)
No we won’t know tomorrow (at least not regarding the true future of .Net / WPF / Silverlight). Microsoft will tell us what we want to hear to appease the crowds but it will be meaningless. They will lie just like they lied about WPF not being killed etc, etc, etc, etc. Whatever is said during the Build conference will not be something that you can take to the bank, it would be nothing but a bunch of distorted “truth”.
And regarding the new technologies they will be presenting, the question to us is… do we want to adopt new technologies from a company that can’t seem to make up its mind about what they are doing and where they want to go? A company that has shown it has practically zero commitment to support and enhance the technologies they produce for a decent amount time. A company that drops technologies every 6 months. A company that keeps secrets and mislead its customer onto making bad investment decisions such as investing millions of dollars producing applications developed on technologies Microsoft knew they were going to kill a long time ago.
Perhaps I am being a bit dramatic here but most developers I know have zero faith and trust on Microsoft. So for us the answer is simple, when it comes down to open standards such as HTML5, we are planning to stay completely away from whatever Microsoft produces and sticking with open source. We are eager to get off the Microsoft train wreck.
Live blogging of the keynote that starts in 20-30 mins will be available here:
http://live.thisismynext.com/Event/Microsoft_Windows_8_BUILD_keynote
Everyone can relax now :)
If you are building Silverlight client apps now, you'll have a pretty easy transition to building Win8 Metro apps.
If you are building Windows Forms (and probably WPF) apps today, you'll be able to run those apps in the Win8 "desktop mode".
All that work we put into making CSLA run on Silverlight now appears to have been an excellent investment :)
Would you elaborate?
On the slide I saw both .NET and SL were in a the "legacy" columns. While I can appreciate the fact that my XAML knowledge via Silverlight is worthwhile I'm not sure why you'd say Silverlight is in good shape but not WPF. There better be a blog post on this by you. :D
As far as I can see, looks like WinRT is the new Silverlight (with some minor changes).
So you can move from Silverlight to WinRT (Metro) with very little effort while WPF is stuck on "desktop" mode, not to mention that WPF will get no more love whatsoever from Microsoft.
But I really have no idea so I probably should not be posting and wait till more info is available 
I'll reserve blog posts until I get more time with the pre-release. But from all I have seen thus far (including a little time working with the VS11 bits), WinRT is quite similar to Silverlight, but with some new namespaces and controls.
So I don't think your SL apps will run in Metro as-is. But I do think they'll port to Metro with reasonable effort in many cases.
Well bummer.
I'd gotten myself all worked up into a nice froth over nothing.
Whatever shall I rant about now?
I still can't find definitive sources of info on the future of wpf or silverlight.
My google fu is either weak or it's still not announced yet?
The only consensus I can see is a lot of people saying Metro is not for business and therefore we don't need to worry about it as business software developers but this seems wrong based on what I saw, Metro is definitely beneficial for any non trivial app and desktop apps are second class citizens clearly.
Anyone know of a good site or blog or summary of the way forward for .net developers given what's been announced so far?
After three days of putting all WinRT puzzles together on build, I can only say that it's another great opportunity for CSLA to unify platforms as it did in last versions.
Rocky are you around in Anaheim?
--- Milan
Everyone can relax now :)
If you are building Silverlight client apps now, you'll have a pretty easy transition to building Win8 Metro apps.
All that work we put into making CSLA run on Silverlight now appears to have been an excellent investment :)
Hurray!!! 
(dancing around the desk, trying not to get entangled in power cords)
Jav
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