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ClockMeister wrote: Winforms is much closer to WORA than that!
It does seem to be the case. And it's unfortunate because there are a lot of crusty old controls in the WinForms realm. Many of them are dated back to Win95, few of them ever really got updated.
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raddevus wrote: It does seem to be the case. And it's unfortunate because there are a lot of crusty old controls in the WinForms realm. Many of them are dated back to Win95, few of them ever really got updated.
You know, that might be true, however give the following a little bit of thought: What difference does it make if they are "old and crusty" as you put it? Do the controls do the job they were intended to? I.E. do they still work?
In many scenarios, the "latest and greatest" technology is really nothing more than "lipstick on a pig", in my opinion, so that someone can sell another version of an item that already does the job. I have a suite of software development tools (VS2008, etc.) that I invested several thousand bucks in. Some "propeller head" developers (who wouldn't think of paying for their own tools, BTW) would consider these tools "obsolete" or "old hat". OK, fine. I can still write very relevant applications with what have turned out to be very stable tools and they run on every O/S Microsoft has produced from Windows XP forward, including every server version they make right on up to Windows 10. If that ain't "write once, run anywhere" it's awful bloody close! 
-ClockMeister
modified 10-Sep-16 17:48pm.
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raddevus wrote: I had to update to the very latest VSTudio Community 2015 SP3 to begin dev. Then I was required to update my Win10 to (the very newest of new win10 update -- Win10 Anniversary)
very useful. 
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There's a ways to go yet. There are some nice features, but there are some compromises that are hard for me, as a WPF lover, to get my head around.
This space for rent
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Pete O'Hanlon wrote: I have the start of a blog post about writing UWA apps
Let me know when you've written it up. I'd be interested in reading.
I just posted a short blog write up at: How Universal Will Win10 UWA/UWP Be If There Is No Windows Universe?[^]
But, it's more of a look at the difficulties that I mentioned before. And, a thought about "what if Microsoft loses devs? "
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raddevus wrote: And, a thought about "what if Microsoft loses devs? "
If? I'd say more that they are.
This space for rent
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Pete O'Hanlon wrote: If? I'd say more that they are.
I know. I've been a windows dev since 3.1 so it's a bit difficult for me. However, I try everything so if they do the wrong thing and lose then ce la vie. 
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Pete O'Hanlon wrote: I have the start of a blog post about writing UWA apps
Link? (And don't say the CP blog - I looked there, CP needs to learn how to display a blog.)
Marc
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Still writing it. There's a lot to cover, even in a bare bones UWA application. There's a lot of code in it that needs explaining.
This space for rent
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Pete O'Hanlon wrote: even in a bare bones UWA application. There's a lot of code in it that needs explaining.
That's a good summary of the situation.
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Why bother in 6 month's it will be abandoned or obsolete or both.
New version: WinHeist Version 2.2.2 Beta I told my psychiatrist that I was hearing voices in my head. He said you don't have a psychiatrist!
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Mike Hankey wrote: Why bother in 6 month's it will be abandoned or obsolete or both.
...to be replaced by what, exactly?
I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just wondering what Microsoft can turn to once it becomes clear it's not taking off.
(Part of me says bring back Winforms)
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Xamarin. They already have a full stack in VS. Deploys to Android and iOS (mostly). Why not make it so it can deploy universally.
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Comparing UWP and Xamarin...I suspect that Xamarin only represents a small subset of what can be done with UWP (notwithstanding being cross-platform).
Mind you, it'd be great if Xamarin became a superset/cross-platform version of UWP. But I don't see that happening.
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Mike Hankey wrote: Why bother in 6 month's it will be abandoned or obsolete or both.
I know. I think you are right.
If you go to twitter you'll see no one is talking about UWA UWP and you can't find many StackOverflow items. People (devs) just aren't really talking about it or doing Universal App dev.
This was Microsoft's last flail, I think. Will be down for the count soon. Of course, they'll still rake in $billions$. 
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I am a uwp dev. If you've done windows 8.1 apps or wpf it might be easier. Definitely if you've done windows 8.1 apps. I prefer desktop apps as the full dot net framework has more support. Performing rest http requests are very similar on uwp but you need to have that stream referenced correctly or you could have memory leaks? Maybe the Microsoft guys on their support forum are confusing me a little.
jeffery
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Good info and interesting to find someone out there actually doing UWP.
You may be the lone pioneer out at the edge of the wilderness though.
Thanks for chiming in.
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It's not too bad. They need it to support XML serialization though so projects can be ported instead of the change data contract type stuff. I was trying to port the eBay source code over to uwp but the XML serialization stuff drives me crazy. If you need help I will try and give it. File system and all that is pretty much the same as windows 8.1 with a few changes that's why a simple app or one with rest API code might be possible but its a little hard because serialization is messed up if you need XML.
jeffery
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raddevus wrote: This would be a good CP poll.
Yes! As a desktop WPF/C# developer (for industrial automation) with absolutely zero interest in apps that could run on the XBox, I would like to see how much actual UWA interest is out there. Am I developing "legacy" applications or am I still one of the cool kids?
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This will be the upcoming model for windows phone. So, the point is as said above in another way, it will be impossible to make a phone app with the full dot net framework now that windows 10 almost permanently uses this model for the store (they were talking about normal apps which still exist but are either considered legacy or "specialized" apps). Now, I do not know what the uwp extensions do but I'm sure they add functionality not given. I'll rise a ticket in visual studio or other support for bringing back serialization for uwp.
jeffery
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Bruce Greene wrote: Am I developing "legacy" applications
Now that we are seeing what Win10 is doing...I guess any win10 development is "legacy development".
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After reading all the folks replying, I feel comforted to know that my initial guess about UWP was at least not terribly wrong...
Stick with win32. Until it dies.
Hopefully by the time that happens, Android will have device drivers, run on beefy tablets, and, well, not suck for C++ development.
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Or WinPhone will ascend!!! 
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My answer is sort of yes and sort of no. The application I am creating is intended to be a "real" or professional level quality UWA app, but it is primarily for my own purposes. I will probably put the bulk of it on github when the time is right.
I have messed with/customized a number of the starter apps, and been satisfied with my results so far, but I am finding the transition from sample app to fully fulfilling the requirements for a store-worthy app to be REALLY poorly documented.
I remember going to a user group at the local Microsoft office early in the Windows 8 era, and hearing pleadings from several people about "it is not that hard", and "you should really do this" but, now, as with then, I reach a particular point, get a number of "bzzzzt, that isn't right" messages, and move on with life because quality explanations for why don't even exist in google searches. "You should ask"? I move on with my life if I have to wait that long for an answer...
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The company I work for is doing UWP for some of our warehousing and retail based mobile devices. Currently shipping two 'apps' (from the store's/binary perspective, they have multiple funtions each). So you're not alone in doing UWP dev, just in a very small minority (I think) 
I agree the lack of UWP specific resources is annoying, but much of the older WinRT stuff still applies. Still annoying when you're trying to find the right way to do something now and you find WPF/Silverlight/Windows Phone/WinRT stuff that doesn't apply or is old.
Since I mostly skipped WPF and my previous (limited) XAML experience has been WPSL/WinRT, I don't find too many differences in the UWP except for the changes in controls etc. The UWP API itself is obviously different to what we've had before, but that's sort of to be expected.
The stuff that really grinds my gears is things like the crappy error handling. Years of being taught not to throw or catch System.Exception and now the framework throws it all the time so you have to catch it, then try and figure out what the HResult from the dark ages means. There's a few helper functions for that (one specifically in the Windows.Web namespace somewhere), but they're all disparate functions and you end up with quite a lot of logic and much Googling to produce good error handling. Thank goodness they gave us exception filters in C#.
I blame jscript for all of this. I once heard (at Build?) supporting jscript and having language projections is the reason we don't have inheritance in 'Runtime Components'. I suspect it's also the reason for using COM and the poor error handling. So once again, jscript is the reason we can't have nice things.
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