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I've been following with interest the evolution of ,NET Core, and was interested to read the latest from MS in the article cited by Kent yesterday: [^] which included the following:Quote: t a recent Visual Studio Live! conference, Microsoft's Beth Massi indicated that .NET Core is definitely the future -- even for those Windows desktop applications -- and it was time for developers to get onboard.
Specifically, the message was that future .NET Core versions would support those desktop apps, obviating the earlier advice about which applications should be ported.
"As we move forward into the future, with .NET Core 3, we're going to see some more workloads that we're going to be working on here, mainly Windows desktop," Massi said. "We're bringing Windows desktop workloads to .NET Core 3, as well as AI and IoT scenarios.
"The big deal here is now that if you're a WinForms or WPF developer you can actually utilize the .NET Core runtime."
Okay, what puzzles me is that I never seem to hear anything about what a developer who creates apps with rich visual interfaces involving complex controls ... does.
I assume (wrongly ?) that the quirky set of WinForm controls (wrappers around COM based cores) we've had since the late neolithic cannot be used since they depend on low-level Win API stuff.
So, where's the TreeView, the ListView, the DateTimePicker ? What if I need a grid, a useful grid, not something like that abomination called 'DataGridView ? I gotta pony-up mega-bucks to Telerik, SyncFusion, etc. ?
If there is a "march" going on here, I hope it's not a "death march," like the WPF, or SilverLight, or "Modern UI" disasters.
cheers, old fossil, Bill
«Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?» T. S. Elliot
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I ported my desktop app from Framework to Core. The native compiler being beta code it ran for a few hours before crashing. Not cool.
Currently pursuing C++/CLR mixed code as my use case is to avoid decompilation.
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Bill, WPF is hardly in a death march. It's in the same position as Windows Forms in that there is a team supporting it, it does get some enhancements and it's very much alive for the foreseeable future. If it were dead, or near death, Microsoft would have to invest a huge amount of time in rewriting the Visual Studio UI which uses it heavily. I get it, you don't like it, but that doesn't mean it's dead and buried or that there aren't plenty of people who do like it and use it a lot.
This space for rent
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Hi, Pete, I do not hate WPF ! I'm in awe of what people like you, Josh Smith, Sacha Barber, and others, did/do with it.
I have great respect for the excellent facilities WPF has compared to WinForms: orthogonal vector rendering for everything; dependency management, powerful binding, support for animations, property change notifications, etc.
I do feel that Win developers got led a merry chase in the whole trauma a la Sinofsky regarding MS waffling on technical support for WPF going forward, killing SilverLight ... I know you know what I am talking about here. imho, the confusion was only intensified by the abortive Win RT thing, and the Modern UI debacle that led to Sinofsky's departure.
In addition, the first (current ?) schizoid VS UI for developing in WPF with split window and dysfunctional relationship between XAML, GUI, and "code-first:" imho that turned a lot of people off, at the same time engendering the cult of savants who styled themselves the "WPF Disciples," your good self included 
To wit: the transformation of our own esteemed mentor, Marc Clifton, from early XAML pioneer to recent statements, here, that, now, he hates it.
Do you believe these events I mention did not impair the adoption of WPF, and cause companies and devs to lose time and money ? Do you believe that WPF is, now, even considered a prime candidate for new projects in major software houses who are being dragged into mobile+desktop/cross-platform/ web-centric apps willing-or-not ?
From my point of view: if all that time and money had been invested into transforming WinForms so it had a vector-based retained mode 2d graphic engine, and all the other advanced goodness of WPF, and made cross platform in the ways that Core and Xamarin are doing now with Win: WinForms would be "on top of the world," and all god's children would have shoes.
But, the modal "culture" of software development seems to be cycles of the next shiny thing getting the glory, the development money, the buzz ... meanwhile, back at the ranch Joe and Betty developer often get by using the older tool-sets, performing what I call "dinosaur dentistry" to shimmy their work into awkward symbiosis with the latest.
Today, I was reading an update on Xamarin Forms 3.3: [^] ... oh glory, they now have labels and buttons, and images, kind-a working better ! The article's sub-title: "Little Things, Huge Difference."
By the way, I am not complaining because the world is degenerating into a circus where the developer lingua franca devolves into the mis-named thing called JavaScript incestuously paired with an archaic mark-up system HTML) in a menage a trois with an abstraction (CSS) of said mark-up system
More seriously, I really am delighted with what C# and WinForms evolved into, including a robust and vibrant 3rd. party tools industry. The ReoGrid project by Jing Lu [^], published here, and now, once again, open-source is a fantastic Excel equivalent complete with scripting in C#, deep customizability, etc. I still use the incredible WinForm TreeView from Lidor Systems (no longer in development; Andrej, the sole developer, has moved on to developing Angular controls).
cheers, Bill
«Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?» T. S. Elliot
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I'm reading these out of order, but this is another great write-up.
Maybe you ought to write up an article on this. Something like, "State of Windows Desktop Development: What Has Been, What Is, and What Will It Be?"
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I appreciate your kind words, Raddevus, but Bill (now seventy-five, and near half-blind) is no one to talk about "big picture" software development in the last few years.
Bill is busy making rings to sell so he can hopefully save his eyes while remaining in the strange country, Thailand, he has come to love; and, when he's not doing that, or pursuing his own creative writing, or studying the iconography of Asian sacred/animist art, ancient trade routes, and folklore ... he finds little time for pursuing programming and pulling his oar in QA
My hope is that my somewhat hyperbolic comments may evoke some response from the many people here on CP I consider mentors, friends, colleagues ... who, I believe, are much more up-to-date than I am.
cheers, Bill
«Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?» T. S. Elliot
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BillWoodruff wrote: considered a prime candidate for new projects in major software houses
I'd be astonished if any major shops are considering anything other than web based UIs. I think WPF has devolved into a mainly corporate tool.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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In tech, you have 2 types of evolutions.
The slow paced evolutions that move at a glacial pace and but also effect the entire industry.
The fast paced novelty gimmicks mostly used to distract us, so we don't get bored waiting for the glacial shifts to produce results.
.NET Core is the glacially slow type. Initially, around 2008 I think(?), it's purpose was to get embedded devices to run C# and compete directly with embedded Java platforms.
Shifts in the embedded market (raspberry PI for low-cost and the crushing dominance of Java for anything else) altered those plans over time, and Core was eventually repurposed as a cross platform CLR.
After waiting what seemed like an eternity, we eventually got a useable version with the release of 2.0.
The upcoming WinForms and WPF support is hype / a pitch designed to increase enterprise adoption rate; it's mostly a distraction.
Once the Mono team gets Core running on WASM, we'll probably get an alternative UI stack that will eventually end up dominating the market.
Probably HTML based? Maybe XAML? We'll have to wait and see. I personally hope for XAML, but anything XML based is fine really.
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.Net core and the current shift of Microsoft (from what I can tell) is to decouple their software platforms from the MS OS hosting. Core is an environment that can be hosted on non-iis servers. Shifting WPF to Core is part of that. Everything MS is doing makes sense from this perspective, including their recent announcement that they are winding down operating system development - dropping Windows.
The problem I have had personally with Core is that its not easy to lift and shift an existing code library to the platform. Some dependencies, both in the API and 3rd party, are just not there. Hopefully they get it all sorted out, would love to have a tool that converts a code base at the click of a button some day.
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add enough bloat and it'll all be possible.
nobody does bloat like ms does.
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Have you installed Java or just about any product from Oracle lately?
This space for rent
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monkey see, monkey do 
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Or Corel, they are damn good at that as well. "Add bugs and Bloat!" - I think that is actually the corporate Mission Statement.
Checkout Paintshop Pro 10 (JASC version) vs X9 (Corel version) 
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Quote: Paintshop Pro 10
OMG, the last image editor I liked using. Photoshop's better nowadays, but the for the most part, the UI was legacy sh*t. Not PSP, use it since version 2.0 I believe 
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It was indeed absolutely brilliant and I clung on to it for years, until it's lack of Aero support made using it for manuals / screenshots a PITA and I had to switch to X8.
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Kinda makes me want to make a PSP-like image editor on UWP.
Oh god, I remembered just now, I registered my (Pirate!) copy of PSP with Jasc. Then, the Jasc spam came in snail mail. The 90's were weird.
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You registered a pirate copy of something that cost about £10 (if my memory serves correctly)? 
Weird times indeed!
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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I was 12, give me a break :P
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Even at the age of twelve: You registered a pirate copy of something? 
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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"register" and "pirate" were but concepts at that age. Besides, were I was from, piracy was the norm. Hell, my cousins had games life "Flashback", which required the photocopied manual as an anti-piracy feature.
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Pete O'Hanlon wrote: Have you installed Java or just about any product from Oracle lately?
LOL! +5 LP (Laugh-Points). 
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BillWoodruff wrote: like that abomination called 'DataGridView
I've use the DevExpress grid control professionally and love it. I was reminded again last week about the well-termed abomination of the DataGridView when I was writing a configuration UI for a silly little app that I'm writing an article about, and don't want to tie the reader to a 3rd party requirement. We hates it!
Latest Article - A Concise Overview of Threads
Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
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