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Totally agree 100% with everything you said.
And maybe this is really means the end of an era with Microsoft.
Just not sure how they survive all of this because it seems like a lot of devs feel this way.
Or, does it mean they continue to limp along on 20 year old technology and devs are fine with that because that is what they know anyways?
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raddevus wrote: 1. Only UWP apps will be admitted to the Windows Store.
Ultimately, that's not going to be true. MS has been working to bring the ability to run Win32 apps/WPF apps/Win Forms, etc, to run as appx so they can be downloaded from the app store.
This space for rent
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Pete O'Hanlon wrote: MS has been working to bring the ability to run Win32 apps/WPF apps/Win Forms, etc, to run as appx so they can be downloaded from the app store.
Now that is an interesting situation.
So they are undercutting their own technology future, because doing that means even fewer (if fewer is possible) will take up UWP.
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There are many reasons for this. Here are a few:
1. It's something that's of interest to enterprises because they can offload many of their apps to use this technology without rewriting; it makes distribution easier for them if they run their own enterprise version of the Microsoft AppStore (this is something I know that businesses are keen on).
2. It opens up the opportunity for Microsoft to vastly increase the amount of applications it can deliver from the app store (as well as increasing the target devices if they ever do manage to get a mobile version out the door).
3. As Microsoft charge a fee for serving apps from the app store, this increase gives them an opportunity to tap into a very lucrative market here.
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All very good explanations for that.
Of course, it is all about the $$$$.
Interesting to think about Corporations pay to deploy apps to their own machines. 
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raddevus wrote:
Interesting to think about Corporations pay to deploy apps to their own machines.
No, they won't be - they'll be hosting their own private app store. They'll license that from Microsoft.
This space for rent
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Pete O'Hanlon wrote: they'll be hosting their own private app store.
Ahh...interesting.
Own the deployment and you own everything else.
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WPF and UWP are, one way or another, getting closer together with the formulation of XAML Standard.
In a year or so, this will generalize XAML to the point that UWP, WPF, Xamarin.Forms (and Unity3D assets like NoesisGUI) will all work with the same basic XAML.
Add that to the steady evolution of WebAssembly, and you'll end up with local HTML clients running C# and XAML somewhere around Q4/2018-Q1/2019.. if nothing goes horribly wrong.
My money is on UWP and WPF devs eventually migrating to HTML5/electron running C# with some iteration of XAML Standard. At that point, the boundaries between web and desktop apps will be gone, and everything else can be deprecated. 
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That's an interesting view on the situation, but I think it may take longer simply because devs get so tied to technologies. Look at us still using WinForms. 
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Working on it? It's been out for I don't know how many months.
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Parts of it yes but there's a lot more surfacing they are working on.
This space for rent
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raddevus wrote: it is really bad for MVC (the pattern, not the microsoft thing)
Really? Simply use the forms or controls as views and write yourself some nice baseclasses for the controllers (or presenters in my case). To completely get rid of the forms concept, you may also need some concept of a workspace. Easy as pie and I have ported code from ASP .Net web forms (a hack, I must admit) to WinForms, from there to WPF and from there to my own UI in XNA (now MonoGame).
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
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Meanwhile, you'll be keeping the CPU busy and draining power, to render 2D surfaces, while your graphics card keeps idling and your users complain of a slow app, nevermind all the frame-skips. Native development is not like web-development, you don't just throw a few libraries and hack a UI.
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André Pereira wrote: Meanwhile, you'll be keeping the CPU busy and draining power, to render 2D surfaces, while your graphics card keeps idling and your users complain of a slow app,
You don't say! If I only had known that. Fortunately I do use the graphics hardware to render the UI and that multithreded little monster uses a 3D engine to render into the background. The CPU barely breaks some sweat.
I have posted the link before: Take a look here.[^] And if you don't like my models or UI design, then that's ok. It simply means that I'm not much of an artist or designer. 
André Pereira wrote: Native development is not like web-development, you don't just throw a few libraries and hack a UI.
Thank god, otherwise our poor CPU would be tied up running some worthless interpreter (like JavaScript) and there will not be enough left for the 2D surfaces.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
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Just as long as your users aren't on Windows XP or Window 7 on "classic theme", which disables 2D acceleration :p. Spread the good word. Don't let web-developers take over what used to be the top-tier experience in usability.
[RANT]God, just last week I had to hack some UI stuff on Android with a web-view. Spent 10 minutes developing the required stuff and 3 days debugging web-browser related stuff. And in the end, I still had to mask the page loading in the background, so it doesn't look awful (i.e. like a browser).[/RANT]
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Mycroft Holmes wrote: what benefit is there to UWP
The "U" in UWP to me says it all: Universal. One codebase that runs on desktops, mobile (or at least used to ), tablets, Xbox, SurfaceHub, HoloLens, and IoT devices. That may not be attractive to all developers or for all use cases, but from my admittedly narrow understanding it opens up some pretty slick possibilities without the effort it takes to get other approaches working on multiple platforms.
Full disclosure: I'm not a developer but I am a Microsoft employee. Flame on. 
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My non-canned response would be:
1 - It's the most recent and the most supported target for software development. (HiDPI screens, touch and pen, GPS and sensors with a simple native API).
2 - You don't immediately lock yourself out of target platforms, you get some choice. (Desktop is good enough, throw in tablet support for free and everything else is a nice extra.)
3 - Integrated store deployment and store updates (I still remember maintaining the self-updater on a legacy software, something that's obsolete now.).
99 - C# + .net + Xaml + MVVM = development bliss.
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Just compare Spider Solitaire Win10 (UWP) and Win7.
Specifically, try re-sizing the windows both up and down.
Then ask yourself what is UWP good for.
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WinForms, or better, the Common Controls, are very underappreciated; it is a mature product. A standard that is not just available on Windows anymore, as WinForms work just as happily under Linux.
I'm sure that WPF is better for graphics, as advertised.
I build tools for people that work. They don't care about flashy, they care about reliability and predictability. I'm not paid for animated borders, but functionality - and will probably still be maintaining WinForms code by the time that our great overloads predicted that AI will write code.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Interesting points and very interesting in light of the original conversation I had with the WPF-centric dev.
It has been my experience that winforms are good enough for corporate devs to get the job done and like you said they have a long history and been "production-tested" and just seem to work.
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: I build tools for people that work. They don't care about flashy, they care about reliability and predictability. I'm not paid for animated borders, but functionality - and will probably still be maintaining WinForms code by the time that our great overloads predicted that AI will write code.
Absolutely agree. I’ve played with some of the newer GUI technologies myself and keep finding that the mature WinForms technology is the way to go. It might not be considered “flashy” but sure is reliable and gets the job DONE.
If you think hiring a professional is expensive, wait until you hire an amateur! - Red Adair
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ClockMeister wrote: ...is reliable and gets the job DONE
And in the end, that's what keeps developers in business. I only write apps for my own use and occasionally a CP article. But everything is Winforms. As the old saying goes, "it just works."
Sometimes the true reward for completing a task is not the money, but instead the satisfaction of a job well done. But it's usually the money.
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The thing about it is that WinForms applications aren't ugly, the data presentation can be very attractive and meaningful. In my case I've found that having a GUI so well worked out lets me focus on the problem-at-hand instead of spending all my time struggling to get the GUI working right. I have a web-based version of program I wrote for WinForms, it's fun to hack on from time-to-time but just getting the output right consumes a lot more time. I am certainly not against web-based presentation if needed, however if a WinForms application can do the job, the performance is far better and results very consistent. As for WPF (or any of the other cute technologies for desktop GUI) ... it's "hand waving" as far as I'm concerned.
If you think hiring a professional is expensive, wait until you hire an amateur! - Red Adair
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The big problem with winforms apps we did at my old job was that the native controls all played badly with DPI scaling; a situation made much worse if you had any custom layout code/custom paint code that had an implicit assumption of no scaling in its math and got totally hosed up if you bumped the scaling levels.
Dunno if MS has made the situation better in Win8/10 than it was in 7 or otherwise in common libraries over the last 2 years or so. It never got past the list of things we were floating to our govt customer as potential upgrades/an internal pain point for anyone using scaling normally. My new job has WPFed for any desktop apps we do for DPI scaling among other reasons; needing to support older versions of windows means that UWP is a non-starter.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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WinForms works well with different scalings; the options for docking and anchoring make that rather easy. I'd daresay it scales as it should, instead of the modern zoom that most people nowadays apply.
It is a well documented library, that many developers are proficient in (making maintenance cheaper), and one that is recognized instantly by many users 
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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