Comment by maxsilver | Hacker News Reader

Comment by maxsilver | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why the author wanted Microsoft to use HTML / CSS / SVG. If Microsoft had actually done that, and wanted or needed anything custom or unique, they would just be accused of "embracing and extending" the technology, as they had been previously.

It's seems like the XAML they went with is actually the better option -- it's close enough to other markup languages that any developer can pick it up with minimal effort, but not exactly the same so they can make any changes they want without hurting anyone else's compatibility or the larger ecosystem.

And (totally subjectively) XAML is actually nicer for developers and users than HTML+CSS+JS in some areas, if your willing to invest just a tiny amount of time to learn it.

--

Plus, Microsoft's UWP also lets you use a web browser too, if you prefer. If you feel your markup is better in HTML+CSS+SVG, Microsoft already supports that as well - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/get-started/cre...

> they would just be accused of "embracing and extending" the technology

Well, that didn't happen with TypeScript. I think the perception of Microsoft has changed a lot since Nadella took over because they have really worked really hard to avoid the IBM trap.

Yes now they're known for monitoring your computer usage and updating it while you're not looking.

By a certain subset of people. I think the perception of Microsoft in the tech community has become oddly polarised.

On one hand you have developers and power-users who use Windows and care about privacy. And a probably much tinier number who don't use Windows but care enough about other people's privacy.

On the other hand you have all the web/JS/FOSS tech folk on Linux and macOS - these OSes have pretty tiny usage stats over all but I'd guess relatively high within that community - who don't care so much about Windows and as such just see the positive results of their FOSS efforts.

I wonder who's winning...

Yes, but apparently they are the only bad ones, because people are perfectly fine when Apple or Google do it.

WPF was released in 2006 though. The Microsoft of 2006 definitely would've been pilloried for EEE if WPF had been built on web technologies. (Not that the Microsoft of 2006 ever would've done that)

You can't learn WPF and XAML in a tiny amount of time, it is substantial.

In my experience XAML can be a massive footgun if you don't know what you're doing. Sure, world-class geniuses are using it to build (still) the best IDE on the planet, but on your everyday development team it can backfire. One of React's biggest selling points is that it has a sort of "pit of success" instead. Partly from the mandatory one-way binding, and partly because of the choice to allow integrating any kind of UI "thing" into the component model.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com