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From: David Wilkinson on 12 May 2008 13:09
Alex Blekhman wrote:
> "David Wilkinson" wrote:
>> WPF/Silverlight will rule the world...
>
> It never occured to me that WPF can be used for desktop
> applications. I thought that all this Silverlight hype was about
> Web programming.

Alex:

As I understand it (which, as a "native-only" programmer, is not very well),
Silverlight is a subset of of WPF that can be used on web pages.

WPF itself can be used for desktop applications.

--
David Wilkinson
Visual C++ MVP
From: Alex Blekhman on 12 May 2008 14:40
"David Wilkinson" wrote:
> As I understand it (which, as a "native-only" programmer, is not
> very well), Silverlight is a subset of of WPF that can be used
> on web pages.
>
> WPF itself can be used for desktop applications.

Yes, you're correct. Being "native-only" programmer myself I'm not
always up to date with newst MSFT technologies. I just have read
about WPF/Silverlight in MSDN and even tried to write "Hello
World!" WPF application. It was pretty much the same as if I did
it with Windows Forms, except that GUI layout was stored as XML
files.

Frankly speaking, if I had to chose between WPF and WF today, I
would rather chose WPF. I never liked the idea of storing GUI
layout embedded right into the code. Moreover, any attempt to
fine-tune it manually would break forms editor. Now, separate
..XAML and .CS files resemble familiar .C/.CPP and .RC pair.

What makes me angry with Bill is Microsoft's crazy pace changing
technologies names and buzzwords. I often fail to keep up with it.

Alex


From: Alex Blekhman on 12 May 2008 15:28
"Alf P. Steinbach" wrote:
> While some few MS products are really extremely good (the Visual
> Studio debugger springs to mind, while the rest of that product
> is very bad), MS products generally sell for three reasons only:
> (1) an established de-facto monopoly, (2) that MS has the
> manpower and $$$ to do things that require manpower and $$$, not
> ability, like e.g. grammar checking or clip-art, and (3) the
> embrace and extinguish tactic, which is a business model, not
> technical ability.

You can sell crappy software once, but you cannot sell it over and
over again to millions of people. Even though MS uses the above
mentioned tactics in order to advance its sells, it cannot rely on
them alone. If SW doesn't do the job it was intended for, no dirty
marketing tricks will help.

You mentioned MS Word as the example of a lousy application. With
all its bugs and quirks I can't replace this application with
anything else, even though I hardly use more than 30% of its
features. All other alternatives I tried were worse or much worse.

MS products are not ideal, but in comparison with others I find
them easier to use and more productive. I think that your main
mistake is that you think that most of MS products are made for
you, experienced computer user who willingly explores an
application's settings and pushes its features up to the limit.
Overwhelming majority of computer users on the planet are not like
you. They hate settings and buttons. They follow what application
suggests and are happy with it.

You get very different perspective on such things when you ship a
product to hundreds of millions of users. I'm sure you're familiar
with Raymond Chen's blog and so you know to what extent they
should go sometimes in order to maintain backward compatibility
with [badly written] popular SW.

Alex


From: Alf P. Steinbach on 12 May 2008 16:04
* Alex Blekhman:
> "Alf P. Steinbach" wrote:
>> While some few MS products are really extremely good (the Visual
>> Studio debugger springs to mind, while the rest of that product
>> is very bad), MS products generally sell for three reasons only:
>> (1) an established de-facto monopoly, (2) that MS has the
>> manpower and $$$ to do things that require manpower and $$$, not
>> ability, like e.g. grammar checking or clip-art, and (3) the
>> embrace and extinguish tactic, which is a business model, not
>> technical ability.
>
> You can sell crappy software once, but you cannot sell it over and
> over again to millions of people.

Heh heh. I just listed six or seven examples. But, OK, if modern
examples aren't convincing, then start at the start of Microsoft,
Z-soft's (or whatever they were called) "Quick 'n Dirty Operating
System", subsequently reacronymed to "Disk Operating System".

Yes, you can sell crappy software over and over to millions of people,
and yes, you can fool most of the people again and again, forever.

Don't know where these urban myths that people are intelligent, come
from. A former president of our Parliament (Norway), once said, while
he still held that title, that voters -- i.e. people in general --
are sheep, and he spoke the truth. It's very true, but one never
recognizes that trait in one's own social environment (e.g., I gather
most Norwegians disagree with the sheep label when applied to
themselves, but readily agree with it as applied to Americans, because
from our self-centered view it's so easy to see the failings of the
people Over There). But, anyway, yes you can. And yes, you can. :-)


Cheers,

- Alf

--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is it such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?
From: Alex Blekhman on 13 May 2008 08:52
"Alf P. Steinbach" wrote:
> Heh heh. I just listed six or seven examples. But, OK, if
> modern examples aren't convincing, then start at the start of
> Microsoft, Z-soft's (or whatever they were called) "Quick 'n
> Dirty Operating System", subsequently reacronymed to "Disk
> Operating System".

These examples are typical for developers and advanced users.
99.99% of other users don't use Cliboard viewer let alone ever
heard of it. Moreover, keeping contact info in a file with the
same name as a contact is quite far from "lacking basic quality".

Regarding DOS. It was an adequate OS for its time and got the job
done. Other vendors offered their versions of x86 DOS OS, however
they couldn't beat MS. The same story with the MS Office suit.
There were many vendors with superior products which reigned for
years in the market. However, they lost momentum and couldn't keep
up with changing reality. MS could, that's all.

> Yes, you can sell crappy software over and over to millions of
> people, and yes, you can fool most of the people again and
> again, forever.
>
> Don't know where these urban myths that people are intelligent,
> come from.

People are intelligent enough to vote with their dollars (euros,
yens, etc) for products they need. People do mistakes, but all in
all they do right choice. Otherwise the most prevalent form of
modern social organization still would be a feudalism.

Alex


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