WPF--Why? No, Really!
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It's crap - you can tell by your description.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001Yeah. I was describing the current VS editor.
Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon Judah Himango
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You are right sir. Don't just blindly follow their lead, MS does some great stuff, but they also screw up once in a while. I put WPF and a lot more of .NET 3.5 in the screw up bin (250 MB download, WTF???). Also I'm not sold on linq for DB access either. I'm gonna lean back a year or two and see what's left standing at that point.
Wout
wout de zeeuw wrote:
Also I'm not sold on linq for DB access either
It is disappointing to read these negative comments, since I have only recently started looking at LINQ, and was beginning to think it might turn out to be useful. Haven't done a lot with DB access yet though.
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
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I disable the start page; it has no part in productivity... not like CP.
It's quicker than the file menu to open a recent project. It needs to sepuku immediately after doing that however. :mad:
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. -- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
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Ya know, I'm the only programmer on my team that doesn't have the Start Page active and that has the last opened project load when VS is started. I'm also the only one on the team that codes for fun at home...
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
has the last opened project load when VS is started.
Where's that feature hidden?
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. -- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
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wout de zeeuw wrote:
Also I'm not sold on linq for DB access either
It is disappointing to read these negative comments, since I have only recently started looking at LINQ, and was beginning to think it might turn out to be useful. Haven't done a lot with DB access yet though.
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
Maybe I'm getting old and resistant to change! But let us know if you find compelling arguments for moving over to WPF/linq. As a business app developer I'm not so much charmed by fancy looks or elegant looking short syntax, I just need to get the job done quick and not run into an obscure dead (albeit advanced) end (like if you started on linq to sql? Tough luck!).
Wout
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Maybe I'm getting old and resistant to change! But let us know if you find compelling arguments for moving over to WPF/linq. As a business app developer I'm not so much charmed by fancy looks or elegant looking short syntax, I just need to get the job done quick and not run into an obscure dead (albeit advanced) end (like if you started on linq to sql? Tough luck!).
Wout
I definitely won't be moving to WPF for quite some time, unless a better (free) designer appears, to tempt me to try again. But from very limited exposure to LINQ I can see possible benefits when dealing with collections. Replacing simple, and I do mean simple, foreach blocks seems to speed things up. I'm will be attempting some timing runs for myself shortly, and am looking for confirmation on t'internet. As I said above I have not yet done much by way of DB access, but I received a book this morning, that I ordered last week. It covers LINQ in general, LINQ to SQL, LINQ to XML (which I also think has possibilities), and LINQ to EF (which I am looking forward to playing with). When I finish my current personal projects, probably next week sometime, I will start exploring in more detail.
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
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Ya know, I'm the only programmer on my team that doesn't have the Start Page active and that has the last opened project load when VS is started. I'm also the only one on the team that codes for fun at home...
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
has the last opened project load when VS is started.
I always used to do that until working at my current place - where the psolution is so huge beyond belief that it can take nearly five minutes to open the solution (depending which views are open) - so when I wnt to open up for a new project to jus test something quick, it's a PITA. Alt-F, J, Enter is my friend!
John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
I'm also the only one on the team that codes for fun at home...
I find this is becoming more common (i.e. fewer people ding it for fun). Having met many up-and-coming programmers at the local uni, I tink it is down to the press that we got when the going was good, so loads of people went into IT for the big bucks, rather than because that was their raison d'etre.
___________________________________________ .\\axxx (That's an 'M')
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wout de zeeuw wrote:
Also I'm not sold on linq for DB access either
It is disappointing to read these negative comments, since I have only recently started looking at LINQ, and was beginning to think it might turn out to be useful. Haven't done a lot with DB access yet though.
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
I'm just starting to use Linq in teh real world, having avoided it for a while. My opinion (FWIW) Linq is great for shortening the amount of code you need to write when dealing with collections of objects. I suspect it is great for dealing with XML (haven't tried it, but have always wanted to be able to find XML elements simply using some SQL-Like syntax) Behind the scenes, though, what does Linq do? Surely it simply iterates collections looking for the criteria you're selecting on - it doesn't (I presume) have some ingenious way of adding indexes, binary trees etc. to objects to increase search performance. I always get a little nervouse when something is essentially generating code for me, that I can't easily look at. It's not like when you have poorly performing SQL and you can add an index, or a foreign key and improve performance... And Linq to SQL IMHO is another 'gimick' that makes it look like a RAD tool, but isn't really good to be used in the real world where (again, my preference) using Stored Procedures rather than generated SQL gives me maximum control.
___________________________________________ .\\axxx (That's an 'M')
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Like most of you, I spend my days (and many nights) in the trenches, and have for nearly 30 years. I came up through assembly to C through C++ to C#, and a bunch of other stuff as side trips along the way. Having come from a place where there were NO IDE's to ease my pain, I'm supremely grateful for the ability to drag controls onto a form, smoosh 'em around, set some properties and be up and running with a skeleton to flesh out and deliver. I do NOT work with or have access to a graphic artist, nor do I wish to. Anyway, for the last several months on and off, I have attempted to come to grips with WPF, and I've finally arrived at the conclusion that it's just not worth the effort! In general, it's more work and more frustration for MUCH less functionality! Come on, MS! If I want to tinker endlessly with markup, I'll write in HTML, and likely have something that works in much less time and effort. To obtain the same level of useability I get with Windows Forms apps using WPF takes unbelieveable amounts of time and effort. Latest and greatest, my achin' posterior! Am I wrong? What am I missing here, folks?? Too busy for the MS merry-go-round, Duane Doutel
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You are right sir. Don't just blindly follow their lead, MS does some great stuff, but they also screw up once in a while. I put WPF and a lot more of .NET 3.5 in the screw up bin (250 MB download, WTF???). Also I'm not sold on linq for DB access either. I'm gonna lean back a year or two and see what's left standing at that point.
Wout
So I read most posts in this thread - and to be ernest it's nothing more than "say no to change". What you are missing: WPF, LINQ, WCF, WinForms, WebForms, ASP.NET MVC - those are all just plain tools. Maybe you like them maybe not - MS is not forcing you into using it (this is the job of your customer or company ;) ) Of course not everything is good (WF certainly wasn't) but I love to learn new things (so my job never bores me) and I ever thought most computer guys are just this way (embracing new things - often to quick) - but maybe this changes with age ;P For my part WPF offers some great things - for example the databinding is great - and for me the lack of a good in build editor was never a problem (the guy starting this thread should know this - in the begining days of MFC you had to design your GUI in an external programm too). And I just can't understand how you can not like .NET 3.0/3.5 as a progammer (ok a C# programmer that is) - now we have almost FP like support for functions as data like closures, type inf. etc. LINQ is much more than Linq2Sql - it came along with all the great FP functionality, extension methods and expression parsing (yes I have real world projects using this). F# is on the horizon, ASP.NET MVC just looks like the long looked for solution for ASP.NET programmers doing bigger apps, WCF is really nice and I really get the feeling that MS listens to the community. Really guys what have you been doing? IT is a field where change is the rule - we all knew this as we got us in this mess.
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Like most of you, I spend my days (and many nights) in the trenches, and have for nearly 30 years. I came up through assembly to C through C++ to C#, and a bunch of other stuff as side trips along the way. Having come from a place where there were NO IDE's to ease my pain, I'm supremely grateful for the ability to drag controls onto a form, smoosh 'em around, set some properties and be up and running with a skeleton to flesh out and deliver. I do NOT work with or have access to a graphic artist, nor do I wish to. Anyway, for the last several months on and off, I have attempted to come to grips with WPF, and I've finally arrived at the conclusion that it's just not worth the effort! In general, it's more work and more frustration for MUCH less functionality! Come on, MS! If I want to tinker endlessly with markup, I'll write in HTML, and likely have something that works in much less time and effort. To obtain the same level of useability I get with Windows Forms apps using WPF takes unbelieveable amounts of time and effort. Latest and greatest, my achin' posterior! Am I wrong? What am I missing here, folks?? Too busy for the MS merry-go-round, Duane Doutel
ddoutel wrote:
What am I missing here
The general consensus is that WPF is NOT WinForms. Frankly I hate WinForms and I've done a hell of a lot with it. However, I've also been doing excessively strange things with XML since 1997 and XSLT since 1999. I took one look at WPF and realised that if someone didn't come from a background similar to mine that they "wouldn't get it", especially not the actual XAML markup bit of it. I've already done some serious playing around with it when it first surfaced (using VS2005 - not easy), and once I got past the initial hurdles found it left WF for dead. But the problem that existed for me then, still exists today - that is, no decent tools to really give the thing a good flogging. The tools have definitely improved, but they're still not "there" yet. And it seems that's everyone elses complaint too. What you "could" do with WPF, especially in terms of automatically generated layout that doesn't suck, is a hell of a lot more than you could ever achieve with WF. But I don't yet see anything in the tools that are available that brings those compelling arguments forward. I think it's another classic example of MS doesn't get it right until v3.0. Gutenberg wasn't the first to invent the printing press. However, he was the first to bring together everything needed to actually do printing as a complete process. WPF is 'missing' all those other parts that make it into a complete process.
I just love Koalas - they go great with Bacon.
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So I read most posts in this thread - and to be ernest it's nothing more than "say no to change". What you are missing: WPF, LINQ, WCF, WinForms, WebForms, ASP.NET MVC - those are all just plain tools. Maybe you like them maybe not - MS is not forcing you into using it (this is the job of your customer or company ;) ) Of course not everything is good (WF certainly wasn't) but I love to learn new things (so my job never bores me) and I ever thought most computer guys are just this way (embracing new things - often to quick) - but maybe this changes with age ;P For my part WPF offers some great things - for example the databinding is great - and for me the lack of a good in build editor was never a problem (the guy starting this thread should know this - in the begining days of MFC you had to design your GUI in an external programm too). And I just can't understand how you can not like .NET 3.0/3.5 as a progammer (ok a C# programmer that is) - now we have almost FP like support for functions as data like closures, type inf. etc. LINQ is much more than Linq2Sql - it came along with all the great FP functionality, extension methods and expression parsing (yes I have real world projects using this). F# is on the horizon, ASP.NET MVC just looks like the long looked for solution for ASP.NET programmers doing bigger apps, WCF is really nice and I really get the feeling that MS listens to the community. Really guys what have you been doing? IT is a field where change is the rule - we all knew this as we got us in this mess.
CKnig wrote:
but maybe this changes with age
Probably, I can't just start learning everything new that's out there, there's too much change to digest. So I have become picky about what I think makes sense and what does not. I like many parts of the .NET framework, I like win forms, ASP.NET, .NET remoting, WCF seems ok too.
CKnig wrote:
And I just can't understand how you can not like .NET 3.0/3.5 as a progammer
I should have been more concise in my wording here: I do like most of the C# 3.0 changes, but I don't see the need for a lot of the framework additions. From a user perspective I don't see why I'd need a 200 MB download for .NET 3.5, as opposed to about 22 MB for .NET 2.0. My win forms apps are just fine in .NET 2.0, for the user there's just no compelling reason to require that extra 180 MB download. Also I can use C# 3.0 fine with .NET 2.0 and compile into a .NET 2.0 application, so for the time being (next one or two years) I'm writing apps in this configuration.
Wout
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Like most of you, I spend my days (and many nights) in the trenches, and have for nearly 30 years. I came up through assembly to C through C++ to C#, and a bunch of other stuff as side trips along the way. Having come from a place where there were NO IDE's to ease my pain, I'm supremely grateful for the ability to drag controls onto a form, smoosh 'em around, set some properties and be up and running with a skeleton to flesh out and deliver. I do NOT work with or have access to a graphic artist, nor do I wish to. Anyway, for the last several months on and off, I have attempted to come to grips with WPF, and I've finally arrived at the conclusion that it's just not worth the effort! In general, it's more work and more frustration for MUCH less functionality! Come on, MS! If I want to tinker endlessly with markup, I'll write in HTML, and likely have something that works in much less time and effort. To obtain the same level of useability I get with Windows Forms apps using WPF takes unbelieveable amounts of time and effort. Latest and greatest, my achin' posterior! Am I wrong? What am I missing here, folks?? Too busy for the MS merry-go-round, Duane Doutel
I understand your reaction - I ran into it while I was giving a weekly training seminar on WPF at a client last year. After a couple of years of solid work building WPF apps (and Forms & HTML before that) I can confirm that yes, it's a bit of a learning curve at first. And that it's well worth it, depending upon the characteristics of the project. With the right orientation, one can become more proficient in forging great-looking functional dialogs and custom controls, then with other technologies (incl HTML). The more you utilize it, the more you discover it's hidden power. Eg, with the right tools it's far easier to globalize. You can set thematic properties that apply across your entire project. It's easy to make layouts that respond well to when the user resizes the window. At this point I only use Blend (or ZAM3D) for real graphical portions, or animations: it feels effortless to whip up a competent dialog just by typing in raw XAML. I think it does merit a good introduction, and a good set of books or tutorials, to get properly oriented. That's just my opinion.
James Hurst "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
Mahatma Gandhi -
I'm just starting to use Linq in teh real world, having avoided it for a while. My opinion (FWIW) Linq is great for shortening the amount of code you need to write when dealing with collections of objects. I suspect it is great for dealing with XML (haven't tried it, but have always wanted to be able to find XML elements simply using some SQL-Like syntax) Behind the scenes, though, what does Linq do? Surely it simply iterates collections looking for the criteria you're selecting on - it doesn't (I presume) have some ingenious way of adding indexes, binary trees etc. to objects to increase search performance. I always get a little nervouse when something is essentially generating code for me, that I can't easily look at. It's not like when you have poorly performing SQL and you can add an index, or a foreign key and improve performance... And Linq to SQL IMHO is another 'gimick' that makes it look like a RAD tool, but isn't really good to be used in the real world where (again, my preference) using Stored Procedures rather than generated SQL gives me maximum control.
___________________________________________ .\\axxx (That's an 'M')
The code generation thingy also makes me very wary of linq. So except for fairly straightforward stuff I'm probably not going to venture very deep into it. Linq to SQL was already deprecated by MS by the way. :doh: I wish they had a sort of trial period of one or two years for components before they actually get absorbed into the .NET framework. Then it wouldn't have gotten to a 200 MB download containing a lot of half baked stuff.
Wout
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
has the last opened project load when VS is started.
I always used to do that until working at my current place - where the psolution is so huge beyond belief that it can take nearly five minutes to open the solution (depending which views are open) - so when I wnt to open up for a new project to jus test something quick, it's a PITA. Alt-F, J, Enter is my friend!
John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
I'm also the only one on the team that codes for fun at home...
I find this is becoming more common (i.e. fewer people ding it for fun). Having met many up-and-coming programmers at the local uni, I tink it is down to the press that we got when the going was good, so loads of people went into IT for the big bucks, rather than because that was their raison d'etre.
___________________________________________ .\\axxx (That's an 'M')
I agree with your observation. Coding seems to have lost the initial lure as a hobby->job and has sunk to being a normal 9-5 type of job for some people. It's also my experience that the guys that don't code at home are also more likely not to do much unit testing on thier own code. Basically, if it compiles, it's good enough to submit to QA. But that's just been my experience.
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I understand your reaction - I ran into it while I was giving a weekly training seminar on WPF at a client last year. After a couple of years of solid work building WPF apps (and Forms & HTML before that) I can confirm that yes, it's a bit of a learning curve at first. And that it's well worth it, depending upon the characteristics of the project. With the right orientation, one can become more proficient in forging great-looking functional dialogs and custom controls, then with other technologies (incl HTML). The more you utilize it, the more you discover it's hidden power. Eg, with the right tools it's far easier to globalize. You can set thematic properties that apply across your entire project. It's easy to make layouts that respond well to when the user resizes the window. At this point I only use Blend (or ZAM3D) for real graphical portions, or animations: it feels effortless to whip up a competent dialog just by typing in raw XAML. I think it does merit a good introduction, and a good set of books or tutorials, to get properly oriented. That's just my opinion.
James Hurst "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
Mahatma Gandhijwhurst wrote:
it feels effortless to whip up a competent dialog just by typing in raw XAML
:laugh:
Wout
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Like most of you, I spend my days (and many nights) in the trenches, and have for nearly 30 years. I came up through assembly to C through C++ to C#, and a bunch of other stuff as side trips along the way. Having come from a place where there were NO IDE's to ease my pain, I'm supremely grateful for the ability to drag controls onto a form, smoosh 'em around, set some properties and be up and running with a skeleton to flesh out and deliver. I do NOT work with or have access to a graphic artist, nor do I wish to. Anyway, for the last several months on and off, I have attempted to come to grips with WPF, and I've finally arrived at the conclusion that it's just not worth the effort! In general, it's more work and more frustration for MUCH less functionality! Come on, MS! If I want to tinker endlessly with markup, I'll write in HTML, and likely have something that works in much less time and effort. To obtain the same level of useability I get with Windows Forms apps using WPF takes unbelieveable amounts of time and effort. Latest and greatest, my achin' posterior! Am I wrong? What am I missing here, folks?? Too busy for the MS merry-go-round, Duane Doutel
All other things being equal, a WPF app will outperform a Win Forms app. WPF uses DirectX; Win Forms doesn’t; so a WPF app can take advantage of the graphics processor which also benefits the central processor(s). WPF uses vector graphics for improved rendering. And WPF apps can be “one-click” deployed over the Web. Word has it that WPF is the “future” (versus Win Forms); so the sooner one gets on board, the better.
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Like most of you, I spend my days (and many nights) in the trenches, and have for nearly 30 years. I came up through assembly to C through C++ to C#, and a bunch of other stuff as side trips along the way. Having come from a place where there were NO IDE's to ease my pain, I'm supremely grateful for the ability to drag controls onto a form, smoosh 'em around, set some properties and be up and running with a skeleton to flesh out and deliver. I do NOT work with or have access to a graphic artist, nor do I wish to. Anyway, for the last several months on and off, I have attempted to come to grips with WPF, and I've finally arrived at the conclusion that it's just not worth the effort! In general, it's more work and more frustration for MUCH less functionality! Come on, MS! If I want to tinker endlessly with markup, I'll write in HTML, and likely have something that works in much less time and effort. To obtain the same level of useability I get with Windows Forms apps using WPF takes unbelieveable amounts of time and effort. Latest and greatest, my achin' posterior! Am I wrong? What am I missing here, folks?? Too busy for the MS merry-go-round, Duane Doutel
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Like most of you, I spend my days (and many nights) in the trenches, and have for nearly 30 years. I came up through assembly to C through C++ to C#, and a bunch of other stuff as side trips along the way. Having come from a place where there were NO IDE's to ease my pain, I'm supremely grateful for the ability to drag controls onto a form, smoosh 'em around, set some properties and be up and running with a skeleton to flesh out and deliver. I do NOT work with or have access to a graphic artist, nor do I wish to. Anyway, for the last several months on and off, I have attempted to come to grips with WPF, and I've finally arrived at the conclusion that it's just not worth the effort! In general, it's more work and more frustration for MUCH less functionality! Come on, MS! If I want to tinker endlessly with markup, I'll write in HTML, and likely have something that works in much less time and effort. To obtain the same level of useability I get with Windows Forms apps using WPF takes unbelieveable amounts of time and effort. Latest and greatest, my achin' posterior! Am I wrong? What am I missing here, folks?? Too busy for the MS merry-go-round, Duane Doutel
I've been spolied by WPF, and now I miss it when I have to code in MFC, Winforms, Win32 or QT. First thing - the code generated by the WPF Designer isn't great, I code all my visual trees by hand, and use templates for visual styling. Databinding is what makes it all worth while, you can even use databinding to control the viewstate, check out this excellent article by Josh Smith Simplifying the WPF TreeView by Using the ViewModel Pattern[^] Once you understand that article it opens windows in your mind. Other than databinding there's easy animations to make nice dynamic interfaces with collapsable panels and stuff, scaling and rotations to allow you to visualize data in new ways, the ability to restyle any control is nice. It does take a month or 2 before it clicks though, and some of the framework could be made a bit simpler, I think Silverlight is heading more down the right path and will probably end up as what WPF should have been.
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I've been spolied by WPF, and now I miss it when I have to code in MFC, Winforms, Win32 or QT. First thing - the code generated by the WPF Designer isn't great, I code all my visual trees by hand, and use templates for visual styling. Databinding is what makes it all worth while, you can even use databinding to control the viewstate, check out this excellent article by Josh Smith Simplifying the WPF TreeView by Using the ViewModel Pattern[^] Once you understand that article it opens windows in your mind. Other than databinding there's easy animations to make nice dynamic interfaces with collapsable panels and stuff, scaling and rotations to allow you to visualize data in new ways, the ability to restyle any control is nice. It does take a month or 2 before it clicks though, and some of the framework could be made a bit simpler, I think Silverlight is heading more down the right path and will probably end up as what WPF should have been.