WPF Sucks!
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Admittedly, I have had little time and experience with WPF, however, I can list out the "suckage" I have encountered, in my short time with it: 0). Large XAML Windows, Controls, etc... crash VS without so much as an error message. I have this happen on two different machines, with various projects. I'd love to report it, but since I have no error message, well ... 1). Complex XAML won't even render in the VS editor; if it opens without crashing. 2). Slow. Slow slow slow slow slow. It's freak'in S-L-O-W in the IDE, slow outside the IDE, and even typing text in some of the controls renders ... SLOW. Ok, I've totally just killed that word, it's lost all meaning now. Frankly, it's so bad, what little WPF I have done, I do manually outside the IDE. 3). Build a WPF solution with no errors. Close studio, come back to that same solution, having no files changed in the solution what-so-ever. Run. Get dozens of XAML related namespace not found errors. The only "fix" is to rebuild the entire solution. Makes me want to stab myself in the forehead with a spork to relieve the pain in my brain that this causes; my company will no longer let me near the plastic utensils because of this. 4). Intellisense. Oh ... wait ... sorry ... there is none for XAML files. What they've done to us, is what drug dealers do: get us all hooked on using something, and then take it away. But unfortunately, there are no street vendors I can shell a bunch of money out to that can give me a FIX! Ok, now my eye's twitching. That's all I've got, it's making my brain hurt ... someone ... hand me a spork.
:..::. Douglas H. Troy ::..
Bad Astronomy |VCF|wxWidgets|WTLIf you'll come this way Mr. Troy, we have your little white room all prepared for you. And no, the pretty white jacket here comes free of charge! The straps, oh don't worry about those, they're just a fashion accessory...
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Oh
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If you'll come this way Mr. Troy, we have your little white room all prepared for you. And no, the pretty white jacket here comes free of charge! The straps, oh don't worry about those, they're just a fashion accessory...
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Oh
Crayons damn-it! I want crayons! And a big box too, not those cheesy little 8 or 16 colors, I wan the full 64 or 128! ... and not those crappy wax ones like you get at restaurants that just irritate you because they don't actually draw anything, I want real Crayola's.
:..::. Douglas H. Troy ::..
Bad Astronomy |VCF|wxWidgets|WTL -
If I understand it correctly, the problem is that the original plan was to allow for a more efficient means of remote drawing (than simply rendering to a bitmap server-side and sending it across) when both client and server supported it... But it never really got tested/refined properly and was eventually dropped. I'm still holding out hope that this will all be working properly somewhere down the line (.NET 4 + We7en perhaps?). It sounds great, in theory. But everything i had hoped to use it for is well under development now, so...
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Crayons damn-it! I want crayons! And a big box too, not those cheesy little 8 or 16 colors, I wan the full 64 or 128! ... and not those crappy wax ones like you get at restaurants that just irritate you because they don't actually draw anything, I want real Crayola's.
:..::. Douglas H. Troy ::..
Bad Astronomy |VCF|wxWidgets|WTLCrayons are a version 2.0 feature. We do have some nice shiny things over here though....(snickers). Remember to breathe, think nice thoughts, and empoweralize yourself.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Oh
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Ok this is the my second post on this topic as people are using my WPF Rocks! to post their rants. My aim is to get the good and the bad of WPFs. Why do you think WPF sucks? Here are my reasons:- 1. Of course it's no doubt that the top one would be the poor VS 2008 designer. (Again please don't post that the problems will be solved by Expression Blend that's not the point of this post), 2. XAML is verbose. 3. Poor performance. 4. Does not work everywhere properly aka Remote Desktops. Anything else?
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
Does not work everywhere properly aka Remote Desktops.
What does it do / not do that it shouldn't /should?
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Crayons are a version 2.0 feature. We do have some nice shiny things over here though....(snickers). Remember to breathe, think nice thoughts, and empoweralize yourself.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Oh
Jim Crafton wrote:
empoweralize yourself.
I tried that once, and took out the breaker boxes on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd floors. Unfortunately, even after all that, I didn't retain a charge for very long ... :rolleyes:
:..::. Douglas H. Troy ::..
Bad Astronomy |VCF|wxWidgets|WTL -
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
Does not work everywhere properly aka Remote Desktops.
What does it do / not do that it shouldn't /should?
Just a guess, but I would imagine that because of the way it renders things, with it's reliance on a DirectX based scenegraph things may not show up in RD. Also for text/font rendering WPF uses a completely separate display engine from the traditional GDI one that most of the rest of Windows uses. I would guess that also causes problems.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Oh
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Why are people choosing WPF in the first place? What is selling them on it? Some specific demos? Promises of a better tomorrow :rolleyes:?
Todd Smith
Data binding is huge. Extensibility beyond the OwnerDrawn junk in WinForms/Win32 UI programming is another boon. We're still using trusty old WinForms here at work, but we are planning to switch as the tools and APIs mature.
Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon Judah Himango
modified on Thursday, May 14, 2009 4:58 PM
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It was a corporate mandate, not a personal choice on my part.
"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, 10/26/2001Change jobs, you hate it period.
Software Kinetics - Moving software
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Ok this is the my second post on this topic as people are using my WPF Rocks! to post their rants. My aim is to get the good and the bad of WPFs. Why do you think WPF sucks? Here are my reasons:- 1. Of course it's no doubt that the top one would be the poor VS 2008 designer. (Again please don't post that the problems will be solved by Expression Blend that's not the point of this post), 2. XAML is verbose. 3. Poor performance. 4. Does not work everywhere properly aka Remote Desktops. Anything else?
1 - this is true 2 - this is very true 3 - this is somewhat true, but reality is needed. Rendering a video on a DirectX surface, costs more than doing it in media player. The end. 4 - It actually works fine with the latest version of GoToMeeting. The big one for me is memory usage. WPF leaks memory if you use a lot of images or videos, and there's no Dispose methods, so the only way to write a media heavy app that works in WPF is to bulldoze the GC regularly. The image resizing stuff is also very buggy, it destroys some images. I told MS this years ago, still no fix.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. "I am new to programming world. I have been learning c# for about past four weeks. I am quite acquainted with the fundamentals of c#. Now I have to work on a project which converts given flat files to XML using the XML serialization method" - SK64 ( but the forums have stuff like this posted every day )
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Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
Does not work everywhere properly aka Remote Desktops.
What does it do / not do that it shouldn't /should?
In my case, I was demoing an app to clients over remote desktop. It was an informal demo and the app to demo was not on the machine so I rded into my work machine and tried to launch the application. It did not launch at all. However, other times it did launch well. To date I still don't know why it works sometimes and other times it does not. Of course, the other problem being it does not perform well on RD.
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This post is kind of pointless - but just wanted to say I'm glad you're trying to get a balanced view. I played with WPF when it first came out (in VS and Blend) and thought cool! Then I tried to do a real world utility app in it and after a few days of pulling my hair out I gave up as I could have finished it long ago in WinForms. If it is really the way we're going, then I'm quite happy to put in the time learning, but I've yet to be convinced that it's going to be here to stay and not dropped like a MS fad. I've followed the various posts over the last few weeks (silently) with great interest, and I'm hoping the way you've posed both your questions will bring out the real answers.
Dave
BTW, in software, hope and pray is not a viable strategy. (Luc Pattyn)
Visual Basic is not used by normal people so we're not covering it here. (Uncyclopedia)
Why are you using VB6? Do you hate yourself? (Christian Graus)Welcome to the fence, I've been down this track with MS so many times over the years only to see the technology "deprecated" that I'll stay here on the fence for a while. I can make winforms sit up and beg so I'll stick with that while my work is all data centric CRUD and reporting.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
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Data binding is huge. Extensibility beyond the OwnerDrawn junk in WinForms/Win32 UI programming is another boon. We're still using trusty old WinForms here at work, but we are planning to switch as the tools and APIs mature.
Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon Judah Himango
modified on Thursday, May 14, 2009 4:58 PM
Ok so your still on the fence too, but with a plan. I'm following Pete's LOB work with interest and hoping the whole WPF thing stabilises or dissapears shortly.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
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0. The font rendering is broken. (0 because that is the killer for me)
xacc.ide
IronScheme - 1.0 beta 3 - out now!
((lambda (x) `((lambda (x) ,x) ',x)) '`((lambda (x) ,x) ',x))This is a major issue for WPF, and I can't believe MS haven't fixed it in the 3+ years WPF has been available. Blurry unreadable fonts will never be accepted in serious applications. Some people tell me when I point it out in my own apps that they didn't really notice it, but it really stands out for me. A related issue is when you put a raster graphic (such as a png image) in your app (such as a 16x16 toobar button image) it gets completely destroyed (WPF blurs the image), and there's nothing you can do about it.
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Ok this is the my second post on this topic as people are using my WPF Rocks! to post their rants. My aim is to get the good and the bad of WPFs. Why do you think WPF sucks? Here are my reasons:- 1. Of course it's no doubt that the top one would be the poor VS 2008 designer. (Again please don't post that the problems will be solved by Expression Blend that's not the point of this post), 2. XAML is verbose. 3. Poor performance. 4. Does not work everywhere properly aka Remote Desktops. Anything else?
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
the problems will be solved by Expression Blend
Not bloody likely, at least until they give Blend a UI scheme that ordinary middle-aged mortals can use. The gray-on-gray (grey-on-grey for you Anglophiles) color scheme is a PITA.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
4. Does not work everywhere properly aka Remote Desktops.
How so? I debug and run my WPF app over Remote Desktop all the time, with no problems. I don't do video, so what fails?
Software Zen:
delete this;
Fold With Us![^] -
Ok this is the my second post on this topic as people are using my WPF Rocks! to post their rants. My aim is to get the good and the bad of WPFs. Why do you think WPF sucks? Here are my reasons:- 1. Of course it's no doubt that the top one would be the poor VS 2008 designer. (Again please don't post that the problems will be solved by Expression Blend that's not the point of this post), 2. XAML is verbose. 3. Poor performance. 4. Does not work everywhere properly aka Remote Desktops. Anything else?
There's a lot of things I really like about WPF, but I think MS has made a lot of mistakes in its implementation, hence why it hasn't had a huge uptake in the 3+ years it's been available. I love the ability it has for a data driven UI (binding to ObservableCollections, etc), but interacting with the UI directly is just too hard - horrendous code required (such as continually needing to walk the visual tree) to do the simplist things. You'd think it would be a simple matter to do something like select a given item in a treeview, but methods haven't been included to do simple things like this that are really important. Excusing the rendering and IDE issues, this is one of my main turn-offs for WPF. The lack of a straightforward transition path from WinForms to WPF is a big mistake and is limiting its uptake. The learning curve is huge, and I have spent huge amounts of time trying to work out how to do things that should realistically be very easy. I know WPF is a different paradigm to WinForms, but I think there should be a layer/library that mimmicks a lot of the functionality available in the WinForms control set to help people transition. That, and add a lot more functionality (such as a Select method to the treeview items) to the WPF controls.
