Silverlight - the plot thickens, Bob Muglia shoots himself in the foot
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peterchen wrote:
He avoids the "Silverlight vs. HTML 5" debate he kicked off until the last paragraph.
Maybe that's just his writing style? Provide a bunch of supporting points that build to a climax, then provide a clear conclusion?
peterchen wrote:
of course we'll release Silverlight 4. Someday. Dunno
Surely you mean Silverlight 5? Like he says, as products mature, the release cycle is not as quick. No need to jam in new features and such, as the product is already very usable.
aspdotnetdev wrote:
Maybe that's just his writing style?
Communicaiton is his job. It sounds more like managerial Cover Your Ass From All Sides, avoiding everything that sounds remotely like a commitment. In a sense, it's ok - he just can't predict the future. But people expected a statement about Silverlight vs. HTML5. It's like asking "Will you help me move my stuff?" And the answer is "You are very important to me."
aspdotnetdev wrote:
Silverlight 5
fixed :D
Agh! Reality! My Archnemesis![^]
| FoldWithUs! | sighist | WhoIncludes - Analyzing C++ include file hierarchy -
aspdotnetdev wrote:
Maybe that's just his writing style?
Communicaiton is his job. It sounds more like managerial Cover Your Ass From All Sides, avoiding everything that sounds remotely like a commitment. In a sense, it's ok - he just can't predict the future. But people expected a statement about Silverlight vs. HTML5. It's like asking "Will you help me move my stuff?" And the answer is "You are very important to me."
aspdotnetdev wrote:
Silverlight 5
fixed :D
Agh! Reality! My Archnemesis![^]
| FoldWithUs! | sighist | WhoIncludes - Analyzing C++ include file hierarchyIMO, he said everything he needed to in the last paragraph. The rest of it just seemed to be supporting points of why Silverlight has a future. Nothing wrong with that. And he might be one of those types who doesn't like to post twitter style blog posts... just gotta pad with a little extra info to get that word count up. :rolleyes:
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What the hell is going on over at Microsoft? First this Muglia character spawns a huge controversy by hinting Microsoft is shifting away from Silverlight in favor of HTML 5 (a patently absurd thing to say since there is really no relation between the two at all), then probably after urging from his Silverlight team he posts a clarification which muddies the waters even further: http://team.silverlight.net/announcement/pdc-and-silverlight/[^] Either this guy is a complete idiot or he meant what he said the first time and is just trying to sugarcoat it. This comment summed it up best for me: "November-02-2010 at 06:36 PM PST Mark S I echo most of the comments here. Silverlight is fantastic and was really beginning to gain momentum, but there was always the specter of it dying on the vine like so many other MS development technologies (cf. CardSpace, v1 of Workflow Foundation, LINQ to SQL, etc). Now, in one fell swoop you have turned what should have been a tremendously successful strategy and investment into the realization of its skeptics' greatest fears. You could have let people crowing about HTML5 while you gradually took on Flash and gradually realized the dream of controlling the internet (if only from the development side) but no, once again MS displays cowardly, shortsighted, fickle leadership (cf. Plays4Sure vs. Zune, WinMo). Perception is reality and oft-burned MS developers know how to read between the lines; we've read this book before. " I was just about to jump into the Silverlight pool with both feet, now I have no idea where they stand in reality and this is making me start to consider open source stuff, something I would never have done before this. Fuck it's frustrating being a developer in the Microsoft camp sometimes but it's gotten worse over the last few years, they've pretty much been kicking us in the teeth for some time now.
“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
We're just going to keep developing for Silverlight. I don't pay too much attention to what some guy is yelling, another six months down the road they might do another 180. By the way, also managed directx, .NET remoting should also be added to this guy's list of dead ends (which were fabulous imho, what were they thinking discontinuing them). Wix is a bit shaky, looked dead for a while, but maybe that's still alive.
Wout
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What the hell is going on over at Microsoft? First this Muglia character spawns a huge controversy by hinting Microsoft is shifting away from Silverlight in favor of HTML 5 (a patently absurd thing to say since there is really no relation between the two at all), then probably after urging from his Silverlight team he posts a clarification which muddies the waters even further: http://team.silverlight.net/announcement/pdc-and-silverlight/[^] Either this guy is a complete idiot or he meant what he said the first time and is just trying to sugarcoat it. This comment summed it up best for me: "November-02-2010 at 06:36 PM PST Mark S I echo most of the comments here. Silverlight is fantastic and was really beginning to gain momentum, but there was always the specter of it dying on the vine like so many other MS development technologies (cf. CardSpace, v1 of Workflow Foundation, LINQ to SQL, etc). Now, in one fell swoop you have turned what should have been a tremendously successful strategy and investment into the realization of its skeptics' greatest fears. You could have let people crowing about HTML5 while you gradually took on Flash and gradually realized the dream of controlling the internet (if only from the development side) but no, once again MS displays cowardly, shortsighted, fickle leadership (cf. Plays4Sure vs. Zune, WinMo). Perception is reality and oft-burned MS developers know how to read between the lines; we've read this book before. " I was just about to jump into the Silverlight pool with both feet, now I have no idea where they stand in reality and this is making me start to consider open source stuff, something I would never have done before this. Fuck it's frustrating being a developer in the Microsoft camp sometimes but it's gotten worse over the last few years, they've pretty much been kicking us in the teeth for some time now.
“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
John C wrote:
f*** it's frustrating being a developer in the Microsoft camp sometimes but it's gotten worse over the last few years, they've pretty much been kicking us in the teeth for some time now.
Really? Well, that depends on whether you adopt everything that Microsoft spews out. Which part of the toilet water would you rather swim in? The nice clean water in the tank, or the stuff in the sewer? Now, granted, I hardly ever do web development, and if I would, I certainly wouldn't touch Silverlight. As for WinForm development, I have yet to have a reason for WPF, and all that XML stuff is great except I already have my own framework, complete with designers that actually work that don't require me to touch the XML. I laugh at this point when I see articles on WPF showing XML. It was cool in the heyday of MyXaml, but come on folks, who really wants to look at XML? So, become a happy little goldfish and don't jump into the putrid waters whenever Microsoft drives the porcelain bus. :) Marc
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What the hell is going on over at Microsoft? First this Muglia character spawns a huge controversy by hinting Microsoft is shifting away from Silverlight in favor of HTML 5 (a patently absurd thing to say since there is really no relation between the two at all), then probably after urging from his Silverlight team he posts a clarification which muddies the waters even further: http://team.silverlight.net/announcement/pdc-and-silverlight/[^] Either this guy is a complete idiot or he meant what he said the first time and is just trying to sugarcoat it. This comment summed it up best for me: "November-02-2010 at 06:36 PM PST Mark S I echo most of the comments here. Silverlight is fantastic and was really beginning to gain momentum, but there was always the specter of it dying on the vine like so many other MS development technologies (cf. CardSpace, v1 of Workflow Foundation, LINQ to SQL, etc). Now, in one fell swoop you have turned what should have been a tremendously successful strategy and investment into the realization of its skeptics' greatest fears. You could have let people crowing about HTML5 while you gradually took on Flash and gradually realized the dream of controlling the internet (if only from the development side) but no, once again MS displays cowardly, shortsighted, fickle leadership (cf. Plays4Sure vs. Zune, WinMo). Perception is reality and oft-burned MS developers know how to read between the lines; we've read this book before. " I was just about to jump into the Silverlight pool with both feet, now I have no idea where they stand in reality and this is making me start to consider open source stuff, something I would never have done before this. Fuck it's frustrating being a developer in the Microsoft camp sometimes but it's gotten worse over the last few years, they've pretty much been kicking us in the teeth for some time now.
“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Just a side-thought. I use netflix and it is pretty bad-ass from a technical point of view. I and a lot of people have a basic pc (with wireless keyboard and mouse) connected to the big screen at home and don't see any need to change that hardware configuration, ever. So, there is a platform configuration that will always be there and work with silverlight. There are a lot of magagement of my personal business (using software that has yet to be written) that I'd prefer to do on a 40+ inch screen and never on a little pocket screen--namely one that that doesn't run a mobile windows os.
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John C wrote:
f*** it's frustrating being a developer in the Microsoft camp sometimes but it's gotten worse over the last few years, they've pretty much been kicking us in the teeth for some time now.
Really? Well, that depends on whether you adopt everything that Microsoft spews out. Which part of the toilet water would you rather swim in? The nice clean water in the tank, or the stuff in the sewer? Now, granted, I hardly ever do web development, and if I would, I certainly wouldn't touch Silverlight. As for WinForm development, I have yet to have a reason for WPF, and all that XML stuff is great except I already have my own framework, complete with designers that actually work that don't require me to touch the XML. I laugh at this point when I see articles on WPF showing XML. It was cool in the heyday of MyXaml, but come on folks, who really wants to look at XML? So, become a happy little goldfish and don't jump into the putrid waters whenever Microsoft drives the porcelain bus. :) Marc
Marc Clifton wrote:
I laugh at this point when I see articles on WPF showing XML. It was cool in the heyday of MyXaml, but come on folks, who really wants to look at XML?
You’re underestimating how many masochistic programmers have out there. I know people that are so dedicated to look “professional” or “geek” that would rather code using two-buttons keyboard/with only zero and one buttons/ than actually get some job done. If memory serves there was even a XML based computer language. X|
The narrow specialist in the broad sense of the word is a complete idiot in the narrow sense of the word. Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.
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John C wrote:
f*** it's frustrating being a developer in the Microsoft camp sometimes but it's gotten worse over the last few years, they've pretty much been kicking us in the teeth for some time now.
Really? Well, that depends on whether you adopt everything that Microsoft spews out. Which part of the toilet water would you rather swim in? The nice clean water in the tank, or the stuff in the sewer? Now, granted, I hardly ever do web development, and if I would, I certainly wouldn't touch Silverlight. As for WinForm development, I have yet to have a reason for WPF, and all that XML stuff is great except I already have my own framework, complete with designers that actually work that don't require me to touch the XML. I laugh at this point when I see articles on WPF showing XML. It was cool in the heyday of MyXaml, but come on folks, who really wants to look at XML? So, become a happy little goldfish and don't jump into the putrid waters whenever Microsoft drives the porcelain bus. :) Marc
Marc Clifton wrote:
So, become a happy little goldfish and don't jump into the putrid waters whenever Microsoft drives the porcelain bus.
Nice! :) Come on Marc, you know me better than that I hope after all these years. :) I never touch anything unless it's of direct benefit to our end users and after evaluating it thoroughly. I absolutely don't use any technology just because it's sexy or marketed well. I'm still holding a grudge from when they dropped MSDN universal for the current byantine morass and gave us no option as a small business for anything as affordable and another big grudge from their completely abandonment of desktop developers when it comes to things like a realistic licensing program for integrating their online mapping products which is technically easily accomplished but the licensing all revolves around web sites and they keep saying we'll look into it for years with nothing coming.
“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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IMO, he said everything he needed to in the last paragraph. The rest of it just seemed to be supporting points of why Silverlight has a future. Nothing wrong with that. And he might be one of those types who doesn't like to post twitter style blog posts... just gotta pad with a little extra info to get that word count up. :rolleyes:
About the future of silverlight he says: Silverlight has and will continue to be a pioneering technology that makes it possible to deliver the best media experiences anywhere. [...] we have and will continue to invest in it. [...] getting a single [Silverlight] runtime implementation installed on every potential device is practically impossible. [...] Make no mistake; we’ll continue to invest in Silverlight and enable developers to build great apps and experiences with it in the future. Everything else describes what Silverlight is now. There's no real committment what role silverlight will play in the future, and allows a wide range of "I never said" phrases. "I never said Silverlight will be supported on Windows 8 or IE 10". "I never said we will use Silverlight for X". "I never said the Silverlight team will not become part of the Windows Phone team, which we are downsizing anyway to give you the best experience possible." etc. ad nauseam.
aspdotnetdev wrote:
And he might be one of those types who doesn't like to post twitter style blog posts
After the stir his PDC statements caused, I desparately hope for him and for Microsoft that this reply wasn't a "Twitter-style blog post", but has seen some consideration and review. I just say: to much of the latter.
Agh! Reality! My Archnemesis![^]
| FoldWithUs! | sighist | WhoIncludes - Analyzing C++ include file hierarchy -
Marc Clifton wrote:
So, become a happy little goldfish and don't jump into the putrid waters whenever Microsoft drives the porcelain bus.
Nice! :) Come on Marc, you know me better than that I hope after all these years. :) I never touch anything unless it's of direct benefit to our end users and after evaluating it thoroughly. I absolutely don't use any technology just because it's sexy or marketed well. I'm still holding a grudge from when they dropped MSDN universal for the current byantine morass and gave us no option as a small business for anything as affordable and another big grudge from their completely abandonment of desktop developers when it comes to things like a realistic licensing program for integrating their online mapping products which is technically easily accomplished but the licensing all revolves around web sites and they keep saying we'll look into it for years with nothing coming.
“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
John C wrote:
I never touch anything unless it's of direct benefit to our end users and after evaluating it thoroughly. I absolutely don't use any technology just because it's sexy or marketed well.
I know, I know. But you have to realize, I also keep the general reader in mind when I write posts about goldfish swimming in the waters of Microsoft. :) Marc
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John C wrote:
I never touch anything unless it's of direct benefit to our end users and after evaluating it thoroughly. I absolutely don't use any technology just because it's sexy or marketed well.
I know, I know. But you have to realize, I also keep the general reader in mind when I write posts about goldfish swimming in the waters of Microsoft. :) Marc
I liked the analogy, reminded me of the windows 7 goldfish and a Japanese water garden simultaneously. :)
“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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What the hell is going on over at Microsoft? First this Muglia character spawns a huge controversy by hinting Microsoft is shifting away from Silverlight in favor of HTML 5 (a patently absurd thing to say since there is really no relation between the two at all), then probably after urging from his Silverlight team he posts a clarification which muddies the waters even further: http://team.silverlight.net/announcement/pdc-and-silverlight/[^] Either this guy is a complete idiot or he meant what he said the first time and is just trying to sugarcoat it. This comment summed it up best for me: "November-02-2010 at 06:36 PM PST Mark S I echo most of the comments here. Silverlight is fantastic and was really beginning to gain momentum, but there was always the specter of it dying on the vine like so many other MS development technologies (cf. CardSpace, v1 of Workflow Foundation, LINQ to SQL, etc). Now, in one fell swoop you have turned what should have been a tremendously successful strategy and investment into the realization of its skeptics' greatest fears. You could have let people crowing about HTML5 while you gradually took on Flash and gradually realized the dream of controlling the internet (if only from the development side) but no, once again MS displays cowardly, shortsighted, fickle leadership (cf. Plays4Sure vs. Zune, WinMo). Perception is reality and oft-burned MS developers know how to read between the lines; we've read this book before. " I was just about to jump into the Silverlight pool with both feet, now I have no idea where they stand in reality and this is making me start to consider open source stuff, something I would never have done before this. Fuck it's frustrating being a developer in the Microsoft camp sometimes but it's gotten worse over the last few years, they've pretty much been kicking us in the teeth for some time now.
“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
On what planet was Silverlight "beginning to gain momentum?" Okay, I suppose that since it was an object at rest and it moved every so slightly, it's "gained momentum". As for Microsoft kicking Silverlight developers in the teeth, be happy, they've been kicking C++ developers in the balls for years.
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On what planet was Silverlight "beginning to gain momentum?" Okay, I suppose that since it was an object at rest and it moved every so slightly, it's "gained momentum". As for Microsoft kicking Silverlight developers in the teeth, be happy, they've been kicking C++ developers in the balls for years.
I purposefully didn't restrict it to Silverlight developers, I'm not one yet and I know what you mean.
“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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What the hell is going on over at Microsoft? First this Muglia character spawns a huge controversy by hinting Microsoft is shifting away from Silverlight in favor of HTML 5 (a patently absurd thing to say since there is really no relation between the two at all), then probably after urging from his Silverlight team he posts a clarification which muddies the waters even further: http://team.silverlight.net/announcement/pdc-and-silverlight/[^] Either this guy is a complete idiot or he meant what he said the first time and is just trying to sugarcoat it. This comment summed it up best for me: "November-02-2010 at 06:36 PM PST Mark S I echo most of the comments here. Silverlight is fantastic and was really beginning to gain momentum, but there was always the specter of it dying on the vine like so many other MS development technologies (cf. CardSpace, v1 of Workflow Foundation, LINQ to SQL, etc). Now, in one fell swoop you have turned what should have been a tremendously successful strategy and investment into the realization of its skeptics' greatest fears. You could have let people crowing about HTML5 while you gradually took on Flash and gradually realized the dream of controlling the internet (if only from the development side) but no, once again MS displays cowardly, shortsighted, fickle leadership (cf. Plays4Sure vs. Zune, WinMo). Perception is reality and oft-burned MS developers know how to read between the lines; we've read this book before. " I was just about to jump into the Silverlight pool with both feet, now I have no idea where they stand in reality and this is making me start to consider open source stuff, something I would never have done before this. Fuck it's frustrating being a developer in the Microsoft camp sometimes but it's gotten worse over the last few years, they've pretty much been kicking us in the teeth for some time now.
“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I've largely given up on Microsoft. I do a lot of C++, SQL, .NET, classic ASP (yes, still) and ASP.NET development and I have loved MS for the quality of the development tools and documentation. Documentation is not bad but searching/finding anything is pitiful, the help system is a total disaster and their path to improvement seems to be dependent on bloatware, bloated APIs and proprietary systems. Visual Studio hasn't improved at all for the type of development I do and is slower and more buggy than ever. Whatever happened to MS producing the best-of-the-best development environment?? SQL Server Management Studio (2005,2008) has never been as fast or bug free as SQL Enterprise manager back in SQL 2000 and while I try to like it, the slowness and bugginess of it drives me up a wall. Internet Explorer is a total disaster from every angle, and the Expression tools could be great, but have been handicapped by MS marketing & licensing strategies. I am definitely moving away from MS technologies when possible, looking at shifting large portions of future code to non-MS APIs and leveraging HTML/HTML5/javascript/jquery wherever possible. Silverlight could have been very good, but MS has had nearly 3 years to deal with bugs, compatibility across browsers AND devices (e.g. smart phones), and missing features. Some of what is in Silverlight is top-notch, but so much of it is bloated, heavy and a pain to use/interact with, that I just don't want to mess with it. I would love to see MS make a turn around. Windows 7 really is the best OS out there as far as I'm concerned. IE9 looks very promising though I don't trust MS to keep up with the other browsers, we'll just have to wait and see. XBOX is good and Windows phone 7 looks good though only time will tell on that. However, Adobe is producing some excellent tools for new media (images, illustrations, video, even Flash/Flex) and open source tools are continuously getting better. If MS doesn't step up, they will continue to lose more developers until a tipping point is reached when they will become irrelevant.
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We're just going to keep developing for Silverlight. I don't pay too much attention to what some guy is yelling, another six months down the road they might do another 180. By the way, also managed directx, .NET remoting should also be added to this guy's list of dead ends (which were fabulous imho, what were they thinking discontinuing them). Wix is a bit shaky, looked dead for a while, but maybe that's still alive.
Wout
wout de zeeuw wrote:
Wix is a bit shaky, looked dead for a while, but maybe that's still alive.
Yes, still alive. I believe that Microsoft now use it for Visual Studio and SQL Server installations. Not sure about Office. With the large-scale move to web apps, windows installers are just not as important as they once were.
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I've largely given up on Microsoft. I do a lot of C++, SQL, .NET, classic ASP (yes, still) and ASP.NET development and I have loved MS for the quality of the development tools and documentation. Documentation is not bad but searching/finding anything is pitiful, the help system is a total disaster and their path to improvement seems to be dependent on bloatware, bloated APIs and proprietary systems. Visual Studio hasn't improved at all for the type of development I do and is slower and more buggy than ever. Whatever happened to MS producing the best-of-the-best development environment?? SQL Server Management Studio (2005,2008) has never been as fast or bug free as SQL Enterprise manager back in SQL 2000 and while I try to like it, the slowness and bugginess of it drives me up a wall. Internet Explorer is a total disaster from every angle, and the Expression tools could be great, but have been handicapped by MS marketing & licensing strategies. I am definitely moving away from MS technologies when possible, looking at shifting large portions of future code to non-MS APIs and leveraging HTML/HTML5/javascript/jquery wherever possible. Silverlight could have been very good, but MS has had nearly 3 years to deal with bugs, compatibility across browsers AND devices (e.g. smart phones), and missing features. Some of what is in Silverlight is top-notch, but so much of it is bloated, heavy and a pain to use/interact with, that I just don't want to mess with it. I would love to see MS make a turn around. Windows 7 really is the best OS out there as far as I'm concerned. IE9 looks very promising though I don't trust MS to keep up with the other browsers, we'll just have to wait and see. XBOX is good and Windows phone 7 looks good though only time will tell on that. However, Adobe is producing some excellent tools for new media (images, illustrations, video, even Flash/Flex) and open source tools are continuously getting better. If MS doesn't step up, they will continue to lose more developers until a tipping point is reached when they will become irrelevant.
Seems to be too that MS isn't really focussing on building quality stuff, but just running after the next hype. I'm probably skipping VS 2010, as I don't like the new help system at all. I'm quite satisfied with the VS 2008 help, where index at least works properly. I never had much problems with SSMS (using the express version), I do like the autocompletion, and ability to script your db and contents. I don't have big performance demands for it though. We've just started with Silverlight 4, as we feel this is the first release that's usable enough (and we needed 3D support for CAD). I have good hopes that this will be a successful project. Sometimes I consider alternatives, but I don't see myself moving to Adobe just yet (I think their Adobe reader is another marvelous piece of bloatware too by the way).
Wout