What do people think of UWP?
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jeffery c wrote:
Those 70-80's languages are only used in nasa mainframes
I'm with you that some languages have become less popular, even to the point where they could be called esoteric. Though I'd draw a line at calling them irrelevant. Perhaps something like Fortran / Cobol tends to be used just (or rather mostly) in legacy systems yes - does that make them irrelevant? Assembly is still used though, quite a bit in fact, wherever you see hardware with extreme limits in resources you're sure to see at least some ASM codes (even in lieu of C), think stuff like a washing machine controller. Another place it gets used often is drivers. Also this new "fashion" of IoT is a prime place for ASM to help out where a higher level language just doesn't provide the full control. And then there's still those who go and optimise after a compiler's done its best. Not to mention, in some cases certain things are just impossible to do in the higher level language. Even in DotNet there are some features impossible to implement in C# without reverting to IL instead (i.e. DotNet's "ASM"). No matter the language which was used to produce the program, it's rather rare to see users being trained in a language instead of how to operate the program. Think e.g. something like SAP, 99% of all its training is done on end users explaining to them which value to put into what field and what button to click when - not anything about the language used to develop those forms. Why would you think that training on a "mainframe" is any different, especially for the operators? In fact it's probably more useful to train users on a higher level language (for stuff like scripts and automation) while leaving the lower level stuff to actual programmers.
I level with you on most of this except most users barely know where the power button is on their computer. I worked in IT at a public K-12 school system and the multimedia/computer teachers were the only ones who had half a clue about them(I am from KY). The science teachers do not know how to program or even learn. High science class was the exception probably.
jeffery
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I level with you on most of this except most users barely know where the power button is on their computer. I worked in IT at a public K-12 school system and the multimedia/computer teachers were the only ones who had half a clue about them(I am from KY). The science teachers do not know how to program or even learn. High science class was the exception probably.
jeffery
jeffery c wrote:
most users barely know where the power button is on their computer
Well, I suggest that you don't make the kind of glaringly deceptive statement that you would use with those people when you post here, in CP, which comprises millions of people who have made a living coding for years (many of us, decades). The only programming languages that have become "irrelevant" are the faddish languages, which came and went, while the old -- faithful, solid, and trustworthy -- languages are still in use, and still being used creatively, alongside the recent/new-fangled (if you're as old as I am/if you're not) OO languages. The whole ms "universal" thing will go the way of all their fads, and in short order, because other people are doing better things -- whether individual, gifted developers, who are finding their own ways to do things; or large firms, who are looking to set standards. ms has already lost the battle, no matter what their marketing morons and wu-maos say. Had windows phone been a success, things might have been different, but they killed windows phone with the very direction they went in for it. Understand that very clearly: UWP killed the windows phone -- no-one wanted it on their computers, therefore they didn't want it on their phones, either. If something stinks, you don't want to put it in your pocket. Shame, really, because the baby-blocks thing, with its low-ish graphics overhead, was a good interface for a phone. Note that I have only really responded to the title of your posting, and not to the content, which is not entirely related to the title (don't get me started on titling things appropriately!), so, in response to your "shall I write articles about it?" question, I reply; Why the Hell not? There is always something to be learned from every direction taken in computing.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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jeffery c wrote:
most users barely know where the power button is on their computer
Well, I suggest that you don't make the kind of glaringly deceptive statement that you would use with those people when you post here, in CP, which comprises millions of people who have made a living coding for years (many of us, decades). The only programming languages that have become "irrelevant" are the faddish languages, which came and went, while the old -- faithful, solid, and trustworthy -- languages are still in use, and still being used creatively, alongside the recent/new-fangled (if you're as old as I am/if you're not) OO languages. The whole ms "universal" thing will go the way of all their fads, and in short order, because other people are doing better things -- whether individual, gifted developers, who are finding their own ways to do things; or large firms, who are looking to set standards. ms has already lost the battle, no matter what their marketing morons and wu-maos say. Had windows phone been a success, things might have been different, but they killed windows phone with the very direction they went in for it. Understand that very clearly: UWP killed the windows phone -- no-one wanted it on their computers, therefore they didn't want it on their phones, either. If something stinks, you don't want to put it in your pocket. Shame, really, because the baby-blocks thing, with its low-ish graphics overhead, was a good interface for a phone. Note that I have only really responded to the title of your posting, and not to the content, which is not entirely related to the title (don't get me started on titling things appropriately!), so, in response to your "shall I write articles about it?" question, I reply; Why the Hell not? There is always something to be learned from every direction taken in computing.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
Mark, sorry for confusion I meant that in the context of my previous IT job. No offense to the programmers on here but normal people can be idiots especially in KY and some do not want to learn. I was referring more to normal users not programmers which deserve a special right to themselves.
jeffery
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Sam Hobbs wrote:
I was actually in her office in the basement of the Pentagon once.
That's an experience I'd swap for a lot. The best thing about COBOL is that it was optimised specifically for handling financial data, so it's blistering fast, when used in that field. The only language that can even come near to keeping up with it is C (with no plusses, sharps, etc.)
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
I should have returned to Grace Hopper's office sometime when she was there and told her I wanted more challenging work. I did not think about that back then but my life would have been different if I had done that. At the time I was working in the Pentagon but I had very, very little to do. As for COBOL, we need a language with similar requirements but improved with modern advances. I don't know what the current standard is but it is probably held back by COBOL's legacy. I think it would be interesting to design a language based on COBOL's design and used in internet servers like PHP. It could be and should be more professional than PHP.
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The whole ms uwp concept is a huge waste of a lot of people's time. Like everything else they've produced over the last few years, they came up with it without even thinking about keeping their feet grounded in reality, and all they've done is take phenomenally uncreative steps (which they probably think are highly creative) in a direction that cannot possibly be the way to the future. What is currently being done by weChat and facebook is one of the potential roads to "universal" computer products. That much is obvious, because many of the roads in that direction are patently obvious -- it's just a matter of waiting to see who will get it all to come together. But that won't be ms. Their idea of "universal" is crippled by their new-found lack of vision and creativity. It's a joke, which will be swept under the carpet, within a couple of years (joining all the other dustballs they've previously hailed as the next great thing), and the people who suffer most because of this will be developers who invest their time, skills, and effort into it. Seriously, you'll do your career better by studying COBOL.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
Spoken like one who is "Truly" outside the loop. I love the "Oh, we're dumping ReactJS. We've rewritten it completely with only "Small" breaking changes. YEAH, let's go AngularJS the "More versions than fleas on a baboon" language. Pick one you will like. uh, no that one is now obsolete. Besides, browsers are soooooo stable across platforms they should be declared a standard..... Actually there are so many standards you can't keep up with them. You are probably right.... Having a true write once and just change the IO's to match the op system language and platform is probably a pipe dream.... Oh, wait... I already have it working using ASP.NET Core....... I know, I know,,,, Raspberry pi is really not a computer......... Actually it is, and is very stable if you use a 2 amp dongle. So C# and a PI talking to an MVC app running in the cloud is a lot of fun...... But MS is sooo confused. Yes, they are probably just stupid to make almost all of their releases of software backwards compatible which protects everyone's investments in IP. I know being open source is so stupid and letting the user community submit enhancements is way dumb..... But they plod along just the same.....
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Mark, sorry for confusion I meant that in the context of my previous IT job. No offense to the programmers on here but normal people can be idiots especially in KY and some do not want to learn. I was referring more to normal users not programmers which deserve a special right to themselves.
jeffery
Fair enough, but don't forget that "normal people" can be absolute geniuses in areas where developers are absolute idiots. "Bert isn't good at what I'm good at" doesn't mean "I'm good at what Bert is good at".
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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I should have returned to Grace Hopper's office sometime when she was there and told her I wanted more challenging work. I did not think about that back then but my life would have been different if I had done that. At the time I was working in the Pentagon but I had very, very little to do. As for COBOL, we need a language with similar requirements but improved with modern advances. I don't know what the current standard is but it is probably held back by COBOL's legacy. I think it would be interesting to design a language based on COBOL's design and used in internet servers like PHP. It could be and should be more professional than PHP.
COBOL was held back be by the fact that it became one of the major languages to be used for banking; and those guys just don't handle advances the way everyone else can. I'm still jealous as Hell of the people you had access to, though, even though it's hindsight that gives me the possibility of such jealousy -- you can't tell something will be thought of as amazing in the future, when you're living through it day by day. It's good to know that I know someone who was there. Kudos.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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COBOL was held back be by the fact that it became one of the major languages to be used for banking; and those guys just don't handle advances the way everyone else can. I'm still jealous as Hell of the people you had access to, though, even though it's hindsight that gives me the possibility of such jealousy -- you can't tell something will be thought of as amazing in the future, when you're living through it day by day. It's good to know that I know someone who was there. Kudos.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
I don't think I ever talked with Grace Hopper directly. I attended a presentation by her. She gave all the participants a nanosecond. I was in the Army. I also wish I had appreciated Grace Hopper back then. As for COBOL, it is more appropriate to say "financial" instead of "banking". However COBOL was used substantially by non-financial companies such as aircraft manufacturers. The engineering and manufacturing systems of aircraft such as the L-1011 and the F-22 Raptor ATF were all COBOL. So it is probably more appropriate to say "business" instead of "financial" and it is called Common Business-Oriented Language. You are right that it is neither scientific-oriented nor software-oriented (as in operating systems and compilers). The C language was designed to include software-oriented uses.
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You have no idea about UWP do you? I rarely develop for windows phone and use the desktop extensions of UWP to skip said non-sense and games for xbox is why I chose it but you can even get around that for xbox one to a certain extent. Anyways, I basically said you could still develop dotnet framework applications because UWP is a "choice" if your developing for windows 10 not a mandated requirement. Microsoft makes it seem that way but it is NOT. If you believe otherwise Microsoft has fooled you. VB.NET forum is going very well because their are still dot net developers on windows 10.
jeffery
No. The guy doesn't know anything. He thinks that UWP apps take over our whole screen. Ha ha ha.
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If I post some code here and articles would people be interested in UWP? I have some file API's and sample code that could help people. To be honest, I like UWP file operations but they are slightly weird. At the same time have great ways to do chain folder/file creation operations which I like and you can create the simple Append to end of sub/function like before but its a little different then before. Note: 1. I understand peoples problems with windows 10 updates but I have not had any problems with my updates with the exception of office 2010 because its so old windows will not install them properly the first time. 2.If you install visual studio at all, remember to install the Hypervisor for windows first because it uses that to test windows phone apps and needs time to run before you install studio.
jeffery
go ahead, post! I am currently doing a lot of iOS and Android development, always hitting the same backend, so lots of redundant code on the client, so I started to develop on Xamarin. Well, I love it, so I might post on that. While creating a new project, it also creates an UWP poject, and I always dismissed it with a meh! Big mistake, I am enjoying (and making money) creating the Win 10 companion apps to my iOS and Android apps, my clients love it!
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Thanks for that. I forgot for a moment about Fortran but if I did I would have mentioned it. Was assembly language really used in nuclear systems?
jeffery
That question jogged my memory and I remembered the name AN/UYK. Googling that, I found they were the computers used by the US Navy. All advertisements in the mid-1970s for that computer were for assembly language programmers. With about 4K of memory, they certainly were programmed only in assembler. Googling for Semi Automatic Ground Environment, that was a network of 27 computers across the US that were connected to radar sites that scanned the skies for incoming Russian bomber fleets. The vacuum-tube IBM mainframes had a max of 64K of memory. You could be sure that they were too programmed in Assembler. While SAGE gave the order to launch the missiles, the missiles themselves were controlled by on-board computers with 4K of memory. You could be pretty sure nothing would fit in that memory except assembly language programs. As the missile fleet was modernised, I am sure the US Department of Defense moved to ADA. Perhaps now, it is in C or C++.
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Sam Hobbs wrote:
In many ways, Microsoft's technology is behind that of half a century ago and UWP is weighed down by that
LOL, reminds me back in my younger days [as an employee] was often required to attend microsoft presentations. I recall one in particular when they introduced "multithreading" (demo: one window set to crash, the other carries on.) (This demo of "brand new tech" was about 10 minutes into an after lunch presentation - at that point I shook my head and left - not back to the office but went home) It was something I knew was already 25+ years old (FFS I had a 'nix running on my own home pc). What sticks in my mind though is the room full of people oohed and aahed over that demo, and were still talking about it the next day back at work. so while true that ms never bring anything new, where they usually [too often] excel is in bringing these things to the market. usually excel as in: there are items even in android/iphone that ms did earlier (not first), .... but they lost the phone battle. (OT - rant: it was 100% their sucky interface that looked just like the same sucky interface on windows 8 (was that uwp 1.0?) that failed their phone. Today it's the win 10 uwp (2.0beta?) that is mostly responsible for hobbling win 10 adoption and killing pc sales; it will also [if not -has already-] wreck their next attempt at a phone. Yes some people like the look, but then again some people drive pink cars. nad's biggest fail is and always will be this insistence on keeping this fugly uwp.
Sin tack the any key okay
Looking in Wikipedia (which is not always reliable but is useful for this) multitasking was available beginning about 1964. Even back then, processors were faster than peripheral hardware so the benefits of multitasking was obvious. Not relevant to Microsoft, but I once saw a presentation for Artificial Intelligence programmers about a new way to design software. It was old stuff for other types of programmers. Microsoft's tendency to deliver things to the world is not always good; their focus on Basic instead of superior technology, such as Pascal, is unfortunate. If I had a choice of Basic or COBOL as they existed at the time, COBOL was far superior. If performance was the consideration, Pascal was explicitly designed to show that something better was possible that could perform equivalent to Basic. Most people do not realize how much of what Microsoft developed in their earlier years came from outside Microsoft, such as from IBM and Unix. The one innovation that Microsoft did help with could be dynamic linking. Unix did not have it at the time; I forget if OS/2 did but it probably did. As I mentioned previously, and in the context of UWP, I wonder how much of the async/await mess is unique to Microsoft.