Initial impression: Silverlight much harder than WPF [modified]
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I've been using WPF intensively for the last 18 months. Until this week I've only read books on Silverlight. Then I had to port a simple WPF application to Silverlight. I'm finding things left and right that are in WPF but missing in Silverlight, and the workarounds are much more complex than the original WPF code. I'm reminded of when I made the transition from Win32 to MFC, how much easier it was to code in MFC (yet MFC is basically only a thin wrapper around Win32). Now I'm having the same experience, only backwards. Coding in Silverlight very often is much more low level than coding in WPF. For example, it's utterly trivial to download JPEG files from a Website in WPF but right now looks like a black hole in Silverlight. I have a feeling that if I ever figure it out, ten lines of code from the WebClient class will be replaced by hundreds of lines of code and deep study of the WebRequest/WebResponse classes. Actually, I hope that's all there is to it. I'm not really convinced that it is even possible with the WebRequest/WebResponse classes and that it will involve writing a Web "service" of some kind, whatever that is. I'm getting the impression that by comparison, WPF is for sissies and Silverlight is for real men (whether male or female). But it goes beyond just the basic frameworks, Silverlight and WPF. WPF is for desktop applications, Silverlight for Web applications. By comparison, the .NET desktop application programming world is a tiny, safe, isolated realm that you can learn inside and out after only coding a hundred thousand lines or so of C#. Web programming on the other hand requires intimate knowledge of a dozen different technologies if you hope to get anything but toys off the ground. I'm getting my welcome to the real world, such as it is these days (and wasn't ten years ago).
modified on Thursday, February 11, 2010 6:46 PM
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I've been using WPF intensively for the last 18 months. Until this week I've only read books on Silverlight. Then I had to port a simple WPF application to Silverlight. I'm finding things left and right that are in WPF but missing in Silverlight, and the workarounds are much more complex than the original WPF code. I'm reminded of when I made the transition from Win32 to MFC, how much easier it was to code in MFC (yet MFC is basically only a thin wrapper around Win32). Now I'm having the same experience, only backwards. Coding in Silverlight very often is much more low level than coding in WPF. For example, it's utterly trivial to download JPEG files from a Website in WPF but right now looks like a black hole in Silverlight. I have a feeling that if I ever figure it out, ten lines of code from the WebClient class will be replaced by hundreds of lines of code and deep study of the WebRequest/WebResponse classes. Actually, I hope that's all there is to it. I'm not really convinced that it is even possible with the WebRequest/WebResponse classes and that it will involve writing a Web "service" of some kind, whatever that is. I'm getting the impression that by comparison, WPF is for sissies and Silverlight is for real men (whether male or female). But it goes beyond just the basic frameworks, Silverlight and WPF. WPF is for desktop applications, Silverlight for Web applications. By comparison, the .NET desktop application programming world is a tiny, safe, isolated realm that you can learn inside and out after only coding a hundred thousand lines or so of C#. Web programming on the other hand requires intimate knowledge of a dozen different technologies if you hope to get anything but toys off the ground. I'm getting my welcome to the real world, such as it is these days (and wasn't ten years ago).
modified on Thursday, February 11, 2010 6:46 PM
Rants belong in the lounge or the soapbox, not here.
I know the language. I've read a book. - _Madmatt
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Rants belong in the lounge or the soapbox, not here.
I know the language. I've read a book. - _Madmatt
Okay, I'll remove the Rant tags. That way it won't be a rant. Do you have anything more enlightening to say about my observations? I was hoping to elicit thoughtful responses.
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Okay, I'll remove the Rant tags. That way it won't be a rant. Do you have anything more enlightening to say about my observations? I was hoping to elicit thoughtful responses.
fjparisIII wrote:
I was hoping to elicit thoughtful responses.
Then ask a question, don't rant. The forums are for questions.
I know the language. I've read a book. - _Madmatt
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fjparisIII wrote:
I was hoping to elicit thoughtful responses.
Then ask a question, don't rant. The forums are for questions.
I know the language. I've read a book. - _Madmatt
Okay. I should have added one more sentence: "What do you think?" So, what do you think? Am I right or wrong in thinking in particular that Silverlight programming is more difficult than WPF programming and that in general Web programming is more difficult than desktop programming? I'm trying to figure out what I'm getting myself into here, and what better place is there to ask this question than on a forum populated with experienced Silverlight programmers?
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Okay. I should have added one more sentence: "What do you think?" So, what do you think? Am I right or wrong in thinking in particular that Silverlight programming is more difficult than WPF programming and that in general Web programming is more difficult than desktop programming? I'm trying to figure out what I'm getting myself into here, and what better place is there to ask this question than on a forum populated with experienced Silverlight programmers?
I think one type is programming is no more, or less, difficult than another. It's all about understanding the tools, techniques, environment, etc.
I know the language. I've read a book. - _Madmatt
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I think one type is programming is no more, or less, difficult than another. It's all about understanding the tools, techniques, environment, etc.
I know the language. I've read a book. - _Madmatt
Mark Nischalke wrote:
I think one type is programming is no more, or less, difficult than another. It's all about understanding the tools, techniques, environment, etc.
Of course, but Web programming seems to require a plethora of different types of programming all at once before you can do anything of commercial value. What about my impression that there is more to learn about the "tools, techniques, environment, etc." in Web programming than there is in desktop programming? To use WPF proficiently, all I needed to understand was C#, the .NET classes, XAML, and WPF. For Web programming, I need to know additional languages, platforms, and libraries like JavaScript, XHTML, CSS, SQL, PHP, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, and who knows what else. It's so complicated that so far I haven't even been able put it all together at the conceptual level, although I'm further ahead with that than I was a couple months ago. I've been a professional programmer undoubtedly for more years than you've been alive, but until recently it was all desktop programming (at least for the last 20 years: before that it was mainframe and minicomputer assembly languages). So I've been around the block a few times, but the neighborhood has changed radically in the last ten years and the amount of knowledge you seem to need to get any kind of a job whatsoever these days seems to be ten times what it was just a few years ago.
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Mark Nischalke wrote:
I think one type is programming is no more, or less, difficult than another. It's all about understanding the tools, techniques, environment, etc.
Of course, but Web programming seems to require a plethora of different types of programming all at once before you can do anything of commercial value. What about my impression that there is more to learn about the "tools, techniques, environment, etc." in Web programming than there is in desktop programming? To use WPF proficiently, all I needed to understand was C#, the .NET classes, XAML, and WPF. For Web programming, I need to know additional languages, platforms, and libraries like JavaScript, XHTML, CSS, SQL, PHP, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, and who knows what else. It's so complicated that so far I haven't even been able put it all together at the conceptual level, although I'm further ahead with that than I was a couple months ago. I've been a professional programmer undoubtedly for more years than you've been alive, but until recently it was all desktop programming (at least for the last 20 years: before that it was mainframe and minicomputer assembly languages). So I've been around the block a few times, but the neighborhood has changed radically in the last ten years and the amount of knowledge you seem to need to get any kind of a job whatsoever these days seems to be ten times what it was just a few years ago.
I think, as originally stated, you should move this to the lounge. It would be a better place to have such a discussion since, once again, the forums are for questions and don't seem to have any, only opinions and a need to discuss your difficulty in keeping up with the body of knowledge in this career field.
fjparisIII wrote:
I've been a professional programmer undoubtedly for more years than you've been alive
I wouldn't be so arrogant and make such assumptions.
I know the language. I've read a book. - _Madmatt