I see where you're coming from, but in regards to MS and developers I really can't disagree with you more. MS, more than most, bends over backwards to reach out to developers. You can still target COM and OLE, you can still write VB4. I have applications written for DOS and Windows 3.1 that still work on Windows 7.
In this case, I think it is more a failure in PR than anything else. Silverlight will continue to work on Windows and Mac, and it will be the primary way of writing apps for the Windows phone. MS has just publicly acknowledged that it's stupid to try to get the Silverlight VM to work on every stack of hardware / OS. They just did it in a very ham-fisted fashion.
That wasn't really news to anyone that's been paying attention anyway. We've been warning our developers away from writing any web apps with Flash or SL (except for video playback) for over a year now. You can write very capable, very pretty web apps using just javascript, CSS and HTML4. HTML5 just makes it that much easier.
> it will be the primary way of writing apps for the Windows phone.
This, right there. Silverlight isn't going away. It's still useful. They just aren't trying to compete in an area where it won't be as useful. However, Silverlight developers suddenly have this transferable skill that Flash developers don't have on the mobile side.
Considering Silverlight and WPF also go together, I don't see Silverlight going away anytime soon. I see it changing direction, or at least, not being limited to just the web.
Honestly I think Microsoft's extreme desire to maintain backwards compatibility has hurt developers in the long run. That's an awful lot of legacy to carry around and they haven't been proficient at phasing products and platforms out when they're clearly way beyond their prime. They should focus more on being innovative and having solid strategies for moving developers incrementally towards new platforms and frameworks.
I currently contract for a company with 50,000 + employees and some pretty specialized software that way too many people need to access. Getting that to change is like turning a convoy of sea liners with no radio communication.
The programmers who actually understand the weird ass domain of that software really wish they were still writing COBOL on a mainframe, the users who know how to use the software are understandably reluctant to have to learn another application when the existing works fine for THEIR needs (and job security). We have succeeded in getting a lot of stuff transferred to Citrix servers, but there are still a few hold outs / problem areas.
So, yeah, sometimes we really need the existing old stuff to still work.
"You can write very capable, very pretty web apps using just javascript, CSS and HTML4. HTML5 just makes it that much easier."
Which part of HTML5 are you talking about here? I always assumed that in this context HTML5 meant 'Canvas + <video> element'. I hope that developers aren't going to use Canvas to replace CSS/javascript menus, rounded corners etc. with Canvas-based ones 8(
Sure, just like shiny Flash components that don't impede usability make the customers want more. I'm not against HTML5, and an open standard is better than Flash, I just hope people won't use 'it's the standard' as an excuse to throw together complete websites on a Canvas and break copy and paste, scrolling, bookmarkibility etc., all those things that suck so much about Flash websites.
Maybe I just don't know enough about Canvas and will it play nicer with the html/css separation model than Flash does, but from what I've seen so far I'm not getting my hopes up.
In this case, I think it is more a failure in PR than anything else. Silverlight will continue to work on Windows and Mac, and it will be the primary way of writing apps for the Windows phone. MS has just publicly acknowledged that it's stupid to try to get the Silverlight VM to work on every stack of hardware / OS. They just did it in a very ham-fisted fashion.
That wasn't really news to anyone that's been paying attention anyway. We've been warning our developers away from writing any web apps with Flash or SL (except for video playback) for over a year now. You can write very capable, very pretty web apps using just javascript, CSS and HTML4. HTML5 just makes it that much easier.