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by JRobertson 4511 days ago
I have years of experience with WPF & Silverlight and agree that it has high learning curve, but once you know it there really isn't much of anything you can't to simpler, faster, and more elegantly than in HTML5, if you have a back end you need to interact with.
2 comments
beagle3 4510 days ago
Except ...

Some things only work in Silverlight, some only in WPF, and mixing both at the same time is a royal pain.

There are a LOT of bugs and regressions in WPF4 that are "wontfix", were supposed to be fixed in 4.5 or 5.0, but that's never going to happen. (Google "wpf 3.5 4.0 bug wontfix" to see a very incomplete list of regressions. I've met some of these myself, and some that are not on the first two pages).

And lastly, unlike Silverlight (Mac or Win, no Android, no iOS, no Linux), HTML5 is much more widely available (and with an easier graceful degradation path). The only place where using WPF or Silverlight makes sense today is when your target audience is using a locked down system - e.g. an enterprise with tightly controlled client machines. Otherwise, it's a no-go just from this perspective.

I didn't find the learning curve intimidating, FWIW. But the experience with using and deploying me scarred me.

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JRobertson 4510 days ago
I agree that HTML5 is much more available. I wouldn't recommend a silver light app for any consumer based product. But I would have for enterprise applications if it was going to continue to be supported.

The lack of support killed off the language, not the language itself, IMO.

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Tmmrn 4510 days ago
What about using it on anything that isn't windows or mac os?

Isn't it kind of the point of web browsers to render webpages in a common open language instead of being a host for proprietary vendor specific plugins? What's the big advantage over standalone applications in that case anyway?

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CmonDev 4510 days ago
We are talking about enterprise which is 99% Windows.
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beagle3 4510 days ago
Some enterprises are, perhaps most. But tablets and phones HAVE made a dent, and some places are BYOD even at the computer level.

e.g. Google is very far from 99% Windows - and though it is not your standard "enterprise", it is far from unique.

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Tmmrn 4508 days ago
Sure, but why make the commitment to build your whole thing windows-only when you are only a tiny bit away from actually doing it platform independent. Like, for having options in the future, and stuff.
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ct 4507 days ago
It would be adding several more months to project completion, and then recurring maintenance costs that overtime costs much more money.
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