About WPF and Silverlight future and what I have gathered about it on DevConnections

For the past few months there has been quite a bit of speculation on the matter of WPF being dead and Silverlight following it closely, being replaced by HTML5 as the platform of choice for rich web application development.

Most of the information and opinions about this statement has been proposed by Scott Barnes, former Silverlight Product Manager at Microsoft. He posts that both insider information as well as logic reasoning all point out to the fact that WPF is not being actively developed and that Silverlight XAML based development is being frozen and not pushed actively by Microsoft. His position about why he brings these issues forward is that he is interested in having both WPF and Silverlight more aggressively developed and marketed by Microsoft.

To find out about how the whole thing started, I suggest you read Scott Barnes’ blog entries at http://www.riagenic.com as well as his twitter postings as @Mossyblog http://twitter.com/#search?q=mossyblog from July 2010 until today. Most of the content there is related to this discussion.

I happen to have jumped on the WPF bandwagon and I share with my coworkers the responsibility to make sure we are not going to be developing into a platform that is declared dead. It is not the first time such an issue happens, and it is not a Microsoft exclusive issue. Many major companies do invest into technologies that sometimes do not meet the expectations and are thus dropped. It is just a reality that forms part of any business.

What had me a bit worried about all this was the lack of an official response by Microsoft. Maybe they just did not deem necessary to answer the allegations as they did not intend for things to head in that direction, maybe they were thinking of an appropriate way to answer, or maybe there was some truth to it all.

Then, PDC 2010 came, and with it, two interesting sources of information. The first one is a blog entry by Pete Brown http://10rem.net/blog/2010/10/28/the-present-and-future-of-wpf, and the second one is a video by Rob Reylea http://player.microsoftpdc.com/Session/c1533143-2bab-43e0-a3ce-114dcdd1143e . Both of these support the fact that WPF and Silverlight are active issues in the current agenda, and that they are here to stay. There is even a famous PowerPoint slide used both in PDC 2010 and DevConnections 2010 with the phrase “The reports of Silverlight’s death have been greatly exaggerated”, in a funny homage to Mark Twain’s famous quote.

Now, I am attending DevConnections 2010, and I had the chance to ask directly to a couple Microsoft people what their take was on this. I was able to steal a couple minutes from Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President .NET Developer Platform after his keynote presentation this morning, and I asked him directly what his viewpoints where on the matter. His answers, as I understood them, can be summarized in the following statements:

• WPF is not being phased out or declared dead. WPF is an active part of the development efforts at Microsoft.
• The fact that WPF is not seeing as much action today as other technologies is not due to any intention to discontinue the product, but due in part to the fact that the product is mature. It has been kept up to date, and we saw WPF 4.0 release not too long ago.
• WPF is core to to the Development Tools unit, which is a billion dollar business, and the next Visual Studio will be developed in WPF.
• Other very important areas, such as Office, have not been mentioned or developed in an aggressive fashion as of late, yet they are still an integral part of Microsoft business. Lack of aggressive mention does not imply the death of a product.
• HTML5 will be definitely part of future development efforts, but this is not in conflict with Silverlight or WPF future. 

This was very comforting to hear, but that is not the end of it all. It is also necessary to mention that the previous keynotes on DevConnections by Dave Mendlen (Senior Director, Developer Platform and Tools) and Joe Belfiore (Corporate Vice President Windows Phone Program Development) involved heavy Silverlight usage, both in current products and future plans. Furthermore, several of the sessions I attended with John Papa and Tim Heuer clearly showed substantial development efforts to further support Silverlight development based on XAML.

In my opinion, I do feel that these are very good and strong reasons to believe that using the term “dead” causes a distorted image of what the current state of affairs is. I do see HTML5 in the future, but not at the cost of XAML based development. Both WPF and Silverlight have substantial investment in them and Microsoft interest is to continue supporting such effort. People closely linked to it all have reiterated these statements from their point of view: Things are going as they would expect. I would also like to add that I think Scott Barnes means well, and he is just posting his view. If it was up to him, he would push the platform in a different fashion mainly because of the potential he sees in it.

Lastly, as if all that was not reason enough, consider the following: I am writing this in my hotel room, in Vegas, instead of hitting the strip for some Nevada style fun. That much I believe on the need to share this information with my fellow .NET programmers.

WPF lives, and so does Silverlight.

* If any of the people mentioned feels misquoted, please let me know, I will be happy to clarify any statements.

Saying Bye to Sasha

Hard day to go through today. Our dog had a bad skin issue and she could not help licking herself all over, particularly her rear legs. We tried all kinds of allergy medicines and antibiotics to no avail. We used muzzles, wraps, dog gloves and collars to keep her from doing it, but alas, one time of us not being attentive enough and she would undo weeks of care. Today, we took her to the vet with her rear left leg in shambles, cut and with a serious inflammation. There were some options, but that included therapy for her for life and no guarantees. In the meantime she could keep hurting herself.

It was enough, for her and for us, and we had to take the hard decision to put her down, and let her rest.

My wife went to the school and brought the kids home early. We tried and enjoy one last day with our beloved Sasha before her time was up. 

When it came to it, it was not easy, but it was something that had to be done. I did spend a good deal of time digging her grave and preparing everything. My wife took care of the kids and the rest of the stuff. Sasha was lively and excited, but I am quite sure she felt our grief.

Things were over really quick, and the procedure was very simple and painless. She just went to sleep like she would when we were scratching her tummy.

I think she had a good life and we were the best we could to her. It is hard to let it go and think that I could have done things differently and have her still with us, but the reality is that we did what we could.

Never easy to deal with the death of a dear one and Sasha certainly was a dear one to my family.

I will chose to remember her on her prime, when she was proud and crazy, young and wild. Just like this.

Bye, little Sasha!