Pete Brown - Windows Store App Development: C# and XAML

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Ive been programming for fun since seventh grade in 1984 and professionally since around 1991/1992. During that time, Ive see a lot of change. In the 80s, as the personal computer industry was trying to settle, there were dozens of completely incompatible (both software- and hardware-wise) computers available to the public. In my small group of friends, some owned Commodore 64s, some Commodore VIC-20s, a couple of Apple II variants, a TRS-80 or two, and a couple of others I cant recall. My middle school (properly called a junior high school in Massachusetts) was equipped with some DEC VT-102 Robins, a handful of Commodore VIC-20s (with their disk drive on a serial A/B switch to share between different computers), and a number of Commodore 64 computers. My high school had an Apple IIgs, a couple of Apple IIe computers, and several Apple II computers. Later, they got an Apple IIc and several knock-off Apple clones as well as a lone black-and-white Macintosh. The few computer-literate teachers had access to a handful of IBM PCs to do the serious work of tracking student grades and whatnot. The computer camp I attended in tenth grade used DEC Rainbows and Commodore PETs. The computer competition I attended in tenth grade required knowing Unix and C.

Over the span of four years (seventh grade to tenth grade), I had to learn how to program in multiple incompatible dialects of BASIC and become proficient in multiple different operating systems just to be able to sit down at any given machine and do something useful. (One very interesting trait of these computers, as has been pointed out by others, is that you used to have to choose not to program. Programming was the default. More on that some other time.) Later, as a professional just a couple of years out of high school, at a single job I had for a bit under four years, I had to know how to use dBase, FoxPro, Borland Delphi, Borland C++, PowerBuilder, Visual Basic 3, QBasic, QuickBasic, and much more. Oh, and I had to be able to set up the Novel Netware 4 network at the office and convert everyone from dumb terminals to DOS and Windows 3.x PCs. The languages were different, the UI layers were different. There was little to no compatibility between any of these packages.

Change was the norm. It was expected.

Fast-forward to today. As developers, weve never had more pressure on us to be productive, but at the same time, weve never had the longevity of tools, platforms, and languages that we have today. If you started with .NET 1.0 or the alphas/betas (as I did), youve been able to use the same programming language and core runtime for almost 13 years. If youve been a Java programmer, you can claim an even longer run. The only people who had those kinds of runs in the past were FORTRAN and COBOL programmers.

Lately, things have begun to change a bit more. To keep up with the demands of users and the heavy competition in the mobile space, were seeing programming languages and underlying platforms rev more frequently. A natural consequence of this is deprecation or sunsetting of platforms that dont fit the new interaction models and the emergence of newer API sets, compilers, and more. The JavaScript space has arguably had the most rapid innovation, with new tools and libraries emerging seemingly daily. Many of those have, over the years, completely altered the language in ways that would make modern JavaScript completely foreign to programmers who learned it 10 or even 5 years ago.

On the Windows side, weve seen some amazing work in the .NET and XAML space. Interestingly, despite the changes of underlying platforms and the names of the products, .NET and XAML have remained far more compatible than many other platforms over the years. If you started learning XAML with WPF (or a year later with Silverlight), modern Windows Store XAML will easily become familiar, much like learning BASIC on the Commodore 64 and then learning to program the Apple II. Sure, the PEEK and POKE locations may be different, and there are a few other syntax differences, but theres far more thats compatible than incompatible.

As someone who has made a career of .NET since the first time I gave the two-day .NET 1.0 seminars in the .NET 1.0 alpha days, its heartening to see that my C# skills are still just as valid today as they were 13 years ago. Im also happy to see that my investment in XAML starting back in 2006 has served me well across every client platform Microsoft has created. By combining XAML and C#, I can code for the Windows Phone, Windows Store, and the desktop. If I stick to just C#, I can code for everything from tiny ARM microcontrollers on Netduino and Gadgeteer all the way up to massive servers. Through all of this, Im staying within a tightly focused sphere of development that centers on Visual Studio and C# (or VB, if you prefer).

Thats a solid return on investment.

As developers, we tend to focus on the differences in the Microsoft platforms. Its just natural, because its those differences that give us headaches and make us take up hobbies that involve close encounters with our mortality. But the very fact that we can focus on those differences shows how compatible these platforms are.

For fun, I like to code on microcontrollers. To varying degrees, Ive learned ARM with C, AVR with C and C++, PIC with C, NETMF with C#, and a little Arduino. Each of these used completely different IDEs; each uses completely different toolchains. Each time I try to learn another microcontroller, theres very little practical knowledge I can port from one to the other. The registers are all different, the libraries are completely different, and, of course, the IDEs are completely different. This means Ive not been able to ramp up on any one platform (with the exception of NETMF because of C#) in a short amount of time; each has been a huge investment in after-the-kids-go-to-sleep time. Few of the IDEs have usable IntelliSense, and help files are almost never in sync with the APIs. Its a lot of trial and errorjust getting LEDs to blink on a board feels like a huge accomplishment.