Ole Eichhorn: Comments on XAML and the PDC Experience
I held off on posting this for a while, mainly because I was thinking of ways to say more about it. Then, when great people like Tim Bray just say "Go read it", I figure I can pretty much do the same.
If you're still reading and haven't clicked your back button in disgust, let me explain. The most important thing is not how easy it is to build code, the most important thing is how well the code runs once it is built. This concept seems to have escaped the Longhorn developers, and from this viewpoint Longhorn and its underlying technologies are pretty unexciting.
Ole's post is called The Emperor's New Code -- he figures for the most part that a lot of stuff that Microsoft announced is re-inventing the wheel. A chance to throw in whiz-bang without having to address any current problems.
Similar
- Microsoft Social Networking Patent Application on Peer-to-Patent
- NPR interview with Bill Gates on the Microsoft Vancouver dev center
- Game console dilemma - Xbox 360 or Sony Playstation 3
- Media appearance: Is Microsoft doing enough to reinvent itself? on Business News Network
- Microsoft Canada opening software dev center in Vancouver (commentary)
Comments
he makes so many arguable statements hard to kno...
where to start:
- longhorn will certainly hurt speed
(complete speculation, for giggles he shud simply try NT4 vs XP in a modern [i865 or newer] motherboard and see which flies faster)
- paging that works
(has he tried to use linux when it's thrashing?)
- domain master thing
(entirely optional)
- Why do people use Apache? Speed.
(has he ever seen benchmarks IIS5/6 vs Apache?)
- in all the demos and discussions at the PDC, nobody worried about performance.
(has he ever built an app? you get experienced clever people to draft a reasonable architecture, build and test, and speed tuning is one of the last things done.)
- code like XAML is all very exciting, but why does this improve the UI? Um, it doesn't.
(of course, it's in how you use the tools; or maybe he really likes how XUL things look)
- I care about more than any other, my Outlook .PST file. This one file is a repository of all my emails, sent and received, all my calendar items, and all my contacts. Know why it is one file? For performance. Try storing every email, appointment, or contact in a separate file, and you'll have the slowest PIM known to man.
(so, he doesn't know how to optimize his outlook PSTs)
Sc0bl3 takes him seriously, but methink the guy's trolling. Go here for another view.
Ole is a big-time Windows supporter
Which is why Scoble takes him seriously. In short, he doesn't see the "new Windows" addressing a lot of his pains, it's re-inventing the wheel and a bunch of extra learning of new stuff for him.
You're right, lots of the things he says are "arguable". I could go through each of the points and put yet other counter-arguments in. Your link to John Carrol's article isn't another view -- he merely describes the technologies and what they will be used for, not whether they are good or bad. I do agree with this:
I'm not going to argue the relative popularity of the things he mentions. I agree that the "new Windows" should still be a call-to-arms for opponents -- start building comparable platforms now!
Something else few have observed is
that this is really billg's baby, even though he has stayed out of the PDC limelight. More than anyone else, his is the mind driving the strategy behind these longhorn technologies, their implementations, and how they fit together.
Sc0bl3 has been saying whacky stuff
of late, things that make u wonder about the other things he says.
When you look at the target apps for avalon and dotnet, it is the same vision which they started IE with 9 yrs ago, just that the implementation has gone through so many gyrations even T Br4y doesn't recognize them anymore.