So far, Microsoft has been very tight-lipped about Windows 7, carefully trying to prevent another Longhorn PR disaster where the company promised the heavens and more for Longhorn, but in the end ditched Longhorn to make way for Vista. Chris Flores (Windows Client Communications Team) as well as Steven Sinofsky, has broken the silence a little bit to talk about Windows 7. In addition, it is believed Windows 7 will make its first official debut at the D6 All Things Digital conference today, during a keynote held by Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates.
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Member since:2005-11-10
Member since:2006-08-26
It depends on what you do. For a while I was working on simulators and there were things that made Windows (Win32) something more of a challenge than Unix. However, I would say plugging away in .NET is no more of a headache than plugging away in Java (they're much more similar than dissimilar). What does make it suck is the registry. Especially when you have to go in there and edit the registry, or you're coding against the registry. It's always in the back of your mind that this is the one time where your 'harmless' registry edit goes foul and you have no current image of your hard disk.
Member since:2007-08-22
Well.. the truth is in the eye of the beholder.
So, no, developing for Win is not really painful, in my experience.
Well...while programming for Unix/Linux is relatively painless, so can programming for Windows assuming you use the right API set.
For example, programming for Win32 is quite nice and easy compared to programming for MFC. Sure MFC makes some things (dialogs) quick and easy to do, but it also throws a ton of gunk in too. CString is just horrendous compared to std::string - especially when trying to track down information on CString and see _which_ CString implementation the software is actually using (since CString itself is really just a template of multiple templates).
Sure, Win32 may require a little more hard-lifting than MFC; but overall it really is easy to use and painless.
Now, COM, ATL, etc...I won't even go there.
Member since:2008-03-18
Member since:2005-07-06
As it is, this post is being written from GNU/Linux. I jumped ship a while ago. As are more and more developers.
You had no need to mention this we figured that out before the end of your opening sentence.
To be honest I had much more to add but decided in the interest of decency to censor myself.
Member since:
2008-03-18
Having seen, frankly, the mess that was and is, Vista, Microsoft should realise they need to do something drastic. Sure, a new kernel will kill the backwards compatibility market, but if XP were to live on longer that wouldn't matter.
The truth stands that developing for Windows is a pain, including .net. The underlying APIs are nasty, nothing is simple, and doing anything complex is frustrating. With Windows 7 Microsoft could have brought the aging Windows out of the dark ages and provided themselves with a decent OS for years to come.
As it is, this post is being written from GNU/Linux. I jumped ship a while ago. As are more and more developers.
Edited 2008-05-27 15:57 UTC