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Windows 8, HTML5 Applications, and Bitching, Moaning, Whiny Developers

I have a great idea, Windows developers: stop being a big bag of whiny bullshit. Oh my god, you have yet another optional API in your toolbox, if you want to use it. Oh no! It's based on scary web thingies you haven't used before! Guess what? COM was new and scary, and so was Win32, and so was .Net and WFC and DirectX and everything else Redmond is spat at your feet to walk on our praise, at your discretion, for the last several decades. You're making a big whiny fuss because you have one more optional API to use, for a novelty new feature that has obvious merits, but is so obviously not the entire picture of Windows 8 that your overt and public cry-fest would be laughable if it was even remotely believable. I refuse to accept that the host of Windows developers is really buying into the bullshit story that everything in the history of Windows is getting swept under the rug and replaced by this, that everything is immediately an old, festering legacy API with legacy applications waiting to collect dust on Balmer's bookshelf. Not a god damn chance. They didn't rewrite Word on top of .Net, and they aren't going to rewrite it for HTML5, either. They're going to integrate a lot of things the Internet Explorer 9 platform provides into the new Operating System and they're going to do some fun looking features and make a great effort. Hell, it might even be a Decent Product! But you know what it isn't going to be? It isn't going to be made from scratch biscuits from grandma's secret recipe. No. This is going to be hamburger helper with some basil tossed in, so the cook feels fancy. Learn a little Javascript, because you've got so many things under your belt already that one more language isn't going to make much of a difference, so live a little and see what its all about. Make a fun little touch-based windows 8 application and impress your friends, and then get back to your job where you'll write version 17 of whatever corporate tax audit tool you've been maintainer for the last twenty years. When someone suggests rewriting it for Windows 8, giggle with your friends while one of the managers mentions that most the customers are still migrating off Windows XP and IE6, and move on to getting some real work done.

Comments

Dustin Lacewell said…
this post shamed me
12:23 AM
Anonymous said…
But they have a point ...
5:10 AM
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