Dan Appleman: Kibitzing and Commentary

My personal blog

In a recent blog item, Robert Scoble suggests that Joe Stegman’s video on Windows Forms answers Joel Spolsky’s article “How Microsoft Lost the API War.”

Sorry Robert – but it doesn’t.

Make no mistake, Windows Forms is great stuff. Ok, perhaps you hype it a bit too much – that great looking Outlook application that is created with 100 lines of code largely looks like Outlook because it uses an Outlook control. But nevertheless – it’s great.

And yes, Windows Forms will “play” with Avalon. Microsoft’s “Developer’s Guide to Migration and Interoperability in “LongHorn” on MSDN chapter 5 addresses this.

But “play together” in this sense is an interoperability issue. Avalon and Windows Forms represent two different programming models or API’s.

Let me stress the word “interoperability” here. Sure, Avalon can host Windows Forms and vice versa. Just as Windows Forms today can host COM ActiveX controls. But do you know many people writing COM ActiveX controls for use with .NET? No.

Why not?

  • Because people are reluctant to trust an interoperability layer, both from reasons of compatibility and reasons of performance.
  • Because once Microsoft adopts and promotes a new technology (.NET), they tend to stop development and gradually support on the old one (COM).
  • Because psychologically, developers want to play with the latest technology, and managers feel pressure to adopt the latest technology.

Having two technologies that have different API’s have all the costs Joel discusses such as the cost to learn a new technology and the cost to port applications (even when there is no feature, performance or economic benefit in doing so).

With Avalon and Longhorn we are faced with the same process. Sure Windows Forms is being invested in big time. Sure Windows Forms controls will be hosted in Avalon through an interop layer (and vice versa). It doesn’t matter. The same pressures will apply in just a few years to migrate to Avalon. There will be inevitable problems in the hosting, concern about long term support, and pressure in the media and development community to use the latest and greatest thing.

Sure, if you’re writing software with a lifespan of a few years, Windows Forms is a great way to go. But we all know that software, enterprise software especially, lives a long time. Can Microsoft categorically promise to maintain a full commitment to development, maintenance and support of Windows Forms for the next 15 years? (A more typical lifespan for enterprise software). Will they maintain that commitment during at time where their marketing department and media are pushing Avalon and Longhorn?

Do you really want to invest full bore in Windows Forms today given the uncertainty of which technology will become dominant, run on the most platforms, and have the best long term support?

For smaller applications, absolutely. But if you’re going to invest in a large project, this is a very difficult decision, and waiting for Avalon might be the better strategy. It’s too soon to know.

RSS feeds for sites referred to in this item:

Joel on Software
Scobleizer