Windows 8 / Metro ?

[ovidiucucu]

[beyond the topic]

Imagine the following dialog:

Programmer: Computer, please write a program according to REQ64123.
Tablet: What is REQ64123?
Programmer: Take it from The Cloud, stupid bunch of bytes!

After a while:
Programmer: Helloooooou!... Haven't you compiled yet?
Tablet: Sorry, Sir, it gives me a bunch of errors!.. My fault, I need a break. Please touch the red icon on my screen! Gently... pleeeeease!...

Well, for working/programming prefer a classic desktop computer, having a classic display (non-touchscreen) which is showing classic overlapped windows, and having a classic keyboard which does a classic "click!" when you hit a key. And of course, a classic mouse.
Is this just old fashion? I think it's not, at least for the moment.

[nuzzle]

I find this blog very enlightning,

http://dougseven.com/2011/09/15/a-ba...g-discussions/

It seems WinRT doesn't mean Windows Retro Technology as I initially thought. Desktop applications will prevail for the forseeable future. Only when Visual C++ itself becomes a Metro application is there a reason to reconsider. Metro simply is a way of positioning Windows as a viable alternative for gadget computing like tablets.

[ovidiucucu]

I find this blog very enlightning,

http://dougseven.com/2011/09/15/a-ba...g-discussions/

At least Win32 is in the right place, even in the original "boxologic" diagram.



So again: Don't panic, Windows API is still there!..

[TheGreatCthulhu]

I find this blog very enlightning,

http://dougseven.com/2011/09/15/a-ba...g-discussions/

It seems WinRT doesn't mean Windows Retro Technology as I initially thought.

Ta da!

Anyway, some of that stuff was mentioned in that hour long, somewhat overenthusiastic presentation video I linked to. Speaking of which, they mentioned that when you switch Metro-style apps, the inactive ones go into a state of hibernation of some sort (whatever they mean by that)... Last night, after having to wait for a counter to download something, and a browser/web-page glitch that caused it not to update while I'm not looking at the d4mn thing (killing time on some other tab instead), I'm not sure I like the approach... Unless the picture more complicated than that.

Desktop applications will prevail for the forseeable future. Only when Visual C++ itself becomes a Metro application is there a reason to reconsider. Metro simply is a way of positioning Windows as a viable alternative for gadget computing like tablets.

I agree. I was simply saying that now we have a new exploration space, so new and interesting things may appear in that foreseeable future.

P.S. Same blog, new post - where we are now with Metro: There is a need for only five Metro style apps in the world.

[ovidiucucu]

For somebody who realy wants to see what's inside Windows 8 / Metro / WinRT, I would like to recommend to download, install (on a virtual machine) and test Windows 8 Developer Preview.

// the rest related in the net is for the moment noise, impression, religion, talk, talk and talk...

[TheGreatCthulhu]

I thought you guys might wanna give these a look:
Under the Covers of WinRT Using C++
Design Details of the Windows Runtime [not too in-depth, and not C++ - oriented, but still...]

EDIT:
Aaaand check this short video out - showcases Windows 8 Metro-style UI; you can see that although there are no classic windows, there are various "boxes" - that pop up, or are docked; you can also see how you can look at two apps simultaneously (yeah, they are full screen but not full - full screen...), and how will the old style apps work and look like, and how you can simultaneously work with a classic windowed app, and a Metro-style app.

[Alex F]

For somebody who realy wants to see what's inside Windows 8 / Metro / WinRT, I would like to recommend to download, install (on a virtual machine) and test Windows 8 Developer Preview.

ovidiucucu, did you try this? I thought about this, but I see two problems: Win8 Virtual machine support and missing multitouch screen or emulation. What virtual computer did you use for Win8 image? Is there something interesting to try without multitouch screen?

[ovidiucucu]

I used Oracle VM VirtualBox on Windows 7 64-bit host.
Because I have a classic desktop with a classic display, I'm still using a classic mouse instead touching the screen with the fingers.

Of course, may be interesting to see yourself what Windows 8 / Metro / WinRT really is, much more interesting than looking at "boxologic" schemas and/or reading whatever weblogs.

[ Later edit ]
Windows 8 Developer Preview with developer tools English, 64-bit (x64) includes Visual Studio 11 Express, which allow you to play and enjoy with WinRT.
And why not?.. become a Metro-pioneer.

[Alex F]

I don't have multi-touch screen (though I think to buy it). There is multi-touch screen emulation, available for Windows 7, but it doesn't work, of course, inside of virtual computer. So, I am curious, did you find something interesting to learn in Win8/Metro/WinRT, having only classic mouse-keyboard support? Doesn't it look like trying Windows having only command line interface?

[ovidiucucu]

[...]
So, I am curious, did you find something interesting to learn in Win8/Metro/WinRT, having only classic mouse-keyboard support? Doesn't it look like trying Windows having only command line interface?

Somehow but not exactly, even Metro still has a GUI...

Anyway, I hope the release will have at least three main editions, as follows:

1. Windows 8 Immersive (Metro only) - for marketeers, managers and secretaries.
2. Windows 8 Business (Desktop only) - for serious hardworking applications.
3. Windows 8 Ultimate (both Metro and Desktop) - for developers and hobbies like us.

[ Later Edit ]
Of course, Visual Studio 11 isn't Metro-style application.

[12oclocker]

To me it looks like Microsoft is making a major strategy shift.

http://www.i-programmer.info/news/12...pers-take.html

Windows 8 is split into two. There's the Desktop with all the "old" familiar technologies such as Win32 and .NET. And then there's the Metro which is based on a brand new native API called WinRT, an object oriented C++ interface. The Desktop isn't going to be developed any further, only maintained. All new developments will go into Metro.

To me this is truely amazing. That Win32 would need to go at some point is maybe natural but .NET, that's a big surprise. Just a few years ago .NET and managed code was the future and would replace native developments eventually. Microsoft even put C++ on hold. But now native C++ is back big time, at least that's what it looks like to me.

What do you make of all this?

I could probably make a bloat sandwich from it. lol, Microsoft should call themselves, GigaSoft, since every attempt I have seen thus far at "re-inventing" how things are done just bloats the operating system and slows it down.
I'm sure they won't disappoint on this either....
On a side note, All this frameworks stuff I have seen so far is bloated nonsense to me. COM is nonsense as well. C++ is a well refined development language, and it has stood the test of time, why do they have kept trying to replace it with garbage? to make programming simpler for beginners to learn?

let me spin off a little story, one of countless many, of MS bloat-ness at work,... my wife had a ton of duplicate pictures on her hard drive from using Microsoft picture import feature, and she never remembered to delete the pictures from her camera, so I threw my little dupfinder app on her PC to get rid of the dups, but none were found, I found this odd, upon research, I discovered Microsoft is inserting a XML file into EVERY PICTURE she copied of the camera, I calculated there was about half a gig of garbage XML data inside of all her pictures because of this! Data not even needed, such as the date she copied off the camera, website links to the revision of XML they are using, ect. So I had to write a program to correctly detect all the duplicates, ignoring this BS data,... still on the todo list is to rip all the bloated junk data they inserted into the pictures, back out of the pictures. No wonder their import feature is MUCH slower than just copying directly from the SD card, they have to bloat up all your pictures files with junk XML stuff first, thanks MS ;-)

[Eri523]

I could probably make a bloat sandwich from it. lol, Microsoft should call themselves, GigaSoft, since every attempt I have seen thus far at "re-inventing" how things are done just bloats the operating system and slows it down.
I'm sure they won't disappoint on this either....
On a side note, All this frameworks stuff I have seen so far is bloated nonsense to me. COM is nonsense as well. C++ is a well refined development language, and it has stood the test of time, why do they have kept trying to replace it with garbage? to make programming simpler for beginners to learn?

Do you want a TRS-80? I still have one, lying down in some cellar. And I can guarantee that it's entirely unbloated. What could you bloat within the 16 kB of RAM in the most popular variety or the 12kB of ROM? (Note that nowadays application icon files are at least about the total RAM size of the TRS-80. Would you call that bloat?) Or do you want a C64? The fact that the TRS-80's Level 2 BASIC originally is from Microsoft is relatively well-known, yet the fact that they made the C64 BASIC as well is not. Perhaps they weren't too proud of that?

The point is: Don't forget where the name Microsoft comes from. It originates more than three decades ago and the notion of "bloat" these days was different from what it is now. While 30+ years ago what nowadays is a single app's icon image would have instantly exhausted the total RAM capacity of a contemporary machine, it's way in the "don't care" range now. Even my (outdated) mobile phone has more memory by magnitudes than the "computers" from three decades ago.

Get the point? It's all a matter of time frame.

let me spin off a little story, one of countless many, of MS bloat-ness at work,... my wife had a ton of duplicate pictures on her hard drive from using Microsoft picture import feature, and she never remembered to delete the pictures from her camera, so I threw my little dupfinder app on her PC to get rid of the dups, but none were found, I found this odd, upon research, I discovered Microsoft is inserting a XML file into EVERY PICTURE she copied of the camera, I calculated there was about half a gig of garbage XML data inside of all her pictures because of this! Data not even needed, such as the date she copied off the camera, website links to the revision of XML they are using, ect. So I had to write a program to correctly detect all the duplicates, ignoring this BS data,... still on the todo list is to rip all the bloated junk data they inserted into the pictures, back out of the pictures. No wonder their import feature is MUCH slower than just copying directly from the SD card, they have to bloat up all your pictures files with junk XML stuff first, thanks MS ;-)

To sum up all the lines above: Why worry? The "half a gig" of wasted space you complain about would be no more than 0.2% of the capacity of my own outdated hard drive. So what!?

Both storage and processing requirements need to be considered in their respective time frames. Konrad Zuse's brain would certainly have instantly exploded when he realized that my (outdated!) Motorola V3 mobile has, by magnitudes, more memory and processing power than the mainframs of the 60's and 70's!

And as to the dupfinding: I'm always slightly annoyed by the fact that Unison always copies my Excel files to the backup if only I opened instead of modifying them. But then again, who cares!? That's less than 1% of my overall backup volume. You may be really concerned about that if you were the author of Unison (or Excel), but most probably you are not. And the culprit of that Excel File mess-up certainly is MS (yes, now they actually are), yet I don't really care since it doesn't really waste a significat amount of my time or storage capacity.

[Alex F]

The stories about bloated MS programs are always funny and always correct. The problem is that this is not related to the topic discussed here

[superbonzo]

On a side note, All this frameworks stuff I have seen so far is bloated nonsense to me. COM is nonsense as well. C++ is a well refined development language, and it has stood the test of time, why do they have kept trying to replace it with garbage? to make programming simpler for beginners to learn?

BTW, COM is neither a framework nor a language extension; it serves a specific purpose ( defining a powerful ABI for components ) that stays on top of the C++ ( or even C ) language with a fair design; where's the bloat in COM ? it seems you don't understand what COM is and what's used for ... saying that we don't need COM because "C++ is a well refined development language" is like saying that we don't need bananas because we have pandas ... now, this is nonsense

[TheGreatCthulhu]

to make programming simpler for beginners to learn?

Beginners are significantly more likely to mess up with higher level technologies, so, I don't think they are made for them...