The Political Side of Silverlight’s Death
Let us say MS supports Silverlight for the next 10 years. That is great. But that means nothing to the customers I work with. Microsoft's poor communication over the past months built the coffin and BUILD put the nails in it when it was not even listed as a product. I lost a contract about 9 months or a year ago because of Bob M.'s comments, rebooted two Silverlight and one WPF project because of BUILD.
I just restarted planning a major initiative that was to include a WPF interface, a Silverlight interface, an MVC interface, and an ASP.NET interface. It was luckily only a few weeks underway. Guess what NO ONE, including me, is willing to continue with Silverlight and WPF. They may not be dead @ MS as far as support goes, but MS killed them for us this week with their lack of support for them.
Silverlight and WPF are no longer on my available technologies list for use until I see explicit Microsoft support for XAML beyond the METRO junk, and not just the Silverlight evangelist's requests we accept implicit Microsoft support . This is not a technical or emotional decision, it is a political one. I respect Jeremy Likness, John Papa, Pete Brown, Laurent Bugnion, but I can’t make recommendations based on their passion for a technology Microsoft is not supporting.
Like I said above, not using it is not an emotional or technical decision. It is political. I could handle the politics when I had Microsoft’s support, but that is gone now. The emotions come into play with how ticked off I am Microsoft handled it this way.
I have pushed Silverlight very hard. I have been selling it over the past year without any support from Microsoft. The end result of Microsoft’s lack of communication and now with the clear message BUILD sent, by MS having no good communication for SL, has killed the battle for me. I lost, and I can’t say that I care. I am tired of the unclear communication creating so much havoc and making my life so difficult. I wasted a heck of a lot of time fighting a battle that MS clearly didn’t want me fighting in the first place.
I am sure I will personally be using XAML for windows. Actually I already am. I download the preview as soon as it was available. I am not happy with it. I think it is the result of lack of leadership and a clearly lost battle in the mobile market. I will not be fighting for XAML anymore in the environments I go into, unless they already use it. For the past few years nowhere I went used it until I arrived and sold them on it. One of my friends who has not had time to keep up with XAML, said that he is now glad he didn’t. I have had to fight for it everywhere I went. I got it started in a lot of places, but I can’t say that that was wise of me.
We just officially nixed another Silverlight Project that was using the MVVM Light toolkit. That is two SL and one WPF app this week. We are starting over with MVC. The only thing left alive is our Silverlight SharePoint web parts. I will keep them alive since I mainly support them.
I believe Silverlight within a year it will be known as the “S” word, and we won’t be using it anywhere except in conversations about how painful Microsoft made that initiative.
I just restarted planning a major initiative that was to include a WPF interface, a Silverlight interface, an MVC interface, and an ASP.NET interface. It was luckily only a few weeks underway. Guess what NO ONE, including me, is willing to continue with Silverlight and WPF. They may not be dead @ MS as far as support goes, but MS killed them for us this week with their lack of support for them.
Silverlight and WPF are no longer on my available technologies list for use until I see explicit Microsoft support for XAML beyond the METRO junk, and not just the Silverlight evangelist's requests we accept implicit Microsoft support . This is not a technical or emotional decision, it is a political one. I respect Jeremy Likness, John Papa, Pete Brown, Laurent Bugnion, but I can’t make recommendations based on their passion for a technology Microsoft is not supporting.
Like I said above, not using it is not an emotional or technical decision. It is political. I could handle the politics when I had Microsoft’s support, but that is gone now. The emotions come into play with how ticked off I am Microsoft handled it this way.
I have pushed Silverlight very hard. I have been selling it over the past year without any support from Microsoft. The end result of Microsoft’s lack of communication and now with the clear message BUILD sent, by MS having no good communication for SL, has killed the battle for me. I lost, and I can’t say that I care. I am tired of the unclear communication creating so much havoc and making my life so difficult. I wasted a heck of a lot of time fighting a battle that MS clearly didn’t want me fighting in the first place.
I am sure I will personally be using XAML for windows. Actually I already am. I download the preview as soon as it was available. I am not happy with it. I think it is the result of lack of leadership and a clearly lost battle in the mobile market. I will not be fighting for XAML anymore in the environments I go into, unless they already use it. For the past few years nowhere I went used it until I arrived and sold them on it. One of my friends who has not had time to keep up with XAML, said that he is now glad he didn’t. I have had to fight for it everywhere I went. I got it started in a lot of places, but I can’t say that that was wise of me.
We just officially nixed another Silverlight Project that was using the MVVM Light toolkit. That is two SL and one WPF app this week. We are starting over with MVC. The only thing left alive is our Silverlight SharePoint web parts. I will keep them alive since I mainly support them.
I believe Silverlight within a year it will be known as the “S” word, and we won’t be using it anywhere except in conversations about how painful Microsoft made that initiative.
posted by tadanderson at 9:36 AM
4 Comments:
Hear! Hear!
I'm a little more hopeful for Metro than you, but thanks for saying what most developers, in my experience, are thinking but don't dare go public with for fear of upsetting Microsoft 'community'.
I was beginning to think it was just me and Scott Barnes that held these views given the way the mindless Microsoft 'echo chamber' that constitutes 'public community' these days is so loud and over-powering.
@Ian-
Thanks!!!
Although I have blasted METRO, my hope technically in it is not as bad as these posts sound. They completely dropped the ball on delivery. That cost me personally a fairly large chunk of change last year, and it cost one of my clients a large chunk of change this week. The thing I am mostly ticked about is that except for what I do personally, I still won’t be using XAML in a major way, because of the way this year went down. Not because I find it technically lacking, but because they won’t allow it.
I have not said once don’t use it, I have been saying, in the client circles I have I won’t be allowed to. I have been fighting a losing battle, and the biggest pill to swallow is that my biggest hurdle has been Microsoft’s messages!!! I got a dozen and a half emails saying told you we should not have used Silverlight/WPF as soon as the Session schedule was published. It is hard to stick with a company that continuously not only moves my cheese, but also eats it.
I have seen three camps so far. Those who work for MS, those who make the toolkits (Telerik, etc.), and the gurus writing Silverlight and WPF books saying everything is great, this is perfect, seamless integration… who hoo.
Those who don’t do anything with it anyway. They never left the safety of ASP.NET. They are the pathetic ones because they are saying calm down, this is great, what is the problem. While the real case is they don’t care because they will never use it anyway. They just feel the need to be a positive force in the zombie community you mention.
And then there are the suckers like me. The ones that use it in the real world, with real customers, that as of today, are really scared they made a big mistake. We are in the in between world because we are trying to comfort all the customers who Microsoft is confusing the heck out of and pissed about it, but we still want to use it.
I sadly have joined this camp and can no longer in good faith support SL as a codebase. The reasons (as you've said political) are in my view a risk / reward dynamic.
This really feels like "New Coke" and "Netflix". The only avenue I can now support for LOB is roll your own LINUX. This really is a shame for someone like myself who has been a Microsoft supporter / evangalist for 20+ years.
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