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Microsoft Vista: Microsoft loses confidence in .NET

grimes.demon.co.uk — Microsoft appears to have concentrated their development effort in Vista on native code development. In contrast to PDC03LH, Vista has no services implemented in .NET and Windows Explorer does not host the runtime, which means that the Vista desktop shell is not based on the .NET runtime.

Who dugg this? Made popular Mar 15, 2006

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  • RobLoach, on 10/12/2007, -34/+74.NET is an amazing framework...
  • joshduck, on 10/12/2007, -5/+42Yes. .NET is good for application development. Would you prefer MS going back to pushing Visual Basic?

    .NET is not good for OS development, which makes this article kind of redundant. I do see his point about Vista being stripped back from MS's original vision though.
  • drawkbox, on 10/12/2007, -3/+36This is misleading. Does Sun make Solaris in Java? no its meant to be an enterprise services layer that is not meant for making Operating Systems or operating system components beyond minimal services. Its like this, if you are making a game, you could use .NET or Java, but if you went with native C++ your game would be faster, however it woudl not be as safe for the performance benefit. Using a managed layer like Java or .NET is really only for services, web applications and maybe a simple corporate desktop app, for quite some time C and C++ will be the tool of coice because they are simply a layer beneath Java and .NET (which are both written in C++). Java and .NET were meant to make it easier to make web applications not necessarily desktop applications. How many Unix flavors use Swing or AWT for their desktop clietns.... very minimal. I think that the author may be confusing the use of certain languages.
  • zootm, on 10/12/2007, -11/+36"Nobody ever figured out WTF .Net was supposed to be, including Microsoft. In addition to having a stupid name, it assumes that ISPs are running Microsoft servers."

    You just lost your right to criticise .NET, I'm afraid. That's clearly incorrect.
  • Cykaos, on 10/12/2007, -13/+36C# has become a very popular language and many windows developers program .Net applications
  • InternetUser, on 10/12/2007, -10/+31Haven't read the entire article but I don't believe this for a second. Especially considering Microsoft has recently been pushing for online services and applications (that'll be .NET, folks). I'd believe that they were dropping support for WinForms maybe, but not Web.

    .NET is an incredible framework, and a lot of effort and money has gone into it. Don't bother commenting if you haven't used it for a serious project.

    @Xiol: Why isn't it?
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -13/+34I say don't put-down .NET if you don't know the ins and outs of it
  • Zaki, on 10/12/2007, -6/+25Had Microsoft implement Vista with a fully managed kernel, everyone would be crying that it's too slow and it does not allow certain things.

    Microsoft not using .NET for its operating system does not mean they have lost confidence in that platform. It simply means that at this time, managed kernels 1) are not efficient enough and 2) would break software. That also does not mean, that .NET is not a very good framework for what it has been designed for - ie to develop business applications with it.

    I wonder however if Singularity will ever take off, as it seems a great research project so far.
  • drawkbox, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20myspace is going .NET to increase performance, many large sites use it including ones I have worked on and it reduced servers needed from the ATG Java Oracle setup (not to mention oracle licensing), even writely that Google just bought is .NET. For website performance it is currently the best (of course when you have .NET developers with skills that know how to use caching, and architected the right way). Really though all languages have their purpose and making OS's is not Java or .NET's place. If you are a company banking on desktop apps in Java Swing AWT or Windows Forms from >NET rather than C++ for fat clients, well you are going to be out of business. 99% of desktop apps and OS components (including .NET, Java and the PHP frameworks) are C or C++ and it will be that way for a LONG time.
  • jmacdonagh, on 10/12/2007, -14/+32"Nobody ever figured out WTF .Net was supposed to be, including Microsoft. In addition to having a stupid name, it assumes that ISPs are running Microsoft servers. HA! Fat chance. Deploy your systems on non-proprietary underpinnings, and then you aren't screwed when the half-baked Microsoft buzzword du jour fades into oblivion."

    Actually anyone with half a brain figured out what .NET was for and have been using it for some time now. Try a monster search.
  • j_bellone, on 10/12/2007, -3/+20.NET is great for developing applications, but I never expected it to be used for Kernel development. That's silly. Why would you want your kernel requried to run the .NET runtime? That's just asking for trouble. Why are we even digging this story? I thought this was some form of logical basic knowledge. That's like saying do you want the Solaris kernel running through the Java VM. Absolutely not!
  • swax, on 10/12/2007, -3/+20Misleading article, c# / .Net has been under heavy development during the entire Vista development process. VS 2005 / C# 2.0 and improvements to the framework came out just last year. Were you expecting them to delay Vista even longer to re-write c apps that already work, in c# just because they can?

    Here's .Net technologies MS has been working on, and its a far cry from 'losing confidence.' If you think MS is ever going back to C /MFC think again, those days are over. Thank god.

    WPF (avalon) - write full featured 3D GUI applications with HTML like script.
    Monad - a full featured command shell that fully utilizes .Net objects
    WinFX - managed replacement for Win32 API
    Interactive Designer - create rich user interfaces with vector graphics, 3d models, sound, anything, without writing any code
  • mbiesz, on 10/12/2007, -13/+28Is the anti-Microsoft blend already brewing this early in the morning? I actually recognize and agree with the point that the article makes, but that doesn't stop .NET from still being a great framework -- just one that Microsoft failed to fully deploy and utilize for their own OS.
  • jmacdonagh, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16"I wish C# and a Microsoft supported .Net runtime worked on Linux and mac."

    *Cough* Mono
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -12/+25ive been coding in .net since some time...
    its a great framework.
  • jimshady, on 10/12/2007, -5/+16I've been programming in .NET for a couple of years now. I'm glad they didn't use it for Vista. It's an amazing framework but makes no sense to use it for writing an OS!

    One must be brain-dead along with a few dozen brain-dead diggers to wonder why MS is not using .NET for Vista. Can you people atleast _try_ it before going ballistic about anything MS? Friggin kids.
  • zootm, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11I think a lot of people in this little thread seem to be misunderstanding what MS were promising when they said they'd use .NET for the "OS". The kernel would never be rewritten in safe code (although if you're interested in that possibility, look up the MS Research project "Singularity", which is one of the most interesting things I've seen recently), but the main apps, like Windows Explorer, for example, could be, and they would probably benefit from it.

    What this article seems to be saying is that that has not been done, which is a bit of a pity.
  • joshduck, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9What they are doing make sense to me. They used .NET for prototyping and then moved to C or C for final releases. .NET makes sense for apps that sit on top of the OS, like Media Player, Notepad an so on, which is what this article says it is being used for.
  • Xiol, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9While Linux is missing a VS.NET application (KDevelop?) we still have Mono.
  • eylander, on 10/12/2007, -21/+28too slow for what? maybe you're just too dumb to write efficient code. or perhaps you don't know what options to pass to the JVM to get decent performance. Did you know generational garbage collection is usually faster than manual memory management? Did you know that bounds checking is f'ng fast when compared to the cache miss you'll make when. How about the built in security of the language? how many non-virus java programs are critical security threats when running on a system?
    Fortran, C/C++ and ASM may be blazing fast, but they come with drawbacks. Modern languages such as C#, Java, Ruby, Python, Haskell et al. are great for programmer productivity (which, most cases, costs much more than processing time). Sometimes taking 50ms to perform quicksort instead of 10ms is acceptable when it only took you 2 mins to implement and debug it. Most real world applications are not starved for CPU cycles, just the ones with the highest profiles are.
  • adamkmccarthy, on 10/12/2007, -6/+13.net has its good parts, im glad to see though that they are staying away from running large parts of vista off it - its scary, particularly if you're a developer writing say, java, then compiling it in an environment running on another virtual machine? crazy...i like .net but would prefer if it wasnt running my os...
  • Xiol, on 10/12/2007, -9/+16My God man. Who the hell brought Apple into this discussion? You're always flaming Apple whether they have anything to do with the story you're commenting on or not. You are the biggest MS fanboy on this site, bar none.

    Get over your zealotry. Different OSs and frameworks have different uses. Let people use what the right tool for the job is rather than going around an lambasting everyone who uses something different. I remember your comments in the Origami stories. The the Origami is a crappy product with no market - even the TWIT guys all agreed about that, but you kept defending it with unbridled passion - anyone would've thought you designed the thing.

    -digg for you. -diggs for me probably as well.
  • kungfustickman, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10Remember what Paint.net is written in. That's right dot net. Dot net is not a bad framwork.
  • jron, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11This write up is total BS. MS has the time, money, staff, and ability to write unmanged code. .NET if for RAD and is a great framework.
  • Xiol, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Perhaps a silly question to those in the know, but why can't we write an OS in .NET or some other language like it? I'm not saying this is a good idea, I'm just curious if it's even *possible* to write a kernel in .NET? I mean, wouldn't you need to have some platform to execute the byte code on in the first place?
  • jron, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7.NET apps will run just fine in vista and you won't need to download the framework either as it is packaged in vista, just like 2003.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+12.NET has been both a dinosaur and a goldmine for Microsoft. I agree that just because support isn't native doesn't mean they aren't going to support it. My problem with .NET in general is that if you go down that path, you're stuck on that path and it is VERY expensive to get off of it. Microsoft has made sure of that. Besides, the only really good long-term platform for web services and systems integration HAS to be more cross platform than .NET. WHat does this do to the open-source folks at the Ximian spin-off who started the Open Source .NET compatibility project?

    http://www.gfx.com
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+12".NET is an amazing framework..."

    No, it's really not. It's hugely bloated, but due to backwards-compatibility, they now have to keep all the APIs. It's also embarrassingly slow, especially compared to super object-oriented frameworks like Cocoa that use native code. Adding an arbitrary and pointless intermediate binary layer in Windows is ridiculous and only serves to slow Windows down even further than it already is.

    .NET was just Microsoft's attempt to grab Java developers and tie them to the Windows platform. C# is a goofy Java ripoff. Absolutely everything Microsoft does--from PlaysForSure media players to XBox game consoles--is about tying people to the Windows platform in some way, shape, or form.
  • zootm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Yes and no. Novell think so; a lot of other people aren't sure.

    I would personally trust the core .NET libraries on Mono. They seem fairly sturdy. Problem with .NET is that because of the fact it was originally restricted to one platform, and because it has very good support for linking to unsafe external code, a lot of developers did just that. The result being that quite a few existing applications for .NET aren't written in "safe code" (compare with "100% Pure Java" in the Java world), and won't port cleanly.

    The biggest example of this, and one of the biggest headaches for the Mono developers, is the Windows.Forms namespace. Now, although this is not part of "standard" .NET (it's just included by MS), it's the only GUI library which ships with the official .NET. Although GTK# can be used, people tend not to unless they're specifically coding something to be cross-platform. Windows.Forms allows access to the HWND Win32 native code hooks for the GUI elements it is creating, and this is where the trouble comes in, since ex-C++ coders like to get around what they see as "limitations" (read: consistency) in Windows.Forms by hooking into native code. This means that in order to maximise compatibility, Mono's WinForms implementation is trying to emulate (or was, it's been a while since I looked) some of these native calls so that existing applications work smoothly. This is not ideal.

    My workmates and I disagree on the overall stability of Mono. It's still not got much of a track record - it needs to prove itself. But I think that it will bear out this process if people keep pushing forward with it. .NET is a good platform, and Mono appears to be a good free implementation of that platform. The problem is that MS are developing it faster than Mono can keep up, meaning that it's likely to be trailing several years behind the MS implementation for some time.

    Hope this is helpful.
  • jboi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6The article is very good tbh. Just showing that vista isn't using any .NET services (Why on earth would it)

    the title of this post is just purely biased
  • Takteek, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Misleading article title... Just because Microsoft didn't program the OS in .NET doesn't mean anything.

    Also, .NET is a very good framework.
  • ArmchairAthlete, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5".NET is better than Visual Studio"

    lol.

  • Blitzenn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Straight from an unknown blogger site. It must be true then!
  • odysseus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4People would take your post more seriously if you didn't use marketing-speak in the first 2 sentences.
  • Gotebe, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6What a load of crap! Sorry for this Grimes character, I think he's usually well balanced and knows its stuff. I wonder why would he go all high and mighty on this.

    It has nothing to do with MS's confidence (or lack thereof) in .NET. The problem is that we are talking about the OS. Written in C/C++. Big parts. Why would it (or its parts) be rewritten on top on .NET? To spend more time/$, to what gain!? Using .NET does make sense for new stuff that does not interface much with existing stuff.

    Also, the interface of the OS, so far, has been a C API (Win/U/Linux at least). It will stay like this, because C is the lowest common denominator (even if APIs are COM-based, it's still pure C). So what are they supposed to do: write the stuff in C#, expose it as both C AND C#, then write C# on top of that!? Yeah, right!
  • jmacdonagh, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Too bad .NET isn't a UI framework! It has been used to build a couple UI libraries though.
  • bluehouse, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6.NET is not appropriate for an operating system.
  • lordbelial, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5First an OS was never meant to be written on .NET platform, just like as OS was never meant to never be entirely written in Java.
    Secondly, why would MS go to the trouble of re-writing all of its applications using .NET? Just to "show off" .NET? .NET is already in widespread use and slowly catching up to Java. Even if they did, would you notice the difference in Notepad, Media Player, or IE between C++/C# versions? I doubt it.
  • jedi0utkast, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7This is actually a good call from MS, .Net is a amazing tool, but will not offer the performance that native code provides. It is sad that the ignorant MS Haters are making stupid comments about it, without even having an idea of what .NET is. Do your homework before making comments. That way you look less stupid than how you look now.



  • jackol, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4They'll work just fine.
  • samuli, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7Java isn't slow because of the speed it crunches numbers, but because the classes programmer interfaces with are so abstracted away from the iron running under it.
  • terminalpariah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I really love working in .Net, and I can't wait for the Mono developers to finish their System.Windows.Forms implementation so the masses can start to appreciate what .Net has to offer us.
    But I have to say, MS hasn't exactly embraced it. They're funding Paint.NET, but other than that they haven't really been using it too much (unless they're just not very vocal about it). And Managed DirectX is a joy to work in, but I'm not aware of any commercial games that use it. Seems to me that .Net is the perfect way to get Xbox360 -> PC compatability going.
  • apollo13, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4This article looks nuts....net or j2ee are not supposed to be used to develop an operating system which can rock and roll. These are application platforms and meant for that only. and morever Vista is not a Windows .NET 2006 ..LOL, it's just a next gen OS from Microsoft.
  • simpleid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I used to be the kind of person who would buddy up with people on one side of the argument for which is the better programming language. After a few years of intensively teaching myself everything related to computer science I realized that maybe that's been a pretty ignorant mindset. All languages are made either for a greater purpose overall or for fun because someone thought it would be neat to make one. A language either best suits your needs or it doesn't, you have to decide the level of performance and security you want and use what's going to work best for your targeted demographic.

    People seem to argue one language over the other as if it's hard to learn both languages and instead just use what's convenient, arguments should never arise, they are completely useless. Arguments arise naturally when people have a conflict in logic/interest, yet they don't realize how little it matters if one person prefers something over another thing. Anyone that just spends the time to truly understand computer architecture and programming languages will understand it's merely a difference of syntax, the logic is always the same. Always. So what's the point in debating it? There isn't one, it can't be logically justified.

    I'm a .net developer professionally, .Net is fine, I enjoy it deeply, c# is a great language and I can build some useful apps very quick. In my spare time I write applications in java, php, ruby, c/c++, just to do it. Why not? It's not like you HAVE to only like ONE language, that is ignorance, that is being simple minded. Too many people try to look cool or smart by degrading the image of something they dislike, yet we who realize how things really work know they are uselessly wasting time, so don't let it bother any of you. Who cares what they think, they won't change the way things work because they'd have to convince the people that know the truth and understand the technology, which will never happen, which is why it doesn't happen.
  • Veretax, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This is a red herring. MS can still use .net on top of the Operating System, there is nothing preventing that, after all it has to be possible in order to support "legacy .net" applications. However this level of seperation may help improve the security on Windows against hacks and viruses and I for one think thats a ++
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Totally agree. No digg, this article and most of these comments are just posting to get their kicks in at Microsoft. And I just have to say I'm a hardcore Apple geek, but I love .net and praise MSFT for such an incredible product. I hope Vista will be the same.
  • dahat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3To Xiol:

    A lil while back Channel 9 had an interview with a group at Microsoft that is working on a research operating system known as Singularity that is not only written in C#, but is almost entirely managed code.

    A managed kernel is possible... however not as easy as simply recompiling it with a different compiler flag as it might seem. Take a watch of the interview here: http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=68302
  • modena330, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This is not new. It has been common knowledge for at least a year. I think I first heard it from a previous story on DIGG.
  • zootm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2OS applications. This is a weird distinction, but it's why Stallman insists that people use the term "GNU/Linux". bash etc. are all applications which run on the kernel, but they form a part of the OS as a whole. Windows Explorer is a part of the core operating system, for example, and there's no real reason it cannot be written in .NET.
  • riskable, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2No kidding. I started reading the comments and immediately noticed that a number of logical and coherent replies were given many thumbs-down. Then I read on to see pro-Microsoft propaganda modded up to the extreme--when it is clearly fanboy/marketing BS like, ".NET is an AMAZING FRAMEWORK because it brings SYNERGY to the desktop and ENABLES developers (developers developers!) to create FULLY FEATURED applications and ONLINE SERVICES."

    While they're at it, they should write up an action item to schedule a meeting to celebrate their team players.

    -Riskable
    http://www.riskable.com
    "I have a license to kill -9"
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