David Wilkinson said:
dududuil wrote:
Maybe all programming on Windows is moving toward the .NET platform. Or
maybe it isn't. Personally, I see the whole thing as a bit of a mess
right now. Obsolete managed C++ syntax. Soon to be obsolete WinForms?
It sure seems like a total mess reading the newsgroups. How can the syntax
be obsolete from version to version? It all begins to make sense if you
imagine that it's a devilish scheme cooked up to have non-Microsoft
companies running around in circles, never gaining any traction - while
giving people who making a living training on this stuff something to do.
Meanwhile, MS doesn't get high on its own supply.
But anyway, just compiling your app to VC8 does not move you in this
direction at all. It just gives you a better compiler, and (in many
peoples' opinion) a worse IDE. No .NET involved. So you should perhaps
consider why you are doing it.
I for one think the IDE is very bad compared to VS6, but I imagine this
depends on how hard core an editor you are. I've written 4 chess programs
so far (gotta admire the writers of Shredder, Fritz, etc. wow!) and I don't
really see any reason to do any .NET stuff for chess at all. No way it can
improve performance. Maybe you can get a tiny, slight, imperceptible
improvement in performance due to a better optimizer, but in general, any
improvements will come from better pruning algorithms, etc.
One reason to do it is so you can start to incorporate .NET features in
your app. This is what MS wants you to do (even though they do not do it
themselves).
Of course they haven't! Then they'd be treading water like all the other
poor souls who jumped on board instead of moving forward. This is really
going to hurt a lot of companies, I believe. Customers will demand ".NET"
code, believing all the marketing hype, and force mom and pop to jump
through hoops to make their software saleable. Meanwhile MS won't have to
jump through the hoops because they're MS. The same thing happened to a lot
of players with MSI and installer technology and getting a Windows logo. MS
didn't have to certify its apps to be logo compliant, because they're
MS...but we sure did, and it cost (and costs) a lot of resources.
-Michael Viking