New to WFP

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Gordon Padwick

As a longtime programmer with lots of experience with VBA in Access, I
thought it was time to come up to date by becoming competent with WPF. So, I
purchased Visual Studio 2008 and several books thar seemed to deal with C#
and WPF.

I'm running into lots of problems.

The books seem to preach to the converted. The books use lots of terms
without explaining what those terms mean. For example, one book in its first
sentenece says "WFP is a completely new framework..." My question is: what
is a framework?. I haven't come up with that word in my previous experience.
I need to know what the word means in order to understand what the author is
talking about'

The same book and other books use many terms without defiining what those
terms mean.

Please, authors and publishers, provide definitions of the terms used in
your text. Either provide a definition where you first use the term and
refer to that definition in the book's index, or provide a glossary that
defines all the terms used in the text.

Gordon Padwick
 
Gordon Padwick said:
As a longtime programmer with lots of experience with VBA in Access, I
thought it was time to come up to date by becoming competent with WPF. So,
I purchased Visual Studio 2008 and several books thar seemed to deal with
C# and WPF.

I'm running into lots of problems.
Click to expand...

You're starting at the wrong end of the spectrum with C# and the .NET
Framework which is at the top, when you should be starting at ground zero.
You need to go get some books on the basics first and work your way up the
spectum, which is not hard to do. You can't be an advanced programmer in
..NET if you have jumped right over or have ignored the basics. Do you even
know what the CLI or CLR are about? Those are things you should be starting
on first and not WPF.

And below is part of ground zero.

What is Object-oriented-programming?

(OOP) is a programming paradigm that uses "objects" and their interactions
to design applications and computer programs.

The key concepts of OOP are the following:

Class

Object

Instance

Method

Message passing

Inheritance

Abstraction

Encapsulation

Polymorphism

Decoupling



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming

No matter what development platform Java, .Net or others OPP is OPP.

http://math.hws.edu/eck/cs124/downloads/OOP2_from_Univ_KwaZulu-Natal.pdf

http://www.blackwasp.co.uk/ObjectOrientedConcepts.aspx



What are design patterns?

Design patterns are recurring solutions to software design problems you find
again and again in real-world application development. Patterns are about
design and interaction of objects, as well as providing a communication
platform concerning elegant, reusable solutions to commonly encountered
programming challenges.

http://www.developer.com/design/article.php/1502691

http://www.dofactory.com/Patterns/Patterns.aspx

http://computerprogramming.suite101.com/article.cfm/patterns_and_antipatterns

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms954638.aspx

http://www.designpatternsfor.net/Presentations.aspx?tid=3&cid=4



What is Domain Driven Design?

(DDD) is an approach to the design of software, based on the two premises
[1] that complex domain designs should be based on a model, and that, for
most software projects, the primary focus should be on the domain and domain
logic (as opposed to being the particular technology used to implement the
system).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-driven_design



What is Test Driven Design?

(TDD) is a software development technique that uses short development
iterations based on pre-written test cases that define desired improvements
or new functions. Each iteration produces code necessary to pass that
iteration's tests. Finally, the programmer or team refactors the code to
accommodate changes. A key TDD concept is that preparing tests before coding
facilitates rapid feedback changes. Note that test-driven development is a
software design method, not merely a method of testing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development

http://weblogs.asp.net/rhurlbut/archive/2007/07/16/another-tdd-and-ddd-success-story.aspx



I really can't find a link on this information. So a link to a book might be
helpful.

http://whitepapers.zdnet.com/abstract.aspx?docid=260168



What is a software framework?

A software framework, in computer programming, is an abstraction in which
common code providing generic functionality can be selectively overridden or
specialized by user code providing specific functionality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_framework


__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4098 (20090522) __________

The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.

http://www.eset.com
 
Gordon Padwick said:
As a longtime programmer with lots of experience with VBA in Access, I
thought it was time to come up to date by becoming competent with WPF. So,
I purchased Visual Studio 2008 and several books thar seemed to deal with
C# and WPF.

I'm running into lots of problems.
Click to expand...

You're starting at the wrong end of the spectrum with C# and the .NET
Framework which is at the top, when you should be starting at ground zero.
You need to go get some books on the basics first and work your way up the
spectum, which is not hard to do. You can't be an advanced programmer in
..NET if you have jumped right over or have ignored the basics. Do you even
know what the CLI or CLR are about? Those are things you should be starting
on first and not WPF.

And below is part of ground zero.

What is Object-oriented-programming?

(OOP) is a programming paradigm that uses "objects" and their interactions
to design applications and computer programs.

The key concepts of OOP are the following:

Class

Object

Instance

Method

Message passing

Inheritance

Abstraction

Encapsulation

Polymorphism

Decoupling



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming

No matter what development platform Java, .Net or others OPP is OPP.

http://math.hws.edu/eck/cs124/downloads/OOP2_from_Univ_KwaZulu-Natal.pdf

http://www.blackwasp.co.uk/ObjectOrientedConcepts.aspx



What are design patterns?

Design patterns are recurring solutions to software design problems you find
again and again in real-world application development. Patterns are about
design and interaction of objects, as well as providing a communication
platform concerning elegant, reusable solutions to commonly encountered
programming challenges.

http://www.developer.com/design/article.php/1502691

http://www.dofactory.com/Patterns/Patterns.aspx

http://computerprogramming.suite101.com/article.cfm/patterns_and_antipatterns

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms954638.aspx

http://www.designpatternsfor.net/Presentations.aspx?tid=3&cid=4



What is Domain Driven Design?

(DDD) is an approach to the design of software, based on the two premises
[1] that complex domain designs should be based on a model, and that, for
most software projects, the primary focus should be on the domain and domain
logic (as opposed to being the particular technology used to implement the
system).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-driven_design



What is Test Driven Design?

(TDD) is a software development technique that uses short development
iterations based on pre-written test cases that define desired improvements
or new functions. Each iteration produces code necessary to pass that
iteration's tests. Finally, the programmer or team refactors the code to
accommodate changes. A key TDD concept is that preparing tests before coding
facilitates rapid feedback changes. Note that test-driven development is a
software design method, not merely a method of testing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development

http://weblogs.asp.net/rhurlbut/archive/2007/07/16/another-tdd-and-ddd-success-story.aspx



I really can't find a link on this information. So a link to a book might be
helpful.

http://whitepapers.zdnet.com/abstract.aspx?docid=260168



What is a software framework?

A software framework, in computer programming, is an abstraction in which
common code providing generic functionality can be selectively overridden or
specialized by user code providing specific functionality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_framework


__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4098 (20090522) __________

The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.

http://www.eset.com
 
Gordon said:
As a longtime programmer with lots of experience with VBA in Access, I
thought it was time to come up to date by becoming competent with WPF.
So, I purchased Visual Studio 2008 and several books thar seemed to deal
with C# and WPF.

I'm running into lots of problems.

The books seem to preach to the converted. The books use lots of terms
without explaining what those terms mean. For example, one book in its
first sentenece says "WFP is a completely new framework..." My question
is: what is a framework?. I haven't come up with that word in my
previous experience. I need to know what the word means in order to
understand what the author is talking about'

The same book and other books use many terms without defiining what
those terms mean.
Click to expand...
Please, authors and publishers, provide definitions of the terms used in
your text. Either provide a definition where you first use the term and
refer to that definition in the book's index, or provide a glossary that
defines all the terms used in the text.
Click to expand...


A reasonable definition of Framework can be found in "Design Patterns"
by Gamma et al. This book was an attempt to standardise the language and
concepts used in software development. It has been hugely influential,
but is a little dull.
 
Gordon said:
As a longtime programmer with lots of experience with VBA in Access, I
thought it was time to come up to date by becoming competent with WPF.
So, I purchased Visual Studio 2008 and several books thar seemed to deal
with C# and WPF.

I'm running into lots of problems.

The books seem to preach to the converted. The books use lots of terms
without explaining what those terms mean. For example, one book in its
first sentenece says "WFP is a completely new framework..." My question
is: what is a framework?. I haven't come up with that word in my
previous experience. I need to know what the word means in order to
understand what the author is talking about'

The same book and other books use many terms without defiining what
those terms mean.
Click to expand...
Please, authors and publishers, provide definitions of the terms used in
your text. Either provide a definition where you first use the term and
refer to that definition in the book's index, or provide a glossary that
defines all the terms used in the text.
Click to expand...


A reasonable definition of Framework can be found in "Design Patterns"
by Gamma et al. This book was an attempt to standardise the language and
concepts used in software development. It has been hugely influential,
but is a little dull.
 
Gordon,

What you see is typical in certain areas of the development world.

I have to the idea that some writers write more books then to impress others
with their knowledge than to tell something.

I am not such a theoretical as guy like Nick.

A framework is simple a name, you even can call your car (as you have a car)
a framework.

But they have divided the car in more frameworks, so the brakes are a part
of the brake framework and they have given that names like WPF.

Those names are absolute not important in a year the will maybe name it
something like a construction package or whatever nice name.

WPF is the new name for the new set of controls which can now be used in
every area to write Net programs for.

I don't know if you have ever created a webpage, then for you it looks the
same as CSS but then in XML (for this named XAML).

The good thing is that WPF becomes really something and by instance in VS
2010 beta 1 is easy to handle because you can do it in the same way as
Microsoft has done forever with controls.

Just my opinion,

Cor
 
Gordon,

What you see is typical in certain areas of the development world.

I have to the idea that some writers write more books then to impress others
with their knowledge than to tell something.

I am not such a theoretical as guy like Nick.

A framework is simple a name, you even can call your car (as you have a car)
a framework.

But they have divided the car in more frameworks, so the brakes are a part
of the brake framework and they have given that names like WPF.

Those names are absolute not important in a year the will maybe name it
something like a construction package or whatever nice name.

WPF is the new name for the new set of controls which can now be used in
every area to write Net programs for.

I don't know if you have ever created a webpage, then for you it looks the
same as CSS but then in XML (for this named XAML).

The good thing is that WPF becomes really something and by instance in VS
2010 beta 1 is easy to handle because you can do it in the same way as
Microsoft has done forever with controls.

Just my opinion,

Cor
 
Cor said:
Gordon,

What you see is typical in certain areas of the development world.

I have to the idea that some writers write more books then to impress
others with their knowledge than to tell something.

I am not such a theoretical as guy like Nick.
Click to expand...

No I'm an older programmer who has also had to make the same sort of
transition to the newer more popular programming paradigms and languages
around today. I was and am a great fan of the simplicity of Access and
VBA and I'm not entirely comfortable with some of the currently popular
techniques which I feel lead to unnecessarily complex/hard to
understand/hard to maintain systems.

The point is that most of the newer framework designers are disciples of
Design Patterns and this is the language they speak.

I was recommending Design Patterns as a translation tool/dictionary,
nothing more.
 
Cor said:
Gordon,

What you see is typical in certain areas of the development world.

I have to the idea that some writers write more books then to impress
others with their knowledge than to tell something.

I am not such a theoretical as guy like Nick.
Click to expand...

No I'm an older programmer who has also had to make the same sort of
transition to the newer more popular programming paradigms and languages
around today. I was and am a great fan of the simplicity of Access and
VBA and I'm not entirely comfortable with some of the currently popular
techniques which I feel lead to unnecessarily complex/hard to
understand/hard to maintain systems.

The point is that most of the newer framework designers are disciples of
Design Patterns and this is the language they speak.

I was recommending Design Patterns as a translation tool/dictionary,
nothing more.
 
Nick,

Sorry there is somebody from London, who as almost the same nospam email
address like you and his name is as well Nick.

He is a young programmer, in past very active in the VB Net newsgroup and a
rebel (then he was really young).

Sorry again for mixing you up, it was just to tickle him, because in past he
was the opposite from theoretical.

Sorry, Sorry, Sorry

:-)

Cor
 
Nick,

Sorry there is somebody from London, who as almost the same nospam email
address like you and his name is as well Nick.

He is a young programmer, in past very active in the VB Net newsgroup and a
rebel (then he was really young).

Sorry again for mixing you up, it was just to tickle him, because in past he
was the opposite from theoretical.

Sorry, Sorry, Sorry

:-)

Cor
 
Cor said:
Nick,

Sorry there is somebody from London, who as almost the same nospam email
address like you and his name is as well Nick.

He is a young programmer, in past very active in the VB Net newsgroup
and a rebel (then he was really young).

Sorry again for mixing you up, it was just to tickle him, because in
past he was the opposite from theoretical.

Sorry, Sorry, Sorry
Click to expand...

Its fine, nothing wrong with a bit of teasing ;o)
 
Cor said:
Nick,

Sorry there is somebody from London, who as almost the same nospam email
address like you and his name is as well Nick.

He is a young programmer, in past very active in the VB Net newsgroup
and a rebel (then he was really young).

Sorry again for mixing you up, it was just to tickle him, because in
past he was the opposite from theoretical.

Sorry, Sorry, Sorry
Click to expand...

Its fine, nothing wrong with a bit of teasing ;o)
 
Adam Nathan's book "WPF Unleashed" is very affordable at £36, full color and
easily assimilated. However, he encodes everything in XML when I would much
rather have seen real code (as I am a programmer and not a designer). In
some cases, the translation from XAML to a real language is non-trivial.
Also, he is extremely positive about WPF (presumably he wrote the book
under commission from MS who edited out anything non-positive?) so he makes
no attempt to cover caveats and design flaws in the library.
Click to expand...

I have also started to play a little with WPF, not with great passion,
because from what I've read, even if a WPF application is deployed as
an web application, it still only works in IE and FireFox with a plug-
in. What about those people who only use Opera or Safari, etc.? This
limitation makes me less excited about this technology and thus have
been hesitating. Any comments about the future of WPF? Thanks.

BTW, the OP's complaint about the book's not defining "framework"
reminds me of a paper I wrote when I was at my university for a
phonetics course I selected. In the paper, I talked about "schwa",
one teacher who reviewed my paper is not strictly in the linguistics
field and complained that I didn't define "schwa". Naturally, the
other teachers in the linguistics field disagreed because one cannot
expect an academic paper in phonetics to define such common terms as
"schwa", much like you cannot expect an academic paper on nuclear
energy to define maybe what an "atom" is.

The point is, any paper/book has a basic assumption of a collection of
common terminology. Otherwise, any paper/book will end up being a
dictionary.

For those curious, here is more info about "schwa": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa
 
Adam Nathan's book "WPF Unleashed" is very affordable at £36, full color and
easily assimilated. However, he encodes everything in XML when I would much
rather have seen real code (as I am a programmer and not a designer). In
some cases, the translation from XAML to a real language is non-trivial.
Also, he is extremely positive about WPF (presumably he wrote the book
under commission from MS who edited out anything non-positive?) so he makes
no attempt to cover caveats and design flaws in the library.
Click to expand...

I have also started to play a little with WPF, not with great passion,
because from what I've read, even if a WPF application is deployed as
an web application, it still only works in IE and FireFox with a plug-
in. What about those people who only use Opera or Safari, etc.? This
limitation makes me less excited about this technology and thus have
been hesitating. Any comments about the future of WPF? Thanks.

BTW, the OP's complaint about the book's not defining "framework"
reminds me of a paper I wrote when I was at my university for a
phonetics course I selected. In the paper, I talked about "schwa",
one teacher who reviewed my paper is not strictly in the linguistics
field and complained that I didn't define "schwa". Naturally, the
other teachers in the linguistics field disagreed because one cannot
expect an academic paper in phonetics to define such common terms as
"schwa", much like you cannot expect an academic paper on nuclear
energy to define maybe what an "atom" is.

The point is, any paper/book has a basic assumption of a collection of
common terminology. Otherwise, any paper/book will end up being a
dictionary.

For those curious, here is more info about "schwa": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa
 
Adam Nathan's book "WPF Unleashed" is very affordable at £36, full color
and
easily assimilated. However, he encodes everything in XML when I would
much
rather have seen real code (as I am a programmer and not a designer). In
some cases, the translation from XAML to a real language is non-trivial.
Also, he is extremely positive about WPF (presumably he wrote the book
under commission from MS who edited out anything non-positive?) so he
makes
no attempt to cover caveats and design flaws in the library.
Click to expand...

I have also started to play a little with WPF, not with great passion,
because from what I've read, even if a WPF application is deployed as
an web application, it still only works in IE and FireFox with a plug-
in. What about those people who only use Opera or Safari, etc.? This
limitation makes me less excited about this technology and thus have
been hesitating. Any comments about the future of WPF? Thanks.

--------------------------------

I think WPF is more for Intranet solutions not Internet solutions per say,
which is going to be controlled as to what browsers are used on the
Intranet. Howevre, if an Internet site is using WPF, then the browser that
must be used is IE or FF, plain and simple. Even today, a lot of sites do
indicate that either IE or FF are approved browsers to be used at the site.



__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4101 (20090525) __________

The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.

http://www.eset.com
 
Adam Nathan's book "WPF Unleashed" is very affordable at £36, full color
and
easily assimilated. However, he encodes everything in XML when I would
much
rather have seen real code (as I am a programmer and not a designer). In
some cases, the translation from XAML to a real language is non-trivial.
Also, he is extremely positive about WPF (presumably he wrote the book
under commission from MS who edited out anything non-positive?) so he
makes
no attempt to cover caveats and design flaws in the library.
Click to expand...

I have also started to play a little with WPF, not with great passion,
because from what I've read, even if a WPF application is deployed as
an web application, it still only works in IE and FireFox with a plug-
in. What about those people who only use Opera or Safari, etc.? This
limitation makes me less excited about this technology and thus have
been hesitating. Any comments about the future of WPF? Thanks.

--------------------------------

I think WPF is more for Intranet solutions not Internet solutions per say,
which is going to be controlled as to what browsers are used on the
Intranet. Howevre, if an Internet site is using WPF, then the browser that
must be used is IE or FF, plain and simple. Even today, a lot of sites do
indicate that either IE or FF are approved browsers to be used at the site.



__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4101 (20090525) __________

The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.

http://www.eset.com
 
I have also started to play a little with WPF, not with great passion,
because from what I've read, even if a WPF application is deployed as
an web application, it still only works in IE and FireFox with a plug-
in. What about those people who only use Opera or Safari, etc.? This
limitation makes me less excited about this technology and thus have
been hesitating. Any comments about the future of WPF? Thanks.
Click to expand...
I appreciate WPF's declarative model. Hopefully someday project
managers will use XAML to define 'what it should look like" instead of
refrigerator art (.jpg, .png, etc.).

The current browser selection is limited but that will likely change
with time. Even so much depends upon the application and the target
audience. Placing requirements on users is not unheard of especially
when the app's functionality exists for a specific, limited user base.
If the target is any user with any browser then WPF isn't the best to
use right now.

With all the browser-snobs it can be hard to believe that users can
actually value an app's content and functionality more than the client
container.

regards
A.G.
 
I have also started to play a little with WPF, not with great passion,
because from what I've read, even if a WPF application is deployed as
an web application, it still only works in IE and FireFox with a plug-
in. What about those people who only use Opera or Safari, etc.? This
limitation makes me less excited about this technology and thus have
been hesitating. Any comments about the future of WPF? Thanks.
Click to expand...
I appreciate WPF's declarative model. Hopefully someday project
managers will use XAML to define 'what it should look like" instead of
refrigerator art (.jpg, .png, etc.).

The current browser selection is limited but that will likely change
with time. Even so much depends upon the application and the target
audience. Placing requirements on users is not unheard of especially
when the app's functionality exists for a specific, limited user base.
If the target is any user with any browser then WPF isn't the best to
use right now.

With all the browser-snobs it can be hard to believe that users can
actually value an app's content and functionality more than the client
container.

regards
A.G.
 
I think that Silverlight (WPF for browsers) has a chance of being
around longterm. It was used during the Olympics--people had to
download a plugin to view Olympics online--wasn't a problem to anyone
that I know. Silverlight is duking it out with Flash and Adobe Air,
of course, but Microsoft is unlikely (in my opinion) to abandon it.
 
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