[HN Gopher] Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since P...
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Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold
See also https://x.com/stevesi/status/2036921223150440542
(https://xcancel.com/stevesi/status/2036921223150440542)
Author : naves
Score : 83 points
Date : 2026-04-05 17:27 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jsnover.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jsnover.com)
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The churn would have been much worse if Microsoft was rolling out
| successful GUI framework after GUI framework. As it is you can
| still write a Win32 app if that pleases you, or still write .NET
| (and damn that runtime download!)
|
| Microsoft has bought into 'make a web app' since 1988, they
| introduced AJAX, they got flexbox and grid into CSS and numerous
| HTML 5 features to support application UIs. They 'frikin _bought
| npm!_. I use Windows every day but I almost exclusively develop
| cross-platform systems based on the WWW, Java, Python, etc.
| Whenever I have developed with .NET it has been for a cross-
| platform front-end like Silverlight or Unity /itch.io.
|
| I can't say I have a desire to make a native Windows GUI app when
| I could make a web app: like if it worth doing from my computer
| isn't it worth doing it on my iPad from anywhere with Tailscale?
| For all the complaints about modern JavaScript it gives you the
| pieces to make a very pleasant world in terms of DX and UX and
| you certainly don't need to ship an Electron runtime for many
| applications.
| furyofantares wrote:
| > Dead silence. One person suggested WPF. Another said WinUI 3. A
| third asked if they should just use Electron. The meeting went
| sideways and we never did answer the question.
|
| > That silence is the story.
|
| These LLMs are just awful at writing.
| c-c-c-c-c wrote:
| that part really didn't make sense to me. This is true for all
| desktop platforms.
| furyofantares wrote:
| I agree, although I was talking about: Dead
| silence. Here's what 3 people said (the opposite of silence).
| Then the meeting went sideways (also the opposite of
| silence). The silence is the story.
|
| WHAT SILENCE?
| avazhi wrote:
| He immediately said they never did make a decision, so
| probably that indecision.
|
| Having said that, this article feels like AI slop to me.
| Couldn't get through it.
| g-b-r wrote:
| Just have a look at the final picture if you're unsure if
| it's slop
| super256 wrote:
| I felt fatigued after the second paragraph. All these LLM
| tropes chained together are horrible to read.
| stinkbeetle wrote:
| Yes they really do a great job at mimicking awful human writing
| of that horrendous style, whatever it's called. Post-TED NPR
| style bougie blogging let's say.
| operatingthetan wrote:
| This site needs a no LLM submissions policy too.
| bananaflag wrote:
| This barely mentions Windows Forms, which is the cleanest and
| fastest way to code Windows GUI apps.
|
| A few years ago, I wanted to prototype something quick and I
| wrote it in Windows Forms over C# (all code, no visual editor).
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Winforms is a Win32 API wrapper, so on the same level as MFC,
| not a separate UI framework.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Steven Sinofsky wrote this piece a couple of weeks ago about the
| same topic:
|
| https://x.com/stevesi/status/2036921223150440542
| dang wrote:
| Since that article is a response to this one, we'll add a link
| to it in the toptext above. Thanks!
| binarymax wrote:
| Given how bad windows has become since windows 7, I've been
| wondering. Does Bill Gates still use Windows? Does he put up with
| the horribleness?
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I think Bill pretty much chilled out since he stepped down?
| binarymax wrote:
| Yeah of course. He has nothing to do with Microsoft
| operations or strategy. But does he still use the products?
| throwaway132448 wrote:
| I couldn't know, but generally speaking, older billionaires
| don't typically interact with the world in the same way
| most of us do (well, those without a social media addiction
| anyway). The device is someone else's problem.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| He still visits Microsoft occasionally. A friend showed me
| a picture of him visiting Microsoft in Beijing a few months
| ago (he was excited about BillG visiting). So my guess is
| that he still has an interest in Microsoft products.
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| If he doesn't use Windows, you won't hear about it. And if you
| hear that he uses Windows, it might not be true. He loses
| nothing by denying it. If it worked for his friendship with
| Epstein, it will work here.
| regularfry wrote:
| Having spent some time kicking around the Delphi space I got
| quite into WPF in 2007ish. By 2010 I had not just sworn off it,
| I'd sworn off Windows entirely. The constant stream of rug-pulls
| as one bit of MS managed to pull off a political heist over
| another and - oh no - yet another "latest and greatest"
| technology was effectively deprecated within 18 months of launch,
| invalidating all the effort you put in to staying up to date just
| became a pointless treadmill.
|
| Fortunately Rails was taking off at that point so it was fairly
| easy to change horses and just ignore it.
| PacificSpecific wrote:
| If I'm writing Windows desktop GUIs I still stick to WPF. Might
| be Stockholm syndrome but I quite like it.
|
| I don't see the reason to use any of the new ms ui frameworks.
| Especially if ms themselves don't even really use them.
|
| As far as I know visual studio is still a WPF project so I'm
| not super worried about it no longer working.
| RajT88 wrote:
| WPF looks much nicer. Personally I find it hard as hell to
| debug.
|
| Winforms just work, and have a well defined set of behaviors.
| It does not matter that they do not look as nice for most
| people.
| taylodl wrote:
| Microsoft had a lot of great talent suffering from a lack of
| leadership and coherent vision. They foreshadowed everything
| wrong with Big Tech today.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| At the same time VB still works and runs, so they don't always
| rug pull.
| Surac wrote:
| Today i still use C# with Windows.Forms. All my old knowledge is
| still usefull. People know how to use a Windows.Forms program.
| grebc wrote:
| It's great, some vendors have fantastic component libraries for
| reasonable prices.
|
| Unreal that MS bet the farm in Windows on so many other turds
| instead of boring old WinForms/Win32.
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| As of today, I only use 2 solutions for Windows GUI :
|
| - windows forms in .net
|
| - flutter
|
| All the rest always presents itself with a sheer aura of "It was
| a great idea but we couldn't finish it".
|
| Without ever discussing with anyone from MS about it, I think
| they stopped improving/working on this because of electron.
|
| Any web developer can build a good enough website and a good
| enough desktop app with electron.
| mentalgear wrote:
| I'm planing on switching over to QubesOS - way more secure
| (especially considering rogue LLM-agents) and visually not much
| worse from windows ... maybe even more cohesive.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| I'm not sure I can take such an article seriously if it doesn't
| mention that the WinRT/UWP/WinUI stack is also based on XAML, and
| that a fundamental design goal of WinRT was to let people use
| either C++ or C# according to taste.
|
| Also, the AI smell in this article is just too much.
| goalieca wrote:
| The writing style was really poor. Too many words saying too few
| things.
| OptionOfT wrote:
| Case in point after Edge updated this morning:
|
| https://imgur.com/a/dWp5Ohj
|
| Did they even try to make it look like the new context menus?
| okanat wrote:
| Well, Edge is Chromium. They need to maintain a hard fork, not
| just a reskin with a bunch of Microsoft webpages and adware.
| Chromium basically allocates a window and completely draws
| everything inside using DirectX APIs including menus.
| supliminal wrote:
| I used the more recent Petzold examples to successfully bind
| DirectWrite to Direct3D, but yeah it's been a crapshoot
| otherwise. Still have the Windows Programming (5e?) bible around
| here somewhere. Took awhile to grind through it. I dread modern-
| day windows programming it seems like every OS release some new
| API is going to overtake the others. I moved on.
| fassssst wrote:
| It's web. Just use electron or Tauri.
| lenkite wrote:
| The problem is that they just could not commit to anything for
| more than 2 years after Win32.
|
| They had something reasonably good in WinRT. They should have
| stuck to that. But Nadella came in, said Azure Cloud is the
| future and abandoned the Windows platform.
| steve1977 wrote:
| That illustration at the end of the article is quite something.
| g-b-r wrote:
| Quite some slop
|
| Has it become unreasonable to use an image editor for anything?
| At least to stamp some readable text on top of your slop??
| api wrote:
| Nobody really has. Apple comes the closest but they keep rug
| pulling it in weird ways.
|
| Windows and Mac in the 90s had very consistent GUIs with such
| consistency in things like keyboard shortcuts that apps could
| easily be learned. The term "intuitive" was king in the realm of
| UI design.
|
| Then the web hit and all that died.
| antiframe wrote:
| Not nobody. KDE has a functional and consistent GUI.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Microsoft GUI development is a mess. They don't seem to care.
| Just look at the mishmash of different GUI styles in Windows 11.
|
| Thankfully I have been mostly insulated from it by sticking to Qt
| and C++ for the last 25 years.
| jpeter wrote:
| So the windows team hates .NET, so they use react webviews and
| put them in explorer and start menu???
| praisewhitey wrote:
| They use react native
| arbirk wrote:
| I think that is an insult to MS Bob
| cosmotic wrote:
| This is what happens when one's performance is measured by
| "impact".
| politelemon wrote:
| This is a problem with all the OSes.
| antiframe wrote:
| I disagree. KDE and Gnome both have pretty consistent UI
| strategies. You may or may not like them but they have clear
| identities and design guidelines and follow them.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| I blame "Impact". That's what you are graded on at Microsoft.
| Every performance review ('Connect'), every stock award, every
| promotion run: did this person have that magical impact.
|
| Ostensibly, grading by impact is fine: they want people who make
| a positive difference. In reality, it means that creating is
| better than finishing. Now add in the cold realities that at any
| given time in Microsoft, some groups are on the up and some on
| the down. What's a great way for a group to regain some status?
| Launch something. Jazz it up for the Build or Ignite crowd. Get
| some dev evangelist to talk about it. Then get on the job board
| and slide over to another team ASAP. You're a High Impact person.
| Who wouldn't be happy to have you?
| anthk wrote:
| OLE objects are just like disk images.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > From their perspective, gambling on a new managed-code
| framework had produced the most embarrassing failure in the
| company's history
|
| Most embarrassing failure in the company's history that far.
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(page generated 2026-04-05 23:00 UTC)