As i'm sure you know by now, Microsoft caused a bit of a stir in the .NET development community with their recent 10 minute demo of Windows 8. More specifically, the fact that they explicitly mentioned HTML5 and JavaScript as one of the ways to build these new-look Windows 8 applications while neglecting to mention Silverlight or WPF left a lot of developers wondering what the future holds for both Silverlight and WPF. An interesting thread showed up on the Silverlight forums where Silverlight developers expressed their fear for the future of their platform. I've been following that thread with a lot of interest, not only because the statements and behavior displayed in that thread are both hilarious and astounding, but because i wanted to see how Microsoft would react to it.
Surely, if the core audience of one of their most-touted technologies of the past years started to doubt the future of their platform so openly, a response to calm down the fears would have to be forthcoming, no? The only Microsoft employee to respond was Pete Brown, and i thought it was quite telling:
You all saw a very small technology demo of Windows 8, and a brief press release. We're all being quiet right now because we can't comment on this. It's not because we don't care, aren't listening, have given up, or are agreeing or disagreeing with you on something. All I can say for now is to please wait until September. If we say more before then, that will be great, but there are no promises (and I'm not aware of any plans) to say more right now. I'm very sorry that there's nothing else to share at the moment. I know that answer is terrible, but it's all that we can say right now. Seriously.
Followed by:
Guys, I've been pretty clear that my hands are tied here, so don't read anything more into my lack of comments than that. We simply aren't allowed to say anything about this. It's not that we have nothing to say. It's not that we don't care. It's not that I personally don't care, because I do, a lot.
And finally:
This whole thing has blown way out of proportion. Base your information on our primary sources (like our press release), not on third party speculation. That's not to minimize how everyone feels, but keep in mind that Windows 8 itself is still a ways off from retail, and even much further away from internal IT adoption. The 8 weeks until //build/ is a pretty small amount of time to wait in comparison. Take some vacation time this summer, and look forward to the //build/ conference. Stop speculating based on just a small demo of some very cool new technology. Tell your management to do the same: if they're basing your project work for the next X years on the results of a quick demo for an unreleased operating system, then they are doing you and your company a real disservice.
If i were still a Silverlight developer, i'd find the final sentence quite insulting. If anything, Microsoft is doing a sizable portion of their customers a disservice by being so unclear about the future of one of their technologies. This certainly isn't the first storm to come up about Silverlight's future, and every time people have openly questioned the future of the platform Microsoft has responded rather softly. There's never been a convincing and strong "we are fully committed to making Silverlight a smart choice for the future" kind of response. And this time, no response at all. Just silence. Deafening silence even, because of Pete's remark that they are not even allowed to talk about it. Once again, the Silverlight community is screaming for a real response and they're being ignored. They're being told to wait until September.
Obviously, i don't know what Microsoft is planning for Silverlight, but i really have difficulties understanding how any company could still trust it as a viable technological choice. First the mixed messages, then the clear favoritism Microsoft is showing towards HTML5 and JavaScript (which, IMO, is justified but that's another topic), and now the unwillingness to stand up for one of their products that is being doubted so openly, for the first time by its very users who only want assurance of Microsoft that their investments in the technology haven't been a total waste. I took a lot of flack from the Silverlight community when i scored Silverlight so low in the 'strategic' department in my post where i detailed how we came to the conclusion to go with HTML(5) instead of Silverlight but this recent PR fiasco kind of validates that score IMO.
However, Microsoft certainly isn't the only one to blame here. If you read the thread i linked to, you'll see some reactions from people who've pretty much put all of their eggs in the Silverlight basket and are now reacting angrily towards Microsoft. If any of those people are reading this, allow me to quote myself from 2 posts that i wrote over 6 months ago:
If however, your product is supposed to become the basis of your long-term success, then the choice of Silverlight over HTML/CSS/JavaScript is short-sighted and ultimately flawed for a number of reasons. The first of which is that Silverlight is a proprietary technology in the worst possible way. Its future will be determined by a single company who naturally hold their own best interest at heart, and not yours. As long as it makes sense for them to keep improving Silverlight, they will and you can benefit from that. As soon as it no longer makes sense for them, the technology will become increasingly irrelevant. Obviously, that is a risk that you face with any kind of technology. Sticking with open standards and open source software might very well result in the same outcome but there is one tremendously important difference here: with Silverlight, you have no migration path.
That quote was from 'Keep Your Eyes On The Road', written in September 2010. And the next quote is from 'Developers Shouldn't Specialize', written in October 2010:
There's also another factor to keep in mind, which is more important than you might realize. If you specialize in technology from commercial vendors, you need to keep the market forces in mind that could influence the vendor. Those market forces might be (or seem) irrelevant to you, but the vendor will not let that influence its decisions and strategies if the vendor itself is competing with other companies on a much larger level than your company or your clients are. And when a vendor changes tactics due to market forces, the technology you've chosen to specialize in might be on the way out, or it might no longer be the hot new thing that you can capitalize on. And that is where one of the biggest dangers in specialization lies. If you're specialized in a specific technology, you're personally invested in it. Your current standard of life, your livelihood, depends largely on that specific technology. Sure, you can move on to something else but you will have to get used to less than you're used to, probably both in money and stature for a while. Realistically speaking, odds are high that you are emotionally attached to this technology because of this. When you are confronted with bad news regarding the technology's future, you're likely to exhibit classic denial symptoms. The recent news about the Silverlight strategy shift and specifically the reactions to it, is a beautiful example of this.
Anyone who's upset at Microsoft about this has only himself to blame. You've put yourself in this position, because the writing has been on the wall for a while now.
