WPF vs WinForms or Rich UI vs Stable Applications? What do you think about the future of the Windows Forms platform? [closed]

Answer 1

I have to agree with both posts above. Further, until Microsoft starts really pushing WPF in its own products, it's not really going to take off. In my mind, Microsoft dogfooding WPF is what will lead them to really address the issues that are holding it back: the crashes, text issues, and lack of pre-built controls.

Answer 2

I think WPF is firmly targeted at a group of developers who are not inclined to adopt it. I don't believe WPF was made for CRUD apps. CRUD is much harder in WPF than WinForms. I have seen examples of databinding which I just don't like. You have to run through an intermediate technology (like CSLA) to make it work well.

No, I think WPF was designed for developers who want to ship super slick, super fancy media IDEs to the public. Unfortunately, this is precisely the group which is most stuck on C/C++ and most unreceptive to managed code. For this reason, you have to question Microsoft's market-thinking.

On the other hand, Microsoft eats its own dog food, and new flavors of puppy chow are often a response to strong internal presures for better stuff. You can see why the Windows Media group and the Zune group both would like and want WPF.

Answer 3

I am currently working with my third client to deploy develop a WPF application. The first was a LOB application for one of the 3 major shipping providers in the US, the other two for smaller companies.

I find Visual Studio to be perfectly stable, but I also never use the designer in Visual Studio. Expression Blend is perfectly stable, if not missing many features expected by designers.

WPF uptake is surely slower than language features introduced into Visual Studio & .Net, but it is far superior to WinForms in many ways and will be the future.

Go learn the WPF mindset and you'll never go back.

Answer 4

Windows forms is Honda.

WPF is Orange County Chopper.

It costs more to build a custom hand made chopper, it takes a lot more skill for a worker to do all those components by hand, it requires artistic sense, dedication and allot of work, compared to a worker in a Honda factory that only presses 3 buttons and a bike comes out.

The result?

An Orange County Chopper is unique, beautiful, stands out of the crowd, and makes it's owner prowd, but it is also harder to manufacture, costs more, requires more talent on the builders side and not everyone can do it.

And the point of this rant is?

Use WPF if you want to stand out of the crowd and your clients can afford it ;-)

Answer 5

I gave up on WPF because the visual editor in VStudio 2008 is so unbelievably slow!

Answer 6

I've seen MS's demo of a healthcare app using Silverlight and it is gorgeous. I would say that without a doubt it is the future as it builds upon the experiences of WinForm and restructures things to get around the problems of WinForm.

That said, at present WinForm is obviously more mature and probably has a shorter time to market due to the stability of the platform and wealth of resources, tools and knowledge.

I would expect that WinForm apps will slowly peter out within another decade but for now it is still a very viable platform.