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I keep wanting to develop WinForms apps...but then I don't...

I'm a web developer, hard to the core.  Every few months, I get the “expand thine own skill set” bug and start to dabble in Windows Forms programming, but then almost as quickly dismiss it because it's so damn hard and frustrating. 

Label me impatient and/or ignorant, but sometimes, I don't want to build every single menu, MDI element or be responsible for doing the simple-yet-complex computations required to get the precise positioning of controls on a Windows application.  It's then when I realize what a blessing we have with the browser being pre-built, and then re-commit myself ot my chosen craft. 

At least for another few months.

I'd venture to say that there are a significant amount of desktop/console devs that do web stuff that the converse, and this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.  And if you're a server-side developer on any platform (ASP, ASP.NET J2EE, PHP), there are more than enough topics to keep you from becoming bored with the redundancy of HTML and writing programs that generate it.  And heck, innovations in web technology are bridging the divide between what's truly “desktop only” capability and that which can be deployed, managed and accessed via the Web.

Count your blessings, and praise the almighty URL.

Posted: Jul 21 2004, 07:51 PM by guam-aspdev | with 9 comment(s)
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Comments

TrackBack said:

# July 20, 2004 3:26 PM

TrackBack said:

# July 20, 2004 4:49 PM

Scott Galloway said:

To be honest I'm pretty much the same, I came to web development from Perl and security apps (which were pretty much all command line). I still remember the time when I thought I'd never get the hang of HTML and Javascript was a strange and scary place. Windows forms stuff was something I seriously got into first time round during my VB6 / VC++6 days and I did not enjoy it at all...this time though I have to say, .NET does significantly improve the experience. Chris Sells' book on Windows Forms with C# is excellent and gets all the basics out of the way pretty quickly. For the apps I've tended to write I really haven't bothered much with going beyond what .NET offers (so very few DLLImports or calling native libraries). The way I got a handle on it was to have a relatively simple app in mind that I could do really easily in ASP.NET (so I had a grip on the basic structure), I then implemented it in Windows forms then enhanced it with sruff like threading, progress bars, multiple menus and tabs etc...
What I notice in developing Windows Forms apps was how trivial the actual interface building is in comparison to ASP.NET - the designers are just so much more powerful. Anyway, long reply, sorry! Anyway, give it a go, you might like it!
# July 21, 2004 5:31 AM

Martin Spedding said:

Hi,

maybe it is because I have been in this business for a long time but instinctively I build a win forms app. Sometimes, I will put a web interface on the application. Howver, I always feel like I am comprising when I do a web app, the experience is just not rich enough.

I think it really depends when you came to development, before or after the internet age.

I might expand on this in a blog entry as I have been thinking about this for a while.

Martin
# July 21, 2004 5:43 AM

Søren Lund said:

I share your pain. I really want to make WinForms applications but the fact that you spend so much time just trying to get the UI elements placed just takes the fun out of it. That is why I am looking forward to Avalon which brings the ability to create WinForm GUIs in XAML much like we do with web pages today.

We only have to wait 5 years before XAML and Avalon is standard Windows functionality :)
# July 21, 2004 8:23 AM

Jay Glynn said:

I have just the opposite feeling. Everytime I have to do an ASP.NET app I feel like I'm developing with one hand tied behind my back.

Oh well, to each his/her own....
# July 21, 2004 8:44 AM

Jeff said:

I feel your pain. It's not that coding the app is difficult it's formatting the app. I can't stand that part of it. I'm bidding on a project right now that could easily do five figures, and I'm wondering if I really want to commit to it.
# July 21, 2004 1:22 PM

TrackBack said:

# August 11, 2004 3:47 AM

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# March 24, 2010 1:17 AM
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