The future of winforms?

davetherave2 · 18 Dec 2012 at 00:52

So as a general "jack of all trades c# developer" I am finding that the shift to try and mimic the ease of winforms into the web sphere is causing me concern. I am not sure if it is just me being out of touch but the trend obviously over the past 12 months+ has been to develop web or "App" style solutions that are now compatible with multiple platforms mainly mobile/touch screen.

I'm just wondering if core business management solutions which require multiple forms/points of information on the screen can be successfully converted into this style of application.

So I guess what I am trying to get at is it worth continuing developing my skills in winforms or ditch it and look at the likes of winRT or even shift over to WPF or is this as dead as winforms appears to be going.

The reason I ask is due to working on a past project that looked to convert an existing complex winforms management system into a web application failed miserably. This failure was down to a number of issues but effectively the requirement was to replicate what the win forms app did in the webforms which didn't work was cluncky, slow and i felt the new product was crippled by not playing to the strengths of the web forms environment.

If anyone can point in the direction of some good articles for the pro's/con's of win forms in this touch screen obsessed world we have these days it would be great.

davetherave2 · 21 Dec 2012 at 12:55

Thanks for the info. Kind of what I was expecting really. It's such a shame to leave these skills behind in many respects, although I do enjoy the challange of learning something new it is a shame but like everything technology moves on.

Although I have some great projects I want to convert to the likes of MVC I fear the main product I support will have to be a rework from the ground up (truth be told it was always going to be if I get my way). I guess I can see where my boss was coming from with trying to "webify" this product. Oh well at least it keeps me busy

I have the following books arriving from Santa to help me:

Dependency Injection in .NET by Mark Seemann
The Art of Unit Testing: with Examples in .NET by Roy Osherove
HTML5 Programming for ASP.NET Developers by Bipin Joshi
HTML & CSS: Design and Build Web Sites by Jon Duckett

I already have Pro ASP.NET MVC 3 Framework 3rd Edition by Adam Freeman & Steven Sanderson

I just need to put some serious study time in to understand the concepts of MVC a little more.

I am just wondering if I should also be throwing EF in at the same time or leave that for another day and conitnue to use my current Data Access knowledge and libraries I have set up.

I just need to find some good books on JQuery and Javascript to aid with my knowledge. I am sure the HTML 5 book will help fill in a lot of gaps.

davetherave2 · 21 Dec 2012 at 21:28

NathanE - If websharper and lift are RAD toolkits then I am currently using Telerik's which I have found brilliant for winforms and webforms alike.

They also have some brilliant coding tools equal to the likes or resharper. I have to look more into their ORM solution as it seems that may scale as required (in the EF world) to the level I need. Current database size for the main app I work with is 24GB and has around 100 - 200 concurrent users on an average day.

Spunkey - I have looked at jquery's website and although it has helped me understand some of the fundementals of the api I find it much easier to have a book in front of me where I can understand the subject matter in a little more depth with examples rather than some basic overview. Plus if there is something I don't quite understand I can flick between pages/sections as required.

At least I have a few weeks off now over christmas I can make a start on some the design principles and finally try to get my head around doing Test Driven Development rather than just go in blind and then fixing errors as I go along.

davetherave2 · 23 Dec 2012 at 15:30

Excuse my ignorance here but these products you are going on about where do they sit in the grand scheme of things. Are they ORM systems that tie into a sql product like MS SQL or are they designed to replace these.

We are going to be investing in SQL 2012 shortly to replace our aging SQL 2000/2005 so we will be using 2012 DB and Reporting services (I hope these have been improved since 2005)

davetherave2 · 24 Dec 2012 at 20:53

robotCocks said:
Chill out idiots eh?

Talk about "thread hijack"

OP you need to get into web - the desktop is dead, mate - the closest thing to it these days with a future is native mobile. Learn both - then you're sorted for the next few years.

Its all web/mobile with cloud now

Well I do a mixture of web and desktop development but I am stronger in the desktop sphere purely down to experience compared to web. Although I have been doing web forms for several years and last 18 months using webforms with Telerik's asp.net control suite.

davetherave2 · 26 Dec 2012 at 22:51

Well have started on my DI book and already realising how useful this is and I am only on chapter 2. Even in this early stages I have realised how poorly I have tried to implement DI and I need to start forcing myself to go down the TDD route and seeing how this will help me with implementing this appropriately.

I haven't started on the rest yet but I realising how little I know on occasions. I would consider myself a better than average developer but I admit I have large gaps in my knowledge and have tried to implement design patterns by happy coincidence rather than actually meaning too (again maybe not required but used with the best intentions). I then think back to the products that I am soon to develop/re-engineer I think this will make my life and the rest of the developers that I work with easier to support my products.

I have access to Pluralsight through work so I am going to start working my way through the design patterns course they have on there as well as a number of other courses that will help me to be a better developer. I think it is a constant battle to try and keep up to date and I guess I am now reaching the point in my development career where I have to finally specialize and become a full time web developer and learn as much as I can about the associated technologies that surround it.

Right time for some more reading and see what else I can learn.

edit: One other thing does this potentially mean we are looking at the death of the right click context menu? what are the best ways to try and implement these in the web world or is this considered bad form these days?

davetherave2 · 28 Dec 2012 at 19:06

DanF - I have just got the art of unit testing as part of my presents from Santa.

topbanana - I agree that context menus can be evil if used incorrectly but in the desktop world they do allow to reduce the multitude of options in the main toolbar (if one exists)

I have used it to great effectiveness to help our end users be more productive and simplify otherwise complicated actions/ nested options to action within a click or two at most.

I guess this is probably where MS were going with the whole Ribbon thing in word etc to try and remove people's reliance on context menus but it was a step too far to do such a revolution in toolbar design from the simple text one to the Ribbon.

davetherave2 · 30 Dec 2012 at 16:26

I think responsive design is less critical for the main system I am planning to rebuild as it will only ever be used on devices with desktop type resolutions working with a minimum of 1024x768 but I do understand the need to be able to adapt and cater for more unique/unusual resolutions.

As for bootstrap I have heard about it but not used it myself. One of new senior developers really rates it and I have kind of seen it in action but need to sit down and use it myself to fully understand.

From the quick look I have had in my html & css book responsive design is covered in that as well so I can see 2013 being the year of web specialisation for me I think and hopefully finally achieving senior developer level.