WPF will be community run project

I remember when I wanted to get into C# desktop app development years ago and it was either WinForms or the newer WPF. I chose WPF and it took a while to get a hang of it (mostly I had to either import some libraries or create some common ones to handle variable updates through UI bindings). Unfortunately, WPF always felt unfinished and missing many QoL features. I was hoping they would further refine and make it easier to work with but I guess it was never meant to be.<p>Windows 10 was coming around corner with UWP being pushed as the big desktop app SDK. Then they ditched that because people just didn&#x27;t like Windows Store and how they did the apps on it (I also wasn&#x27;t big fan of it). Then everything went to extremely resource-hungry Electron. Now there is .NET MAUI and and some general WinUI framework [1].<p>I am utterly confused what is happening with UI development on Windows ecosystem. On rare occasion I want to develop desktop app, I have used Avalonia UI [2] which seems to be something more stable than what MSFT churns out every year or two, can highly recommend that.<p>Either way, they are really destroying Windows ecosystem by pushing out new framework every few years that always feels half-finished before they move on to the next one. This is, of course, on top of Windows versions in general with how they pile new half-finished UI reworks that just keeps piling on insane amounts of technical debt and legacy for future maintenance.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;learn.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;windows&#x2F;apps&#x2F;winui&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;learn.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;windows&#x2F;apps&#x2F;winui&#x2F;</a> [2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;avaloniaui.net&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;avaloniaui.net&#x2F;</a>

As an early winForms developer how the hell did Microsoft lose its way so badly in terms of building an app on windows?<p>Almost anyone could build a data bound app ages ago - then they burnt this all on a WPF &#x2F; UPF &#x2F; silver light etc bonfire.<p>Back to the electron apps I go

I recently built a brand new internal GUI tool in WPF. It wasn&#x27;t bad but it has a few sharp edges:<p>- documentation is lacking<p>- open popups overlay EVERYTHING even windows from other applications<p>- no easy way to create a component with a XAML template<p>- no way to set dimensions to a proportion of the parent dimension

&quot;Community run&quot; is code for dead. See ChakraCore as an example.

Been working on a legacy WPF project recently.<p>C# has been pretty great to work with. (Updating from framework to NET 6 has been a slog though)<p>Anything to do with the WPF and the UI just seems way too complicated. I can 100% understand why electron has taken over.<p>Keeping my eye on blazor for desktop as I think that would be ideal.

Now that the standard GUI framework for Windows apps is Electron, there is no point in spending resources on legacy WPF.<p>Much better investing that time in the actual tools that devs use, VS Code and Chromium.

If there is one sin here it&#x27;s that Microsoft waited so long to do so while giving it little to no care in the meantime.<p>AvaloniaUI and Uno have been around for YEARS now, and could have used this announcement earlier to get more inertia behind them.

Is this a generational problem? They can’t find any younger devs willing to work on WPF?

Younger devs didn&#x27;t care about spending a few months learning to build efficient desktop applications.