Microsoft Hasn't Had a Coherent GUI Strategy Since Petzold
by naves on 4/5/2026, 5:27:41 PM
https://www.jsnover.com/blog/2026/03/13/microsoft-hasnt-had-a-coherent-gui-strategy-since-petzold/
Comments
by: lenkite
The problem is that they just could not commit to anything for more than 2 years after Win32.<p>They had something reasonably good in WinRT. They should have stuck to that. But Nadella came in, said Azure Cloud is the future and abandoned the Windows platform.
4/5/2026, 8:59:19 PM
by: furyofantares
> Dead silence. One person suggested WPF. Another said WinUI 3. A third asked if they should just use Electron. The meeting went sideways and we never did answer the question.<p>> That silence is the story.<p>These LLMs are just awful at writing.
4/5/2026, 8:12:06 PM
by: hermitcrab
Microsoft GUI development is a mess. They don't seem to care. Just look at the mishmash of different GUI styles in Windows 11.<p>Thankfully I have been mostly insulated from it by sticking to Qt and C++ for the last 25 years.
4/5/2026, 9:22:50 PM
by: markus_zhang
Steven Sinofsky wrote this piece a couple of weeks ago about the same topic:<p><a href="https://x.com/stevesi/status/2036921223150440542" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/stevesi/status/2036921223150440542</a>
4/5/2026, 8:17:51 PM
by: supliminal
I used the more recent Petzold examples to successfully bind DirectWrite to Direct3D, but yeah it’s been a crapshoot otherwise. Still have the Windows Programming (5e?) bible around here somewhere. Took awhile to grind through it. I dread modern-day windows programming it seems like every OS release some new API is going to overtake the others. I moved on.
4/5/2026, 8:55:03 PM
by: bananaflag
This barely mentions Windows Forms, which is the cleanest and fastest way to code Windows GUI apps.<p>A few years ago, I wanted to prototype something quick and I wrote it in Windows Forms over C# (all code, no visual editor).
4/5/2026, 8:14:12 PM
by: jpeter
So the windows team hates .NET, so they use react webviews and put them in explorer and start menu???
4/5/2026, 9:25:23 PM
by: binarymax
Given how bad windows has become since windows 7, I’ve been wondering. Does Bill Gates still use Windows? Does he put up with the horribleness?
4/5/2026, 8:21:04 PM
by: PaulHoule
The churn would have been much worse if Microsoft was rolling out successful GUI framework after GUI framework. As it is you can still write a Win32 app if that pleases you, or still write .NET (and damn that runtime download!)<p>Microsoft has bought into ‘make a web app’ since 1988, they introduced AJAX, they got flexbox and grid into CSS and numerous HTML 5 features to support application UIs. They ‘frikin <i>bought npm!</i>. I use Windows every day but I almost exclusively develop cross-platform systems based on the WWW, Java, Python, etc. Whenever I have developed with .NET it has been for a cross-platform front-end like Silverlight or Unity/itch.io.<p>I can’t say I have a desire to make a native Windows GUI app when I could make a web app: like if it worth doing from my computer isn’t it worth doing it on my iPad from anywhere with Tailscale? For all the complaints about modern JavaScript it gives you the pieces to make a very pleasant world in terms of DX and UX and you certainly don’t need to ship an Electron runtime for many applications.
4/5/2026, 6:12:38 PM
by: regularfry
Having spent some time kicking around the Delphi space I got quite into WPF in 2007ish. By 2010 I had not just sworn off it, I'd sworn off Windows entirely. The constant stream of rug-pulls as one bit of MS managed to pull off a political heist over another and - oh no - yet another "latest and greatest" technology was effectively deprecated within 18 months of launch, invalidating all the effort you put in to staying up to date just became a pointless treadmill.<p>Fortunately Rails was taking off at that point so it was fairly easy to change horses and just ignore it.
4/5/2026, 8:23:02 PM
by: OptionOfT
Case in point after Edge updated this morning:<p><a href="https://imgur.com/a/dWp5Ohj" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/a/dWp5Ohj</a><p>Did they even try to make it look like the new context menus?
4/5/2026, 8:52:07 PM
by: goalieca
The writing style was really poor. Too many words saying too few things.
4/5/2026, 8:50:43 PM
by: whynotmaybe
As of today, I only use 2 solutions for Windows GUI :<p>- windows forms in .net<p>- flutter<p>All the rest always presents itself with a sheer aura of "It was a great idea but we couldn't finish it".<p>Without ever discussing with anyone from MS about it, I think they stopped improving/working on this because of electron.<p>Any web developer can build a good enough website and a good enough desktop app with electron.
4/5/2026, 8:26:47 PM
by: steve1977
That illustration at the end of the article is quite something.
4/5/2026, 9:02:08 PM
by: Surac
Today i still use C# with Windows.Forms. All my old knowledge is still usefull. People know how to use a Windows.Forms program.
4/5/2026, 8:24:54 PM
by: fassssst
It’s web. Just use electron or Tauri.
4/5/2026, 8:59:07 PM
by: api
Nobody really has. Apple comes the closest but they keep rug pulling it in weird ways.<p>Windows and Mac in the 90s had very consistent GUIs with such consistency in things like keyboard shortcuts that apps could easily be learned. The term “intuitive” was king in the realm of UI design.<p>Then the web hit and all that died.
4/5/2026, 9:19:09 PM
by: mentalgear
I'm planing on switching over to QubesOS - way more secure (especially considering rogue LLM-agents) and visually not much worse from windows ... maybe even more cohesive.
4/5/2026, 8:37:43 PM
by: TazeTSchnitzel
I'm not sure I can take such an article seriously if it doesn't mention that the WinRT/UWP/WinUI stack is also based on XAML, and that a fundamental design goal of WinRT was to let people use either C++ or C# according to taste.<p>Also, the AI smell in this article is just too much.
4/5/2026, 8:41:59 PM