DmitryKo
Veteran
FYI, Paul Thurrot has a great round-up on the future of Windows APIs:
Microsoft Explains the Future of the Windows 10 App Platform
The Future of Windows, Vaguely (Premium)
Microsoft Confirms UWP is Not the Future of Windows Apps
Here's a slide from Ignite 2019 session BRK3323, Windows App Development Roadmap: Making Sense of WinUI, UWP, Win32, .NET
https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/81330
UWP already has support for desktop productivity apps with multiple instances and multi-document interface; additional improvements should come (MSBuild2018 session BRK3506). But it's not a fully capable desktop platform yet - even a simple Notepad clone is quite hard to reimplement as an UWP app.
I assume WinRT/UWP/WinUI would evolve with time to offer full-featured desktop experience, but I guess it would take another rebranding and a new major version of the framework - one that:
Such reengineering is certainly a huge undertaking, and Microsoft is probably not ready to commit to it in lieu of their current "mobile first, cloud first" strategy, since they're not certain standalone desktop Windows platform can survive in the long run...
Microsoft Explains the Future of the Windows 10 App Platform
The Future of Windows, Vaguely (Premium)
Microsoft Confirms UWP is Not the Future of Windows Apps
Here's a slide from Ignite 2019 session BRK3323, Windows App Development Roadmap: Making Sense of WinUI, UWP, Win32, .NET
https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/81330
UWP already has support for desktop productivity apps with multiple instances and multi-document interface; additional improvements should come (MSBuild2018 session BRK3506). But it's not a fully capable desktop platform yet - even a simple Notepad clone is quite hard to reimplement as an UWP app.
I assume WinRT/UWP/WinUI would evolve with time to offer full-featured desktop experience, but I guess it would take another rebranding and a new major version of the framework - one that:
1) offers a clear transition path for traditional Win32 "desktop" User32/GDI/ComCtl32/MFC and WinForms applications, "cross-platform" .NET WPF/Xamarin.Forms applications, and "mobile" UWP applications,
2) uses modern C++20/23/26 language features to maintain parity with C# on the .NET platform and memory-safe languages like Rust, and
3) uses C++/WinRT, Rust/WinRT, and C#/WinRT projections for the "lightweight COM" interfaces
- before developers would accept WinRT/WinUI as the "Windows 10 API", if they could be lured back to the heavily fragmented Windows API landscape at all...2) uses modern C++20/23/26 language features to maintain parity with C# on the .NET platform and memory-safe languages like Rust, and
3) uses C++/WinRT, Rust/WinRT, and C#/WinRT projections for the "lightweight COM" interfaces
Such reengineering is certainly a huge undertaking, and Microsoft is probably not ready to commit to it in lieu of their current "
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