It is what happens when passionate advocates feel betrayed by all the mismanagement that has happened since Windows 8.

I switched from someone that was kind found of WinRT, as what .NET 1.0 should have been, AOT compiled languages built on top of COM, improving the VB 6 experience, to someone burned out with the experience, back into Web development and distributed systems.

However, Microsoft keeps talking as if everything was tiptop, and that angers me thus I keep track of how bad things still are, and spend time making others aware of the false promises.

For example, I bet no one is aware that C++/WinRT is actually in maintenance, and the team responsible for killing C++/CX, is now having fun with Rust on windows-rs.

Yet Microsoft talks about using C++ to develop WinUI applications, as if the tooling was at the same level as using C++ Builder or Qt/QtBuilder.

I jumped the train when they crashed the Silverlight carriage.

I think when people heard that Claude Code is now writing itself, they thought "we could do that" and this is their attempt at it. Different people, different results.

I read it as Winamp myself at first pass. I don't care as much for the UI today, but really did like their Android app, and am sad it's no longer available. One of the better audio apps I'd tried on Android.

If you're using C# this is pretty much your best bet IMO... I think MS really missed the boat by not having a Linux target for MAUI, even if it was just passthrough to GTK (Or Qt).

Sure, I keep forgeting it even exists.

One of the many things this tool claims to be for is better automation of Electron and React Native integration. It seems like a tool designed for web stack developers that don't want to touch Visual Studio.

Besides Visual Studio (WPF), much of Office 365 (or whatever they renamed it to) is using either React Native (MS edition) or Electron (Web Tech) so their latest code is a mixed bag.

Works for me, since I can use it in a browser in Linux... Though some of the new features really tick me off.

Same as always, get one of the old books, the good ones back in the day.

Programming Windows, by Charles Petzold

Programming Windows with MFC, by Jeff Prosise

COM / DCOM Primer Plus, by Chris Corry Vincent Mayfield John Cadman

Their own custom framework built on top of Win32, nowadays they also use React Native, and Webview2 with React to share code with the Web versions.

The Web versions also consume C++ via WebAssembly, the mobile versions are a mix of the platform languages + C++.

There are some CppCon talks about how they use C++ in Office.

> plain Win32

Plain Win32 needs a renaissance. I worked with it and felt like a wizard. Message boxes, dialogue boxes, wizards, hammered out in pure C++. Combined with the Windows Implementation Library[1] I was writing fast, modern code.

[1]: https://github.com/microsoft/wil

Annoyingly many of the new features are WinRT only, so you have to deal with that horror.

I'm a big fan of the MFC/WinForms era stuff myself, but it has one crippling limitation: it doesn't handle display scaling very well at all.

This is absolutely baffling that you can't just make an api request and windows deals with installing those redistributables, must have seen that installer pop up close to 80 times in my life. I understand why maybe it was that way pre-internet but really they should have rolled it into windows and made it automatic by now if their dev tools team and windows team can't figure out how to just compile software on their own OS without shipping another bundle beside it.

The newer .msix apps are supposed to be able to handle this, and WinUI3 is supposed to come with a package-dependency that uses the package system to automatically make sure you have the 100+MB library up to date. However, this is the new cool system that nobody uses and doesn't help ordinary devs. They should just ship it in the OS.

> the utterly insane UX around the C++ redistributable

It could be worse—it could be Linux, with no forward compatibility. The VC/C++ redistributable means that applications can be written on modern Windows that targets much older Windows, by simply providing a sidecar installer that brings with it a newer C/C++ standard library. This situation is basically impossible on Linux without messing with Docker.

Well, was. Then Facebook AI made a side-step, and stopped focusing on downloadable LLM models, and Ollama is now trying to squeeze their users so they can show profits. r/LocalLlama is also a former shadow of itself, with the top moderator trying to move the community off reddit.

Seems Llamas will disappear as quickly as they became trendy.

Their own namespace starts with "Microsoft ...".

Yes, Package Identity was the bane of my existence for a while. It's wild how MS gated important APIs behind it and then made it so difficult+impractical to work with (I honestly think this is a large part of why WinRT was mostly ignored by developers).

I've moved on, but this looks like it will at least fix some of the paper cuts.

I remember the problems with the WinRT APIs being tied to specific Windows versions (still are, just a smaller surface area, so less of an issue). With the old service pack model it wouldn't be an issue but with constant OS releases it was too much churn.

I thought they had solved the worst problem with WinUI2, a bit like the compatibility library in Android, so you only had to bundle the more "volatile" bits while still delegating most things to the OS.

But then they went and threw all that out the windows (pun intended) with WinUI3 which even has its own separate implementation of DirectWrite for some god forsaken reason.

Unlike the DirectX redistributables of old it's not even backwards compatible so you can't tell people "just download the WinAppSDK runtime", they have to install the specific version you used when developing your app.

You get that download "for free" if you use a .appx, but with a regular installer you're on your own. Even the way apps link to the WindowsAppSDK is a mess with a weird bootstrapping process.

Not worth the headache.

If you use classic unstyled Win32 controls (Windows 95-2000 style) then you can do that. If you use uxthemed Win32 controls (Windows XP onwards) then there's no official dark theme support.

> I wonder what would be cutoff age for readers to read it correctly, I guess under 30 read it correctly, and over 40 will many read it as Winamp

I am 17 and I wasn't wearing my glasses and I was really speaking winamp until I read your comment then scrolled back again to realize it was winapp

My bet is that I spend time on HN so I knew what winamp is in more detail but if say friends my age read it & say they use tiktok more, I would say that they wouldn't call it winamp but winapp

So I guess I might be one of the few exceptions but I feel like people on HN are much more likely to read it as winamp than not & age might not be thaaat big of an impact (atleast on HN)

I'm 20 and I read Winamp, ha.

I reckon that the majority of the HN audience is into older (perhaps more graceful) working technology despite all the fanfare that newer, shinier stuff garners.

GPU pass through is possible but too much overhead to utilise.

Ask the marketing department that destroyed one of the most famous brands on earth, MS Office, and renamed it to "Microsoft Copilot 365 app": https://office.com

Winapp, it really whips the LLMas ass

I just realized it now after reading your comment, I opened first comments to find out what's new about Winamp before opening the site

It's perfectly clear: if you need to run a Windows app on another Windows PC, you just open the Windows app store on your Windows PC to download the Windows app Windows App, a Windows app that lets you connect to and run Windows apps on other Windows PCs.