Should I Wait For 1.1?

re: Should I Wait For 1.1?

jackinthegreen — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 16:27:48 GMT

Remember Atlas? Ignore the hype and spin. if you're a .net coder, wait patiently for 1.1, IMHO. MS, as always, is casting about frantically to react to it's competitors and to open-source iniiatives. loyal but naive web devs get victimized by these spasms for fear of being left behind the "next big thing".

Take a deep breath, play around with 1.1 to get familiarized, and be ready for the mature release. (and take interest-conflicted MS bloggers opinions with a healthy grain of salt)

Cheers

What You Need to Know About Silverlight 1.0 Release

Joshua — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 04:07:03 GMT

re: Should I Wait For 1.1?

jesseliberty — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 16:01:28 GMT

Re: Shawn's article. Shawn is a great and very smart guy, but of course he was offering his opinion. I'll ask if he'll stop by to clarify, because I'm sure it wasn't his intention to leave you less certain than before he began.

I think the feeling among most folks who have worked with SL 1.0 is that there are a lot of very serious very powerful things you can do with SL 1.0 (see the Major League Baseball show case application), and there will be more things that you can do more easily as Silverlight matures.

1.1 will be a major milestone, but it won't be the only one. It isn't as if we'll release 1.1 and stop; there will always be something new and cool coming, and if we do things right, there will always be the Silverlight you are using, and the Silverlight that you are experimenting with while it is in alpha/beta.

A couple months ago I gave a presentation on .NET 3.5 to about 300 working professional programmers. They were all very interested, but about 1/2 way into the presentation I learned that about 2/3 of them were still using .NET 1.0 at work; their companies were very reluctant to move up to .NET 2.0!

Adoption rates certainly vary; and depending on what you are doing, and how many folks you have to train, and how quickly your folks pick up new technology, and what bang you see for your buck, etc. etc., you may decide to wait, to learn wpf first, to start with 1.0 or to start with 1.1. These are all reasonable decisions; all I'm arguing is that there is no a priori reason to discount 1.0 as a "toy."

In any case, my job isn't to convince anyone to use anything; it is merely to facilitate the use of whichever version you choose to use, and to provide you with the tools, information and supportive community you need to do so.

-j

re: Should I Wait For 1.1?

j_programmer — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 13:38:50 GMT

Sorry for the double post, but in the article linked to on Silverlight.net has this interesting comment that puts into words exactly what I believe many of use .NET folks are thinking:

The version of Silverlight you choose to introduce to a new project will likely depend on your development team's skill set. If your development team primarily does heavy ASP.NET server-side development (mostly C# and VB.NET), you should wait until Silverlight 1.1 is available. If your team is adept at client-side languages like JavaScript, Silverlight 1.0 is a great platform to introduce.

www.cio.com/.../2

This, interestingly, is by Shawn Wildermuth, one of the video tutorial creators on the Silverlight.net site.

He also says on page four:

If you plan to create applications that are primarily replacements for data-driven desktop applications, you might miss the lack of basic controls and data binding in Silverlight. Silverlight is not a replacement for Windows Forms, WPF, Java Applets or Sharepoint. Simply put, Silverlight was not designed to do line of business applications in these early versions. But if you want to create rich, compelling applications with reach across platforms and operating systems, Silverlight is a good fit.

And now I'm not sure if I want to use it at all, at the moment. I need Silverlight to do serious things. I don't know what it means to create "rich, compelling applications" that cannot do "line of business" things. I remember Scott Guthrie's airline demo. That looks like a business application to me, and that's the kind of thing I want to do. He concludes with, "Now is the time to determine where to use Silverlight in your own Web strategy." Honestly, I have no idea now.

re: Should I Wait For 1.1?

j_programmer — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 13:19:38 GMT

Thanks for the post. I appreciate your comments, and while I understand that Silverlight itself can be understood absent from a particular language, that is the only benefit I can see. That is also a major benefit. But having to use lots and lots of javascript when I am used to .NET seems daunting, especially, when 1.1 appears to be coming soon. Why would I want to invest all the time with javascript, when I can wait on what I already know?

I admit is tempting, but I feel like it will be a waste of time because sooner or later I'm going to have to go back and maintain that javascript, if I build anything serious. And if I don't build anything serious with it, what's the point in spending serious time with it? To learn, yes, but when you take on the new technology simply to learn the basics it makes it hard to take it seriously as something to use right now. I also do not relish making all the controls from scratch and hope that Visual Studio and/or Blend will have drag and drop UI controls like we are used to with forms. I've been waiting a long time on something like this from Microsoft. I guess I can wait a little while longer, but, who knows, temptation may be the best of me.

re: Should I Wait For 1.1?

palermo4 — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 00:53:34 GMT

sl101,

WPF/E... E=Everywhere.

re: Should I Wait For 1.1?

sl101 — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 15:08:03 GMT

Should I wait for UI Controls? Yes

Do I like coding javascript? No

Silverlight was WPF/e please let us know what the e means. We know it means no 3D a nd thats fine but what subset of controls (UI and Layout) are comming over. It would be nice to have some idea of the MS plan so that we can plan our projects.

Personally we have chosen to get familiar with WPF while waiting on 1.1 and dropped a year of Flex development in anticipation of dotnet running in the browser.

Your comments are greatly appreciated.

re: Should I Wait For 1.1?

jesseliberty — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 14:25:22 GMT

JadedOmega:

I'm not sure I understand how starting with 1.1 saves you having to remember hundreds of new classes. Can you say a bit more about that, or give a concrete example?

In any caes, it is important to remember that 1.0 is fully baked and won't have breaking changes, whereas 1.1 is ALPHA and will certainly be changing before release.

Thanks.

re: Should I Wait For 1.1?

JadedOmega — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 04:49:06 GMT

I'm just picking up all of the .net architecture, mostly because I was bored. And I would advise most of the newer people to SL to start with 1.1, if for no other reason than you don't have to remember the hundreds of new classes(because they get generalized in javascript)

which lets you learn more of the programming patterns instead of tedious datatypes

Silverlight Cream for August 17, 2007

WynApse — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 23:37:58 GMT

Silverlight Cream for August 17, 2007

Silverlight Soliloquy: Versions

Palermo4 — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 19:58:58 GMT

After my alter-ego determined he was qualified to get started with Silverlight development, he began

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Should I Wait For 1.1? - Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 14:35:19 GMT

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