1. Microsoft did a good thing at that time with Visual Basic. Building visual interfaces with RAD tools is the most efficient way, as defining visual elements with code is harder. VB was great at its time, Borland Delphi and C++ Builder were good, QT Builder was good, Windows Forms was good. Of course, why use good models when you can inflict pain and let people define UIs by using plain code?
WPF used XAML and the new MAUI uses XAML, and while it is a better experience to define the visuals with XAML, a RAD tool like VB or C++ builder is much better. We should have RAD tools for desktop apps and mobile apps.
In my software career I've not only built apps and websites and web applications and backends, but I worked as a game programmer, too. And people preferred game engines like Unreal and Unity because they were rapid tools with which is was much easier to build game levels and UIs than doing that by code.
2. I didn't use VB, because by the time I've encountered VB, I already knew C and C++ and felt they were more powerful and fast. I enjoyed using Borland C++ builder very much, and I wondered why MS didn't provide such a tool and enforced Win32 over programmers. I thought Microsoft hated programmers. And being that failed to provide one API for desktop programming, switching from Win32 to MFC to Windows Forms, to WPF, to MAUI - I still sometime think MS doesn't do the best job with providing tools for programmers. Now that MAUI is the thing, I hope it will stay and won't be replaced in two years by another thing.
3. If people think using Haskell or Rust is hard, they should buy Petzold's Book and try to program Windows with the info provided in that book. To do very simple things like apps with menus and child Windows, you really had to spend hours, correct compile errors, have the program crash, debug it, make it not crash, observe that things don't work as they should, change the code, solve errors, observe that the program crashes, solve those bugs, make it not crash, observe that things don't work as they should. And all that without having learn.microsoft.com, stackoverflow, YouTube to learn from.
WPF’s and Android’s approach are the best of both worlds. You get both a visual designer that can get you far, and human-editable XML, which is useful for more complicated layouts or for copy-pasting similar widgets around.
Yes, note that JavaFX has the same approach but also has a visual designer (Scene Builder). It can be used from any JVM language which is a lot these days. Like, you could write a JavaFX app in JavaScript or Python if you wanted to.
1. Microsoft did a good thing at that time with Visual Basic. Building visual interfaces with RAD tools is the most efficient way, as defining visual elements with code is harder. VB was great at its time, Borland Delphi and C++ Builder were good, QT Builder was good, Windows Forms was good. Of course, why use good models when you can inflict pain and let people define UIs by using plain code?
WPF used XAML and the new MAUI uses XAML, and while it is a better experience to define the visuals with XAML, a RAD tool like VB or C++ builder is much better. We should have RAD tools for desktop apps and mobile apps.
In my software career I've not only built apps and websites and web applications and backends, but I worked as a game programmer, too. And people preferred game engines like Unreal and Unity because they were rapid tools with which is was much easier to build game levels and UIs than doing that by code.
2. I didn't use VB, because by the time I've encountered VB, I already knew C and C++ and felt they were more powerful and fast. I enjoyed using Borland C++ builder very much, and I wondered why MS didn't provide such a tool and enforced Win32 over programmers. I thought Microsoft hated programmers. And being that failed to provide one API for desktop programming, switching from Win32 to MFC to Windows Forms, to WPF, to MAUI - I still sometime think MS doesn't do the best job with providing tools for programmers. Now that MAUI is the thing, I hope it will stay and won't be replaced in two years by another thing.
3. If people think using Haskell or Rust is hard, they should buy Petzold's Book and try to program Windows with the info provided in that book. To do very simple things like apps with menus and child Windows, you really had to spend hours, correct compile errors, have the program crash, debug it, make it not crash, observe that things don't work as they should, change the code, solve errors, observe that the program crashes, solve those bugs, make it not crash, observe that things don't work as they should. And all that without having learn.microsoft.com, stackoverflow, YouTube to learn from.