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Supposively visual studio 2013. VB.net and C# can create Windows 8/windows phone app's. I havn't touched VB since vb6. Well I have done some when the first vb.net came out but it wasn't to extensive. Anyone do any windows(8)/phone coding?

I'm pretty sure W8 phone coding is as close to desktop as mobile is. I think you can just run native C# apps in W8 and it works. I work in C# all the time and I love it. Visual Studio is the best IDE out there as well.

Xaos wrote:I'm pretty sure W8 phone coding is as close to desktop as mobile is. I think you can just run native C# apps in W8 and it works. I work in C# all the time and I love it. Visual Studio is the best IDE out there as well.

Sort of. Windows Phone 8 actually has a pretty specific development model. It is shared, for the most part, with Windows 8 Store apps. But Windows Forms programs, for example, definitely will not work. The mobile/Store apps are built around C# and XAML.

I use VS 2013 but not and windows phone stuff.

I use VS 2013 as well, but have not done any Windows phone programming.

Speaking of VS 2013... I have a problem. Last night I opened it up to work on my project and there was a notice that an update was available. I downloaded it and ran the update. Now, close to 18 hours later, the update is still running. The progress bar is moving, but incredibly slowly.

On my work machine, it took about an hour to do the update, so I'm wondering if something is wrong on my home machine.

Anyone have that problem?

I develop daily with Visual Studio 2013 and do from time to time WPF (which is a superset of Silverlight / Metro / WP). Honestly I would personally not develop for windows phone as I don't like much the plateform, yet it's not really hard the last time I tried with the simulator. Still I would maybe check html/js solutions instead as you can then deploy your app on ios and android as well.

a_bertrand wrote:I develop daily with Visual Studio 2013 and do from time to time WPF (which is a superset of Silverlight / Metro / WP). Honestly I would personally not develop for windows phone as I don't like much the plateform, yet it's not really hard the last time I tried with the simulator. Still I would maybe check html/js solutions instead as you can then deploy your app on ios and android as well.

Nice to know. a_bertrand, Got a nice example of a VB.net plugin (not sure what its called in VB.net) program I can see.


What does everyone think of C# as a Server for a heavy use multi user application?

a_bertrand wrote:Still I would maybe check html/js solutions instead as you can then deploy your app on ios and android as well.

Unfortunately, this isn't really true. Microsoft really missed the boat with this one. You can tell that the HTML5 Windows 8 Store app development model was really tacked on as a layer above the C#/XAML runtime. As such, it uses a proprietary runtime layer called "WinJS". You use it almost constantly, and it won't port to other models. It also uses a proprietary promises system, so that insures that even your logical structure won't port without a major re-write. And to top it all off, it uses a proprietary system to hook into the Metro look-and-feel, so even your presentation won't port.

So you, in most cases, would be better off just starting over from scratch rather than trying to change every aspect of your app to run on other HTML5-capable mobile platforms. It pretty much negates the benefit of using HTML5 in the first place.

Making something for Windows 8 Store is for the birds. Many Windows 8 users have installed software such as Pokki to avoid the Windows 8 Store, and it is desperately empty of both users and apps.

The Windows Phone 8 Store is a bit of a different story. Even though it is in a distant third place with a meager user share, even 2 or 3% of all mobile phone users is a lot of users. And the WP8 Store is also desperately missing common apps. It could be a good option for lone hobbyist developers, since the Metro look-and-feel does mean you will have to do a whole lot less design work. That and its smaller userbase keeps the big-budget app development companies away, meaning there is more breathing room on WP8 Store. A lone developer will almost never get their non-game app noticed on Android or iOS, since there are multi-million-dollar companies making almost anything you could come up with and doing it with much higher production values then you could hope for. But the story is different on WP8 Store. You won't make a million dollars on WP8 Store, but you will likely get some downloads and make some extra cash if your app is useful, and there is a lot of stuff missing on WP8. So you could just find what it popular on Android and iOS, see it is missing on WP8, and remake it for the WP8 Store.

Jackolantern wrote:

a_bertrand wrote:But the story is different on WP8 Store. You won't make a million dollars on WP8 Store, but you will likely get some downloads and make some extra cash if your app is useful, and there is a lot of stuff missing on WP8. So you could just find what it popular on Android and iOS, see it is missing on WP8, and remake it for the WP8 Store.

Exactly and a lot of the stuff that is popular on android and iOS is so simple to create.

Pretty much. Some of the most popular and most lucrative apps on WP8 are unofficial clients to major services that don't maintain an official WP8 app. Social networks, dating sites, news sites, etc. that all have official apps on Android and iOS but not WP8 would make a good target. They will typically sell for $1 - $5 depending on features, and sell very well.