/ blog / archive — 2 entries
BLOG_
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Field notes from 35+ years in the trenches. Mostly C# / .NET / Avalonia,
some Rust, rants about OOP, retro emulation, and whatever weird thing has me up at 2am.
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winforms
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2026 // current cycle
0x14
2026.05.19
Is MAUI another Silverlight? A retrospective on every Microsoft UI framework, and why developers are tired
Microsoft has shipped more UI frameworks than any other vendor in computing history. Win32, MFC, WinForms, WPF, Silverlight, Xamarin.Forms, UWP, WinUI, MAUI, Blazor Hybrid. Each launched with a deck full of reasons this one was the future. Some are still here. Most are not. The real question is not whether MAUI is the next Silverlight; it is why a working developer in 2026 should ever again bet on a Microsoft UI framework as a strategic choice.
13′
0x06
2026.04.27
Visual Studio 2026 still ships the form designer Alan Cooper drew in 1987
Every UI framework Microsoft has shipped since WinForms (2002) was sold as its successor. WPF, Silverlight, UWP, MAUI, Blazor desktop. Twenty-four years on, WinForms is still there, on modern .NET, with a designer that any VB6 developer would recognise on sight. The Cooper and Geary form-designer architecture from 1987 is still the path of least resistance for a working line-of-business app in 2026, and that is not an accident.
12′