What’s the fuss around Silverlight about?

Since day one of PDC10 there has been a lot of press attention for what appears to be a change in strategy for Microsoft around Silverlight. As I’ve gotten several questions from people concerning the stories published by several respectable sources and how this would impact the business, I decided to write down my take on this.

The PDC10 debacle

So what are people on about? It basically comes down to two things. One is the “lack” of attention for Silverlight on the PDC10. The other is Microsoft announcing that they completely back HTML5. It was elaborated on by saying that there has been a shift in the strategy around platform independent web technology. Also, because there has not been an announcement on Silverlight 5, people are scared into believing there will not be a Silverlight 5.

Most people interpreted this by concluding that Microsoft will limit their investments in Silverlight to the Windows Phone platform. Let’s assume they are right in their conclusion. If that is true, then it’s devastating for all those developers and companies who have invested heavily in Silverlight in the past years.

My analysis on Silverlight

So how do I look at this? Well, there is a number of things I see differently from most people. Let’s have a look at some of those.

HTML5 vs Silverlight

A lot of people see HTML5 and think it replaces Silverlight for the browser completely. Having worked with both HTML4 and Silverlight and having looked into what HTML5 brings to the table so far (it’s not done yet), I have to disagree.

First of all most people that make this statement think of Silverlight as a platform for media and games, similar to Flash. However there is a lot more to Silverlight. For one it is a lot better suited for Line Of Business (LOB) applications. Another major advantage is that everything works and looks exactly the same in different browsers and on the desktop.

Another major advantage about using Silverlight for web developemt is that you can use one programming language across different tiers, complimented by one markup language. Compare that to HTML and you immediately spot the problem. Not only do you need HTML for markup, you need CSS for styling and Javascript for client interaction. To top it all off you need some server side language to work with data. That’s four languages for something that Silverlight does with two languages. Are the decision makers of IT-world paying attention? Less is definitely more in this case.

Because of all this, and a great IDE in the Visual Studio / Blend combination, productivity in Silverlight is much higher and more business logic focused than the classic web application. This allows developers to provide more value more quickly, making more money for the companies and their customers.

But Microsoft has given up on Silverlight, right??

Well, did they? Let’s look at some facts here.

First of all this statement is all based on Microsoft communicating their support for HTML as the only true platform independent technology. People think that this is change in strategy, but in fact it’s not. Let’s face it, that is just reality. The downside on Silverlight is that there is no complete support for all platforms. I’m not only talking about Linux here. It’s also about a lot of mobile platforms. And it’s hardly realistic to expect to get that support for all these platforms. It’s not going to be cost effective to do so. In my book, this statement is stating the obvious and it would be stupid to say anything else.

But will Microsoft stop investing heavily Silverlight because of HTML5? I don’t think so. First of all HTML5 is far from complete. It will take at least another ten years to make it to the main stream in it’s full glory. Second of all HTML5 will have trouble adapting, because it is a global standard and everyone wants to have their say about it. Silverlight doesn’t have this issue.

And then there is the business side of things. Microsoft has invested so heavily in Silverlight, it would not make sense for them to stop now. They have cranked out three major releases of Silverlight in the past two years, including tooling for Visual Studio and support in Blend. They have invested in the Silverlight Toolkit. They brought Silverlight to the Windows Phone platform. And recently they introduced Visual Studio LightSwitch, which can generate complete Silverlight applications. Really, they have hundreds of millions of dollars invested in Silverlight, with great success as a result. And frankly, there is no reason for them to stop doing so, for all of the reasons mentioned before. As long as it keeps selling software for them, they’ll keep working on it.

Conclusion

So we can conclude that Microsoft will not stop pushing Silverlight forward in the foreseeable future. However, it is up to decision makers to stick with the facts and not go with the press buzz, or they will be investing in the wrong technologies, loosing a lot of money in the process. And it’s up to developers to stand by their choice of technology. There really is no need to suddenly change anything.

Just remind yourselves, what made you choose Silverlight as a platform in the first place? Exactly.

Microsoft introduces LightSwitch: Game changer or gadget showoff?

On VSLive 2010 Microsoft announced Visual Studio LightSwitch. In this article I want to take a short look at what it is, based on the information provided by Microsoft so far. Then I’ll share some of my thoughts on this with you about how this might affect us as developers.

So what is this LightSwitch thingy about?

Well, basically it is a new edition of Visual Studio 2010 that enables people to quickly build data oriented applications (are there any other types?). ‘Oh,’ I hear you say, ‘another Oracle Forms clone. That’s not going to be any good.’ Well, first of all I’d say go and take a look at the VSLive 2010 Keynote. Also there is a great introduction video here. And for more of a deep dive you can check out this video.

‘Ok, so it’s just the next Microsoft Access?’, I hear you ask. Well, not quite either. The big difference with the previously mentioned platforms is the fact that you get an application with a multi-tier architecture and you get to choose what your client is and what your data source is. You can even have multiple data sources and link them together. And if you need to take your application to the next level, there are all kinds of extensibility points in both the underlying framework and the IDE itself.

On the UI end they have figured a way to do better as well. In the IDE you don’t have a WYSIWYG editor, but a sort of a tree view so you can better see and understand what you’re doing. The generated UI is also based on templates, so you can easily update the look and feel of your application at one point. And then when you do want a WYSIWYG editor you just start up your application, click a button and your on your way.

All in all it seems that Microsoft has succeeded in building a tool attempted and failed by a lot of companies.

The holy grail of database oriented systems?

For decades a lot of companies have attempted to build a system where you would simply define a data model, press a button and presto, there is your new software. Most companies failed and some partly succeeded, but no one was able to build a system that would actually work in a broad spectrum of cases and still provide enough customizability to implement the very specific features needed in very specific applications.

Most of the time failure occurred because the software would be to generic and the resulting applications would not meet enough of the users needs. And when teams would attempt to implement code to satisfy these needs, they would either become to specific or to expensive.

But is it really that simple? I don’t think so. Most database oriented systems I’ve worked on/with always have some form of extra processing, connect to external systems in special ways or need some very specific UI. In practice I think that most application that professional developers work on will not be built with LightSwitch all of a sudden. There may be some, but not many. There will be many reasons not to build an application in LightSwitch, but the main reason will be that developers feel they might not have enough control to actually build was is required. Another important reason is that you don’t get to choose what technology is used to build your application.

‘So it’s not the holy grail, then? It must fail miserably’ I hear you say. Well, no.

LightSwitch as a game changer

LightSwitch will be a game changer. We will see less complicated systems being build in LightSwitch all over the place. For Microsoft I guess it is all about getting the smaller companies to go with them, instead of going open source. And they do give them an important advantage in allowing them to cheaply and easily build their own software and still keep that software scalable. So in that respect it is a game changer.

Another effect will not be seen until we have moved on a couple of years. Right now we see a lot of applications build in Microsoft Access, which have reached their limits and need a ‘professional’ rebuild. Usually that means bringing in a team of developers to get the job done. Changes are these applications will not be rebuild in LightSwitch. However, what will happen with the LightSwitch applications in a couple of years, when they have reached their limits? Exactly, developers will need to be extending those systems. Mind you, I do think this will greatly reduce the number of rebuilds of applications, as I expect Microsoft to come up with a good upgrade strategy for future versions of LightSwitch, making sure they are always running on the latest and greatest technology.

And finally I think we will be seeing more and more ‘secondary’ applications. What I mean by that is applications which are used to fill in some gaps in our current processes. For example, if you are building a LOB application and you have some tables in your databases, that your company needs to maintain for your customers, why would you not build the UI for that in LightSwitch? Or if you need to collect metadata for generating code, why not do that in LightSwitch? And there will be many other uses like this for LightSwitch where it can add to existing systems as well.

Conclusion

As with a lot of the new technologies that we’ve seen in the past decade, LightSwitch does provide us with another useful tool in our toolbox. It again takes away some of the repeating work we as developers do, so we can focus on what makes our software unique. This again will be a game changer, just not as a lot of people expect.

So what are your thoughts on LightSwitch? Let us know by leaving a comment.