Hi Alastair,
There is no question that learning WPF is hard; much harder than
learning WinForms.
WinForms is great because it hides a lot of the UI complexity away from
you, allowing rapid UI development. However it does tend to work
against you when you try to do more complex operations (especially
customising UI).
WPF addresses this by not hiding any of the complexity at all, allowing
you to define the UI explicitly. This gives rise to a situation where
there are many, many more ways to skin the cat than with WinForms, and
this makes it hard to work out which way is the best for you in the
situation you are in at the time.
In my experience, once you get to a certain level of expertise in WPF it
does become a -lot- easier to code WPF than WinForms. There is still
the occasional UI issue you may encounter where you spend hours trying
to figure out how to achieve what you desire (I just had one yesterday;
it's very frustrating!). However the trade off is well worth it. The
binding system is complete, and in combination with the framework and
some good design patterns (MVVM for sure) you can bash out elegant
solutions very quickly.
It took me a good 4 months or so of coding WPF in anger before I was
comfortable with the disciplines and techniques WPF requires. I am
still learning new techniques and refining my coding style; I don't
think that will ever change. Yet there's no way in hell I would
willingly go back to WinForms now.
My advice is to stick with it. The WPF and Silverlight frameworks are
getting quite mature now, as are the tools to use to develop (Visual
Studio, Blend, Snoop to name a few). It's actually a lot easier to
learn now than it used to be.
Good luck!
Carl.
Carl Scarlett
Senior .NET/WPF Developer, UX Designer - Genesis Team
IT Applications Delivery | Bankwest
A: Level 5, 199 Hay Street | Perth | Western Australia | 6004
P: (08) 9449 8703
M: 0408 913 870
E: [email protected]
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From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
On Behalf Of Alastair Waddell <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, 14 October 2010 9:20 AM
To: <[email protected]>
Subject: Should I give up?
I have been trying to get a solid grip on WPF and I have to say it has
been a love hate journey.
I am trying to replace a business app I wrote in Winforms some time ago
- mainly as a learning exercise
So far I have been able to solve most of the challenges I have faced,
but I have to say that I have spent a ridiculous amount of time on just
the UI layout. Now granted I don't pretend to be a UI/UX expert, but the
amount of choices available make it almost unbearable. I have now spent
longer on the WPF app than the original Winforms app.
It seems that 10 Google searches give 10 different ways to achieve the
same result. - What is the "Best" way????
My latest challenge is with a checkbox list that I want to data bind. -
I would have thought this should be simple, but Nooooo
Anyway's, I am at that point where I am about to say "it's just too
hard" and wanted to know what others are thinking about the WPF
experience.
There are some things in WPF that are really appealing - but others that
are just so well difficult and it seems that there are very few examples
of business apps, so Is it worth pushing through? Or is it a case of
CRUD style apps are still better off in Winforms?
Cheers,
Alastair
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