Win 8, WinRT, perverted C++, what's your take?

[Madman]

It's been all about build event for the last few days, with win8 developer preview downloadable and stuff - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/home/

So, what's your take on all this?

I'm mainly C++ developer, and I've been doing a fair share of GUI development, and from what I've seen from the presentations on the web, Win8 leaves me scratching my head.

Seems that C/C++ is sort of back in the game, with uglified syntax (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... 85%29.aspx). Then there is WinRT - COM(reloaded), which doesn't bring me any bright feelings about all this, XAML that compiles to native, which again seems very crazy. And the whole interface direction, in general, seems very strange, ribbon everywhere... And the best of all, it's all big ball of mud with every technology before, and every technology from Win8 united in a big system, but with every one of them available and exposed to end user. And x86/amd64 vs. ARM incompatibilities...

Have you been developing Win GUI apps before? Do you see anything that Metro brings that would allow you to do things that were not possible before?

I somehow don't feel very confident I'll like the androidish/iphonish interface on my desktop. Actually it doesn't even feel that useful on a smartphone, but maybe I'm just getting rusty and have no clue what is cool nowadays...

What are your thoughts on the topic?

[Flying Fox]

C++/CLI is inherently "ugly" and has been in circulation for years. This is your first time seeing the syntax?

From the 5-10 minutes of skimming some articles, including this one, it seems development should be a bit easier. And I would say this is now a bit of a come back for native code, at least it should get back some attention from devs that have left that world for the "next big thing" (C#). You seem to have a dislike towards managed code so you should be a bit happier now, no?

IMO: The "Androidish/iPhoneish UI" may indeed be a dominant force in the future, with tablets and touch-based interface going mainstream. When you are doing touch, the classic Win32 UI is simply not going to cut it. BTW, the Kinect UI also works better with the tile-based UI as well. If that gesture/motion based UI takes off we should be well positioned for the future.

I am optimistic and will be trying to read more.

[Edit: I still think Win32 will be around, just that WinRT may finally give us something cleaner than messy Petzold-style code from the UI side and gives us some additional stuff either on-top or side-by-side with Win32]