After a really hard month, I find the time to write a new post.
In this time, I had occasion to develop a Windows Phone Application for the first time. The .Net Environment and C# are not unkwnon in my exprerience, I had much occasion to work with Microsoft technology and the awesome Visual Studio.
However, from the last time I put hands in this environment, some things have changed, and I am really astonished by the choices has been made by Microsoft .
The first terrible tihng I came across, it’s not all Visual Studio edition are compatible with all Windows Phone SDK versions. I needed to develop an app that would support Windows Phone 7. But I had to find out that the 2013 edition that I had already installed, supported only by SDK 8 onwards. Both iOS and Android have not this type of requirements, at least for version so close.
The second wicked choice I came across, is the requirement for SLAT technology for the CPU tu run the Windows Phone 8 emulator. No virtualization software has this strange requirement, olny Microsoft. These instructions are present only in very recent CPU, preventing people like me, who still have a very powerful CPU, such as an Intel Core 2 Quad Core, to develop software for newer Windows Phone.
I can not understand why Microsoft wanted to opt for this type of choices, considering the small market share of Windows Phone, and the reduced amount of its value in the App Market. Microsoft should pursue a policy to get more benefits from the millions of .NET developers. With a Google search is very easy to see pages and pages of complaints about this choice…
Threfore, passed the technical barriers (circumvented by installing Visual Studio 2012 and using the emulator for Windows Phone 7), I could finally proceed to develop the application, being able to take advantage of MSDN and the magnificent Visual Studio. The Metro interface allows you to easily build applications with nice graphics, and the powerful .NET Framework allow you to develop very fastly.
It is undeniable the Visual Studio supremacy between development environments and .NET capabilities, and therefore the Microsoft potential. However, remain incomprehensible choices, definitely avoidable, to exclude a number of developers with unnecessary requirements.