There is not any doubt, the words I read today in this article and the complete lack of Silverlight during the PDC 2010 has been for me an hard blow. I put a great part of my work in this technology, I immediately recognized as my best friend for fast and reliable developing of applications. And I'm still convinced about this argument, also after the fashion of HTML5 has taken the scene few months ago and now that it has been promoted to a primary actor of the most important conference of Microsoft. This does not mean I really believe that Silverlight has been put in the trashcan and HTML5 has been suddenly put in its place. This will be a story about whom we will know in the next months and I'm confident that what appear to be real now will be demonstrated false soon.
I say these words not as a fanboy, but simply thinking at the reasons that moved me away from the HTML and Javascript world where I was really active. I remember the days when I spent my time trying to make HTML pages similar across four browser. I remember the days when I filled my code with message boxes just to try to understand why my javascript code did not work. I remember the frustrating hours I wasted to try to make good layouts with a technology that is not born to develop applications but only to display rich hypertexts. Yes, all we have to remember that HTML is not for applications. And it is not cross-platform. Developers makes it so.
I started my story in Silverlight with the very first beta of the version 1.0 and I still have in my ears the voices of people saying: "puah... you have to develop with Javascript... you are crazy!". And they were right, Silverlight 1.0 was ugly because it did not resolved the main problem of the developers, the need of having reliable code that is something Javascript cannot give us. And even Javascript libraries like jQuery can't. I would like to know where are the people that write testable code, the ones that use dependency containers, design patterns, or simply the most effective coding tecniques that have its main reason in protecting the code from errors (expecially runtime errors) and give it maintainability and flexibility. While Silverlight enforces all these tecniques, Javascript doesn't. So the question I asked myself today was: is it what the people really wants?
And my answer is no. I'm confident people like to have effective applications that they can develop in less of half the time they have to use with other technologies. HTML5 will be for sure an interesting thing, but none has to confuse it with a development platform. HTML is the sole language that can be used for websites, where search engines make the difference, but when someone seriously wants to develop "applications", it is an insane choice. Now, and watching at the story behind HTML probably forever. I want to remembers, closing this post, that HTML5 now is far to be final. Just during the demo at the PDC they showed how differently it behave on different browsers and to me none can seriously believe that the actors in the scene will not try to catch HTML5 and make it a weapon to kill the other competitors. This is already happening.