Silverlight 1.1: Feels very raw

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I've been playing with Silverlight for perhaps 2 weeks now.  Evaluating it for a business application, here are some findings:

Silverlight 1.0

It's just fantastic that Microsoft actually got this out of the door.  Programming with Javascript is simple.  More a Flash app than a business app, but stable and rock solid. 

Silverlight 1.1 (now renamed to 2.0) Alpha

Programming with managed code is awesome.  Lack of standard controls really sticks out at you, everybody is writing their own versions of TextBox, DropDownList, etc etc.  No Cross-Domain web service calls is annoying too.  Writing XAML in Blend is a lot easier than in VS.NET even with the Silverlight tools installed.

Silverlight 2.0 Beta

Apparently this will be released in a few more weeks' time, before MIX 2008.  It's got everything.  More controls, better network stack.  All for under 5mb download.  Go-live licence.

I'm somewhat annoyed they won't allow sockets - I want to write a game :-(.

jliu

Good by fish :-(

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I went home last night and Wifey told me we've lost another fish.  This is our second fish that we've lost since we've taken custody of the fish tank of a dear friend.

We never named the fish.  My logic was that if you name the fish you became emotionally attached to him a lot more.  Given that fish have much shorter life-spans than other pets, and are not likely to respond to name commands (unlike say a dog), there was no good reason to name the fish.

Still it was a bit sad to wrap the fish up in a piece of tissue and put him away.  The fish was drying up very quickly once it's out of the water and already I can see decay claiming it.

That was the 2nd of our small fish to go.  Now there's only the larger fish left in the tank.  I'm debating about whether to buy more but currently I'm settling on "no", I think when our friend comes back we'll return this tank, and then go ahead and get ourselves a bigger tank and we'll fill it with more fish.

jliu

A (near) perfect project for 2008

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A (near) perfect project for 2008 would be:

  • Use WPF for front-end (or WPF/E silverlight)
  • Use LINQ for business tier (C# 3.5)
  • Use SQL Server 2008 for the database

Bonus points

  • Use XNA libraries (hmm starting to sound like a game!)
  • Pay lots of money (no, can't be a game then)

If you have a project like above, and are after an experienced .NET developer email me NOW!

jliu