Are .NET languages really making any kind of dent in consumer desktop applications?

Question

Do you write consumer desktop applications with .NET languages? If so what type?

My impression is that most consumer desktop applications are still native compiled applications in C, C++ and the like.

Whilst .NET languages are growing in up take and popularity, do these new breed of applications ever break out of the enterprise & web domain to become high street consumer applications?

For example look at your desktop now? how many applications are written in .NET languages, Firefox? Microsoft Office? Thunderbird? iTunes? Microsoft Visual Studio?

My company develops high end CAD/CAE applications we leverage new technology but our core development is still done with C++.

Answer 1

I built and maintain a big desktop application written in .NET (1.1, 2.0 now). The application is for Dentists and it works by making use of the Ink technology found in the MIcrosoft.Ink namespace in the TabletPC SDK. Some dentists use Tablet PCs to make things easier and leverage the power of that technology.

On the other hand, since I find Windows UI not good looking (XP/Vista) and find that every application looks the same and inconsistent, I wrote my own GDI+ library of controls and while respecting more or less the "windows UI guidelines", I came up with very nice buttons and other UI elements that make my App look "way better" than any other "normal" windows application.

We run at full screen (maximixed, no controls, no app bar), but we do this because it's a very specific application used in machines dedicated to the task. Dental clinics don't use Microsoft Excel and ALT-TAB to our application. The application works like an "ATM", touch touch, done. Very simple. It has been a success in Europe where I am.

So I have to say that I am glad that the app is not a web application, because when we started, the .NET GDI+ for Windows Forms was way superior to anything that WEB could have offered; even today, Ajax is not able to reproduce the full desktop experience (not that it should but…).

Java had an ugly UI back then (don't know now) so we elected .NET and used C# ever since.

Desktop applications are not going to die anytime soon, some things still cannot be reproduced inside a webrowser.

I considered Java, C++, Delphi among others before starting with this six years ago. None offered the simplicity and power of c#.NET with little disadvantages (like the Framework that nobody had back then). Now, every windows box will surely have the .NET Framework 2.0.

Again, my consumer application is very specific and targeted towards a closed market, but we don't have anything against .NET.

Answer 2

As mentioned, I know of Tomboy, Beagle, and in addition, F-Spot. All come as part of most linux distros. Paint.NET is another app.

Answer 3

Maybe you are seeing this because many of the popular desktop apps have a code base older than 2001?

Edit: I should probably have said older than 2003 or 2004...I doubt anyone would have started a major desktop app the first year or two of the .NET release.

Answer 4

Intuit's TurboTax 2007 and 2008 are both written in .NET. Unlike the demo of a niche-market video edit tool I griped about in a comment to another answer, it actually installed completely cleanly and without incident (including its self-updater trick) on my slightly aging XP box here at home.

This year's UI is substantially different from past years, and for the most part its better. Since the transition to .NET seems to have happened last year without changing the UI much at all, the new UI can't be blamed on (or credited to) the switch to .NET.

I'm just a user, and have no idea what motivated their dev team to switch.

I do think that is the first retail software package I've caught in the wild that was clearly based on .NET.