Programming Silverlight/WPF with Windows Forms skills

Question

To what extent can one program Silverlight/WPF with Windows Forms skills?

To what extent is it OK to developer internal applications in a style similar to Windows Forms?

---

The background for my question is that I apply for positions where Silverlight is required, and I try to argue that my Windows Forms experience should be sufficient for internal applications.

I am aware that Silverlight/WPF offers a lot more, but mostly for "fancy" stuff in a web like manner, and also the possibility of higher SoC through th MVVM pattern.

Answer 1

Yes, you can definitely start working on WPF/SL and your WinForms experience would be helpful but I won't agree that it would be sufficient.

Interestingly most of the developers working in WPF currently are basically from WinForms background(as per my experience) and most of them believe that WPF is not very different from WinForms and they try to develop the WPF application applying same problem solving techniques, concepts and methodologies; this is where all the problems starts.

I would suggest you to first go through a WPF/SL book(at least first half) and then while you work on WPF/SL application try and use the new concepts(XAML, Binding, Commands, DependencyProperty, Styles, Triggers etc.) to solve every problem you come across(even if you can solve/implement it in old way easily).

Some may not agree with this but I have seen my friends implementing almost everything (in WPF) in WinForms way and later complaining about memory leaks, performance etc.