What puzzles me...Are .NET languages the mainstream languages for Windows (standalone) applications?

Question

I'm an inquisitive .NET student without any commercial working knowledge and I have been puzzled by what exactlty are .NET languages meant for?

Q1.If you look on job websites, .NET seems mainly used for web applications, not much for Windows applications? (My dream job is to develop standalone small Windows applications.)

Q2.Are most "major" Windows applications developed using C/C++? e.g. word processing applications like MS Word or OpenOffice; photo editing software like ACD See or Photoshop; MSN or Yahoo Messenger; disc burners... Is .NET too slow and too indirect to handle these kinds of tasks?

Q3.Are .NET languages mostly only used in SIMPLE business applications involving database backend? E.g. payroll or GPS applications Because it's too slow and too indirect for major software applications?

Q4.I thought for the last few years .NET was the only development tool encouraged by Microsoft for Windows applications and C/C++ are outdated languages? Do they use MFC to access Windows API which is also outdated in new versions of Windows(backward compatible but not encouraged by Windows)?

Q5.If C/C++ are the main tools for major standalone Windows Applications, then the (slow) managed code approach is only a joke? Or the dominance of C/C++ is due to most major applications are older than .NET? Can you give me some famous names of software developed using .NET?

Thanks a lot for your industrial insight!

Answer 1

If you look on job websites, .NET seems mainly used for web applications, not much for Windows applications?

1) .NET is not very common for "mainstream" desktop applications, if you consider mainstream to be Photoshop, etc. This is often more due to the fact that mainstream applications are based on code that was written long before .NET came around, and those applications are never rewritten, only grown. They carry a huge amount of legacy code from previous versions.

Are most "major" Windows applications developed using C/C++?

2a) See #1.

Is .NET too slow and too indirect to handle these kinds of tasks?

2b) Absolutely not. .NET can be blisteringly fast or dismally slow. Like with any tool, it depends on who is using it.

Are .NET languages mostly only used in SIMPLE business applications involving database backend? E.g. payroll or GPS applications

3) Payroll or GPS are hardly simple. Line of Business (LOB) applications can be immensely complex and .NET is often a good match for these precisely because they are so complicated.

I thought for the last few years .NET was the only development tool encouraged by Microsoft for Windows applications and C/C++ are outdated languages?

4) That is wrong. C/C++ are not outdated, they are just different. They provide a more precise level of control over the machine in exchange for longer and more difficult development time.

If C/C++ are the main tools for major standalone Windows Applications, then the (slow) managed code approach is only a joke? Or the dominance of C/C++ is due to most major applications are older than .NET? Can you give me some famous names of software developed using .NET?

5) Dominance is very much inherited. Again, .NET is not slow. Mainstream applications are well-known in large part because they have been around longer than .NET, so there's no reason to expect many, if any, .NET applications as well-known or popular as Word or Photoshop. Several years in the future, it's not unreasonable to expect some famous applications to arise that are .NET-based.

Edit:

Some people seem to be confused and believe that somewhere in this answer, it is asserted that .NET is as fast as c++. The only argument present is that both .NET and c++ are fast enough to run most mainstream applications. And anyone who thinks development time in c++ and .NET are equal, all other things being equal, hasn't done much development in one of the two :)

Answer 2

.NET is increasingly becoming the language of choice for most Windows development, including standalone desktop applications.

That being said, C/C++ are still used heavily in this space. However, on Windows, much of the "cutting edge" work is done in .NET, or a mix of .NET with native code.

The latter is, frankly, probably where the most exciting work is happening. It allows you to have the "close to metal" feel of native code when required, but still have all of the power provided by the newest .NET framework (such as WPF) for the user interface layer and non-performance critical sections. This is becoming more common over time - for example, Visual Studio is still largely native (C++) code, but the entire user interface was written using WPF (.NET).

I do nothing but desktop Windows development. I personally prefer to use .NET for everything I possibly can - and revert to C/C++ for the very small (and increasingly smaller) portions where .NET doesn't make sense.

Answer 3

One issue I take with your question is that you ask a factual question ("Are most "major" Windows applications developed using C/C++?") and judgmental/causation question ("Is .NET too slow and too indirect to handle these kinds of tasks?") in one go.

It is indeed true that most Windows desktop applications (e.g. Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop and the likes) are written in native code. However it is also quite true that on server side, at least in Microsoft stack, it is all ASP.NET, i.e. managed code.

Consider now that performance requirements of a typical web application are much more strict than that of a typical desktop application - after all, a desktop application only have one user, when a server application may have thousands and thousands. So the causation link you imply sounds weak.

As the others have pointed out, there are many requirements at play when choosing implementation technique for your desktop app. It might be portability, tradition, existing code base, training of your developers, existence of managed wrappers for particular APIs (historically Windows was often lacking in the latter) and many other factors.

For the specific examples of "all managed" desktop apps I would cite ReSharper - it is a fully .Net desktop application with non-trivial user interface and logic. Visual Studio 2010 also have considerable portions (including UI/presentation layer) written in managed code.

Answer 4

There are a few main issues that, I believe, still contribute to the relative lack of commerical .NET applications (the type you buy in a box at your local software store):

• Requiring customers to (possibly) download the correct version of the framework runtime and/or install it before running your app.
• Where ultra-high performance is required, .NET array/collection bounds checking (managed code protection in general) is obviously slower than languages/tools that don't do this for you.
• The view that JIT compilation causes slower startup times.
• There is often little business value in re-writing 1000's of lines of working C/C++ code in .NET.

I'm not saying whether these issues are valid or not, just trying to answer your question as to why there is still a relative a lack of commerical (shrink-wrapped) .NET software.

Answer 5

1. .NET is certainly used for standalone applications, though determining exact percentages is next to impossible.
2. Yes they're mostly done with older languages. Many certainly could be done with .NET, but you'd need a lot of incentive to rewrite something as large as Word, Photoshop, etc., from the ground up.
3. Not necessarily, but it can look that way simply because a huge percentage of business applications can be (and are) written as database front-ends.
4. I don't think MS has a really unified message here -- they've certainly put a lot of work into .NET, but they also continue to develop and improve alternatives such as MFC (probably at least in part because they use it themselves).
5. Some of both. More than speed, C++ and C give flexibility, portability (e.g., Office for the Mac) and greater ability to distinguish your application from the others.