Should I do Win Application ?

Question

Hi ,

It's a question comes to my mind all the time and So i would like to share , And know you mature programmers opinion's .

Unfortunately i spent some years of my life doing Graphic (web) and suddenly i quite and start Web Programming ( because i found myself more interested in programming and because i had a base knowledge about web ) . And now It's more than a year i'm doing .Net (ASP.NET WebApp)programming . During these time , I never even create a Windows Form Application template in VS .

When i take a look at profiles of sophisticated programmers , I see they all know a lot of technologies and I feel so bad .

Do you think Should i learn and do Win App Programming ? Because there are enough (a lot) different things out there in Web world that i can't catch up .

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

The WinForms programming model is quite similar to that of WebForms. Why not give it a try and see if you like it? Investing those few minutes it takes to create a project from that template and poking around I would say are minutes well spent. After all, it is within the samme .Net Framework. What .Net knowledge you have already and any new knowledge you gain will benefit you when developing apps in both WinForms and WebForms.

Update: when you see how easy WinForms development is, I would advice (as @Richard Hein also suggests) moving on to XAML-based apps. WinForms is superseded by WPF and Silverlight.

Answer 2

I'd skip ahead and learn WPF application development and Silverlight development, because it will benefit you more to do that than Windows Forms. Also XAML based applications are more similar to web development than Windows Forms. Any investment in learning Windows Forms will not be as valuable, going forward.

Answer 3

The reason you've probably spent more time over the past year doing web development is because there is more work in that arena. The TCO (total cost of ownership) to organizations offering web-based access to an application vs. fat client distribution is hard to argue with. There are relatively rare cases (hardware interface, disconnected solutions, OS plug-ins, etc.) where it still makes sense to write applications for the desktop, but in most cases the demand for your skills will remain on the web because that's where the savvy people paying for all this work are spending their money.

Rather than turn toward WinForms development take a look at sharpening your skills for the cloud. Amazon Web Services, RackSpace, Microsoft Azure, VMWare, IBM and others are all getting into that space and it's only going to grow, and quickly. Right now there aren't a lot of people who have much experience in this space because it is relatively new. You can more easily differentiate yourself if you teach yourself some skills in this area while it's still new.

If you aren't the teach-yourself type consider looking at something closer to what you already are comfortable with and check out ASP.net MVC or brushing up on jQuery. There are better online references and even some books to help with each of those.

Good luck / keep enjoying what you're doing and the experience will come!