I really hope this will change. I am testing elm now and I think this kind of approach is the future. But it saddens me that we had "proper functional languages" for nearly 60 years and it took all this time to realize their benefit.
The web is a Frankenstein of HTML/CSS/JavaScript that is yet to match the productivity we already had in the 90's with Delphi, VB and 4GL tools.
Even now, there isn't any Web tool that allows for designing Web UIs like Microsoft Blend (XAML) or Qt Creator (QML).
The Web could have been like that if XHTML and its related standards were adopted, then we could have had something like XUL or XAML.
Instead we have the broken promise of Web Components that still aren't properly supported across all major browsers, or the "UI framework of the day" without any kind of tooling support besides code.
Same here. After the mess with WPF, WinRT, Silverlight, HTML5/JS and now UWP I am done with windows desktop. We just ported one big WPF app to web and will continue to do so.
That line really bothers me. I'm writing a new application in WPF (thus using Win32) and am avoiding UWP because of the fact that I want (actually need to) support older platforms. As I'm writing this software to make money and it is B2B, I can't afford to ignore Windows 7 as many businesses are still running it and many more still target it.
I'm currently learning UWP as well but why would I bet my product on a technology that limits me to a single operating system version?
I am, I'm currently learning Elixir/Phoenix and Elm and am doing WebApi work at work. Most of the problems that I want to solve on a hobby/solo project, though, lend itself more to desktop software.
Cool. I have done WPF for a while and it just feels very stale. Nothing new coming, MS changing direction very 2 years. I would put everything possible on the web now. It's a much more interesting environment. And if you really need desktop for some reason, I would probably go Qt/C++ now. Or straight Win32.
My product depends on WIX, which in turn depends on .NET, so there was no reason not to go with .NET (I started with WinForms but then converted to WPF). Web can be interesting but I just have a harder time coming up with ideas for products than I do with desktop.
Once I can't target Win32 anymore I'll switch to the browser. Metro/Modern/UWP isn't on my radar. I doubt I'm alone in those thoughts.