Silverlight might die... but XAML will be alive...

"Silverlight is going to die"... This has been the hottest topic for the past 2 - 3 weeks. I have not seen any Microsoft guy responding to this post. There were several discussions, blog posts and debates on this topic and most of the bloggers / editors stick to the "gossip" that "Silverlight is going to die". As a Silverlight developer, I was deeply concerned and irritated of Microsoft, trying to kill the product before it reaches its peak. Well, I was wrong.

After going through many blog posts and news, I came up with my own conclusion.

Silverlight might die... but XAML will still be there in the future and this will be the future of all the existing applications. So no worries for Silverlight application developers :)

As I understand from Win 8 tutorials, XAML is one of the core components above the Win 8 Kernel, Instead of Silverlight application; Visual Studio will provide a Metro Style application which is the same XAML application with many more features; Of course, you have to learn a lot more than what you have done with Silverlight application, but this won’t be as hectic. The Metro style application will follow the same XAML concept that you were learning in Silverlight. As I understand, the Win 8 OS with Metro Mode is mainly build to target tablet PC’s with touch interface. There is a Desktop mode which actually runs on normal PC’s which will also support the Silverlight applications.

Again the question is what about the tablet PC’s and how will the existing application works for tablet PS’s? The MVVM coding pattern comes in to play in this scenario. An application that is developed in MVVM pattern can be easily transformed to Metro style. Now, I understand why Microsoft was recommending developers to use MVVM. This would also mean that the developer should invest more of his time, to re-create the new Metro style application, but this will again be an easy task as the coding pattern is almost the same and the code can be reused.