Happy 15th Birthday .NET
There&#x27;s so much going on that it&#x27;s almost making me hesistant about taking on the new strategies like .NET Core or where to go with user interfaces. For the long term, is it better to lock myself into UWP and Windows Store, or reap the benefits with Xamarin?<p>Much would be easier if UWP was open and DirectX accelerated on Windows and OpenGL accelerated on Linux or macOS, and uploading these apps on Windows _could_ be to Windows Store but wouldn&#x27;t be so architecturally tied to it. I know there are ways to dodge their store even with UWP apps, but it feels like you&#x27;re hacking their intented model and on thin ice for whatever will come or change in the future.<p>I never really liked platforms where application development is tied to distribution methods, especially not when .NET has it in its history to not be that (other than maybe a very slight nudge towards ClickOnce). I felt like a part of the .NET philosophy died with UWP.<p>I applaud Microsoft for where they have come and their latest developments are intriguing but I see many quite major annoyances remaining. I work almost full time with .NET though, simply because that&#x27;s where my money is for now. But I&#x27;m not touching UWP either at work or at home. It&#x27;s still also receiving a mixed response at best by developers, from what I&#x27;ve heard. It&#x27;s like... &quot;OK, so here&#x27;s this limited UWP app compared to WPF on desktop, because we have to build it on an API with Windows Phone in mind which no one uses and then upload it to this single store out of our control, with the excellent company of scam apps tarnishing our trademark&quot;. I feel like this is Microsoft&#x27;s unfortunate reality of where things stand which they should move from. &quot;How do we best fix these concerns?&quot;