Look, I despise Windows and no longer use or program for it, but it is ignorant to say that GUI programming in Windows is still stuck in 1995. XAML adds a declarative interface to WPF control instantiation, and the out-of-the-box WPF controls are more powerful than most other GUI toolkits, including HTML.

"Each button in the UI has to be tediously positioned and configured ... Windows UI programming is as tedious today as it was in 1995."

Clearly he's still doing Windows forms.

"When is Microsoft going to learn the real lesson about simplicity of HTML?"

About three years ago.

WPF ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Presentation_Foundation ) has been around since .Net 3.0 ( 21 November 2006 ). The XAML markup, where you don't have to "tediously position and configure" each element is heavily influenced by HTML, CSS and SVG.

Ok, first this is Guido and there is the obligatory "we're not worthy" stuff but this is a pretty bad argument. UI development for Windows in .NET WinForms is not that difficult and you do not generally have to dig into the guts of UI subsystem.

Secondly, Guido brings out the old whipping boy of "clients are dead long live the Web." I think this is not a good view. Why is it either Web or Clients. Personally, if HTTP/HTML the best we're over going to do then I think it's a pretty sad state of affairs. It also seems like a big waste to have these powerful computers with many cores that do nothing but allow you to have more tabs open in your web browser.

The web is a great platform but there must be a world beyond HTTP/HTML/Javascript and the occasional Flash application.

Lastly, I think Guido is either being naive or coy treating HTML as if developing UI in it has no tedious aspect to it.

His viewpoint on MS technologies is pretty dated and ridiculous:

"When is Microsoft going to learn the real lesson about simplicity of HTML? Instead, Microsoft is doing the same thing to HTML that it does to anything it touches: adding cruft to the point where the basic functionality is buried so deeply that most people can't even find it."

Has he ever heard of ASP.NET MVC?

"It's no wonder that users are switching to the web as the platform for everything that used to live on the desktop"

People are moving to the web? Hmmm...

I happen to have read both that book along with several on programming in cocoa (never done either professionally, I was just curious, so I claim no authority) and I thought that the systems (both what you can do with ironpython and wpf in general) turned out to be generally comparable in terms features, albeit grounded in differing philosophies and idioms. That said, what is the ideal to which WPF should aspire? If not Cocoa, then QT? Gtk?

I am curious mostly because I see a lot of this sort of nothing-new-under-the-sun critique of WPF, and while I have not worked with it in any great depth, what I've seen has been impressive enough to put doubt in my mind about such statements.