Why I'm having difficulties with WPF

Through Twitter I stumbled upon this article: http://www.thejoyofcode.com/If_you_cant_beat_XAML_improve_it.aspx

I think it’s an interesting post. Below you find my comments on that post. Any thoughts on the issue?

I am a very experienced programmer and have worked on a great number of languages (C, Basic, Smalltalk, Pascal, Fortran, Cobol, C++,, C#). Recently I started working on WPF. And I am one of those developers that is experiencing more difficulty grasping WPF than I did with other languages.

I don't think that it's because of XAML per se though. I don't mind typing in long XML element names and attributes. I don't mind writing all the end tags. I don't mind typing at all. Visual Studio / DevExpress' CodeRush offers me all the aide that I need for that. Code completion, templates, short cuts, et cetera make that real easy.

What I do have problems with is the actual concepts in WPF. One thing that I find really difficult to learn and to accept really is the fact that one must/can implement a lot of functionality in the XAML, which in my mental model represents the display part of the application, not the code. I seem to be that old fashion developer that wants to type a=b if I want to assign the value of b to a.

WPF/XAML drives me away from that mental model and I'm very much aware of that. It is beginning to win its place in my brains, but it's taking longer than I thought. Even being aware that another mental model is needed for WPF doesn't make it easier for me.

Maybe XAML *is* for designers. That is why I'm trying to work more closely with our visual designer (i.e. having him learn Blend) and leave more of the work to him.

But, it's really new and sometimes hard to go this way. I'm so much used to being able to do everything in our software. That is no longer the case. I will get used to it, but it may take me a bit more time.

My 2cts worth.

Bye,
Bart