Windows Phone vs Windows 8

I’ve been playing some more with Windows 8 and reading a bit about how it works. Very interesting. The thing that I find most surprising though is how unsurprising a lot of it is to me. I think this is because I’ve been deeply into Windows Phone development for the last 18 months or so. The Metro user interface and the use of XAML to design the front end are just how I think about doing things, based on my Windows Phone experience.

The underpinnings of the operating system, with this new Windows runtime are the really fascinating parts, but if you just want to write Windows 8 applications using C# and .NET you could do a lot worse than get hold of the Windows Phone SDK and have a play. My guess is that when the Windows 8 Marketplace opens up it will have a very similar way of working to the Phone one too, so you would also be able to get experience in how to publish programs.

I thought at the time of the Windows 8 keynotes “We are all Windows Phone developers now”, and I reckon this is definitely the way things are going to go.