Microsoft has initiated plans to introduce a significant upgrade to its Windows operating system in the forthcoming year. After a minor update, known as “Moment 5,” expected early in 2024, the tech giant is gearing up for a notable release later in the year, potentially dubbed Windows 12. This update is anticipated to incorporate artificial intelligence-driven features and numerous additional enhancements, although specific details have yet to be officially confirmed.
Mikhail Parakhin is at the forefront of these developments, having been appointed as the head of the newly formed Windows and Web Experiences team. His appointment followed the departure of the former Windows head, Panos Panay, who moved to Amazon. Parakhin's influence extends beyond Windows as he continues to play a pivotal role in the evolution of Copilot, previously recognized as Bing Chat.
Community Engagement and Development-Side Queries
In preparation for the updates, Parakhin took to the social media platform X, soliciting feedback from the developer community. He inquired about the user experience (UX) framework within Windows that should receive enhanced focus from Microsoft. The options presented were Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), WinUI 3, Windows Forms (WinForms), and the lower-level Raw Win32 API. As of the latest information, WinUI 3 led the poll with a substantial majority.
It's New Year, I'm asking all kinds of questions for my resolution list 🙂 Which UX framework in Windows should we invest more in?
— Mikhail Parakhin (@MParakhin) December 31, 2023
Exploring Developer Preferences in Multithreading
In a related consultation, Parakhin posed another question to Windows developers regarding their preferred multithreading and concurrency frameworks within C++. The choices offered were C++ 20 Native Threads, the Parallel Patterns Library (PPL)/Concurrency Runtime in Visual Studio, Intel's Threading Building Blocks (TBB), and OpenMP, an API for shared-memory parallel programming. Preliminary results indicate a strong preference for C++ 20 Native Threads among developers.
In Windows, in C++, which multithreading/concurrency framework are you using?
— Mikhail Parakhin (@MParakhin) December 31, 2023
Understanding the Choices
The UX frameworks mentioned play a critical role in defining the interface and experience of applications running on the Windows OS. WPF is used for building rich desktop applications, WinUI 3 is the latest native user interface technology for Windows apps, WinForms is a set of managed libraries that provide a graphical application programming interface, and Raw Win32 API offers comprehensive low-level access to Windows functions.
In the realm of multithreading, the tools listed enable developers to write programs that can perform multiple operations concurrently—a vital feature for modern application efficiency and performance. C++ 20 Native Threads represent the latest standard for concurrency in C++. PPL and the Concurrency Runtime provide asynchronous and parallel programming capabilities within Visual Studio, TBB facilitates scalable parallel programming, and OpenMP is widely used for multithreaded performance.
As Microsoft continues to evolve the Windows platform, the input from the developer community remains a crucial component in steering the technological advancements and ensuring the operating system stays responsive to the needs of its users. Further details on the release date and specifics of the updates are awaited with anticipation by the tech industry and consumers alike.
