Our vision for LightSwitch was to accelerate the development of line-of-business apps, but the landscape has changed significantly from the time when we first thought about LightSwitch (think mobile and cloud for example). There are now more connected and relevant choices from Microsoft and our partners for business app development.
Visual Studio 2015 is the last release of Visual Studio that includes the LightSwitch tooling and we recommend users not begin new application development with LightSwitch. That said, we will continue to support users with existing LightSwitch applications, including critical bug fixes and security issues as per the Microsoft Support Lifecycle. For reference, the mainstream support phase for Visual Studio 2015 is active until 10/13/2020. Read more about mainstream support.
We no longer recommend LightSwitch for your new apps. But we remain committed to fulfilling our vision to significantly raise the productivity bar for building modern LOB applications, which is why Microsoft is aligning efforts behind PowerApps. Microsoft PowerApps is a solution to build custom business applications that enables increased productivity with business apps that are easily created, shared and managed. PowerApps offers a modern, intuitive experience for LOB application development. Learn more about PowerApps.
– The Visual Studio Team
I think we all knew it was coming, but… ouch.
Powerapps is useless outside azure. Our security conscious clients will laugh at us if we suggest it, as for the architecture to connect an on-prem SQL db, they will be rolling around on the floor. It’s a toy.
If you are still seeking for the alternative meet this https://www.cuba-platform.com/blog/migrate-lightswitch-application-to-cuba. Just found on Quora.
Wow what an absolute disgrace. You delayed and misinformed — or really uninformed! — an entire community of your most passionate users for over two years while this thing slid to its death! Did you ever consider being up front with your customers? Are you implementing any lessons learned with this fiasco or are you going to do the same thing with PowerApps now? How long do you intend to slide this technology to its death? Why should we trust you with this now?
Seriously. It’s been over five years since we have had a viable client technology while the rest of MS has been on par with industry. What is the major hold up here? Why is this so difficult?
Wow RIP but can’t say I am too surprised. After Silverlight bit the dust it wasn’t going to be long that anything dependent on it would get shown the door, too.
It would have been nice to see you more upfront with your developers. This will only cause trust issues now with adoption towards PowerApps.
Of course, you could still listen to your developers and build the next Silverlight in a standards-compliant manner. 😛
https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio-2015/suggestions/10027638-create-a-ubiquitous-net-client-application-develo
Not really much of a surprise, given the total silence coming from Redmond on LightSwitch’s status for the last few years.
It’s unfortunate, however, that what little communication there was tried to reassure us that LightSwitch would continue to be developed, and to then have you go back on that reassurance.
You might want to consider being more transparent and honest about product roadmaps.
Extremely disappointed, but not surprised with how this product has been neglected.
Unfortunately PowerApps doesn’t come close to offering what my company needs compared to LightSwitch.
It is very disappointing both to get this news and also the length of time it has taken for anyone at Microsoft to acknowledge the truth. You abandoned Lightswitch over two years ago.
I am a software consultant who chose LightSwitch years ago to build a desktop client used by a manufacturing company for managing workflow on the floor. It has grown over the years and now has functionality for CSRs, buyers, and other departments.
LS gave them an app that installs, runs, and updates itself with the ease of a web app but with the power of a desktop app (like the ability to interact with printers, USB devices and hardware attached to client PCs). I loved the ability to use VS/C# with a full debugging experience. I could create a screen much faster than building one by scratch with MVC/WebForms. I loved that I could implement complex custom business logic and override default behavior. Many of the screens are so customized they look nothing like what comes out of the box. I was able to accommodate every feature request by my client.
I don’t know much about PowerApps but it looks like none of the things I love about LS are present. Debugging? Custom business logic? Integration with SSRS? Communicate with hardware? Web services for consumption by other apps?
I always felt LS was best for developers who wanted to get things done faster than they could with MVC/Webforms. Moving forward, I’ll have to use MVC/Webforms for new projects but my quotes will be at least twice as much to get equivalent functionality. Bummer.
Very, very disappointing. LightSwitch was a brilliant tool to conceptualize and prototype business apps. It was adopted into the teaching curricula at Universities to help teach business app development methodologies to non computer science students.
The dependency on Silverlight is not absolute – the HTML interface was a promising alternative.
PowerApps, from what I have seen simply does not make the grade (yet).
I accept that the IT landscape is changing fast, but so called “modern LOB applications” running on mobile devices are currently over rated in the business context. You just have to look at how many Cobol apps are still out there to realize that even modern business is not all about a flashy dumbed down cell phone app.
>>I accept that the IT landscape is changing fast, but so called “modern LOB applications” running on mobile devices are currently over rated in the business context. <<
Couldn't agree more with the above. I came across LS about three years ago, when it was obvious silverlight was on the way out, but the HTML LS client had promise…unfortunately it was built on a jQuery Mobile interface, which was awful for desktop apps (most business apps, in other words.)
That was my main gripe with the lightswitch HTML client, the UI was terrible on the desktop. No sortable or pageable grids out of the box, chunky text boxes and buttons, obviously designed for phones. Why didn't Microsoft splurge for a few UI folks for the lightswitch team? It was a great product with the exception of the UI (and the screen designer was never my favorite, but leave that aside).
Au revoir lightswitch. You had a good ride while it lasted. Pity the management team at MSFT couldn't figure out how much upside you had and starved the team for resources.
Microsoft keeps doing this over and over, we invest months even years to master a technology, just to find out it’s being phased out prematurely. Perfectly good, one-of-a-kind niche tools too. So much investment on both sides (both MS and customers) down the drain. What’s worse, it is done is a non-transparent, dishonest manner, letting things dry up over a couple years so that when the announcement comes, no-one really cares any more, no more noise – just look at this blog, if the announcement had been made 2 years ago there would already be hundreds of irate comments here. Nice strategy really. As far as I’m concerned, as a software developer / PM / tech author and trainer, this is the very last time I invest my time and effort on any MS technology. The trust is gone for good this time. I’m switching to non-MS technologies.
Not much of a surprise – especially clear since Beth Massi left …
What I don’t understand is the fact, that MS does not manage to create an app which is a legal successor for MS access, I thought MS would be clever enough to use LS for that, but obviously MS is not understanding the “poor peoples” whishes. In that regard … What a pitty … Another lost chance …
You just broke me out of business. I spent 2 years learning LS, finally I was able to start developing and quit my job one month ago for making my own. I am a poor entrepreneur looking forward to support my family with anything rather than my brain. I do not have land, money nor university degree but only the love for computer and some self-learning skills.
Last night I spent until 3:00 am until I figure it out how to make Microsoft Flow respond to an Azure SQL Database and only happened through LS nor external list, not triggering directly form a native Sharepoint list and still keeping Power BI’s Direct Query capability. I do not understand the speeches of Satya Nadella when he says that Microsoft mission’s is to empower every person…
He needs to know what is going on with LS maybe he can reinvent it because he understands the poor people. Mr Nadella please revoke this.
Can you just put it in “OpenSource” so that the people who did invest in it, can use it ?
Microsoft’s policy on this is that frameworks can be/will be/are open source. However, a large part of LS is considered “Tooling” which they cannot open source.
Hi,
thanks for the info
“which they cannot open source” ..
you mean they WILL NOT – the ability is given …
The majority of Microsoft project have horrible, horrible build and deployment processes that involves horrible, horrible internal tools. Unwillingness to open source then is just yet another sign of acceptance how horrible, horrible they are. And you don’t want to touch then even with 10-feet pole for sure.
Pathetic treatment of your developer community of this epic proportion is going to cost you the entire industry. We will unite and convince the business decision makers in the mainstream that’s it’s finally time to go open source in all things and transfer our skills to a now evolved and well community supported software infrastructure instead of wasting time on a never ending learning curve managed by cheaply employed forum moderators with no clue what an acceptable answer is. Nor with your choice of the year of badly planned and mismanaged RAD tool developments, nor with getting a pathetic excuse of a condescending post like this with no iota of an apology of your treatment of the most passionate community you’ve ever had. Your loss Microsoft. It cost us dearly, we won’t repeat the mistake. Now it will cost you.
It doesn’t surprise me. Only disappointed that it took so long for Microsoft to tell the community.
Power Apps is a no go for me personally or professionally. Open-source and not being tied to a particular OS is the driver now. I’ve already decoupled most of everything I do from Microsoft, with the exceptions being Office, Windows 10 (not a fan of Macs), and Azure – though I can switch easily since we are moving to containers.
Sad to see it die, I really enjoyed it for the first few years and built some cools apps. I only have 1 LS app remaining and it is just for my personal use. Python, R, and Javascript is the future for everything I will touch moving forward.
RIP Lightswitch, sorry you were mismanaged so much.
Only trust MS for Office (and only for Doc, Sheet and Presentation) and Windows 10 (for gaming OS) nothing else.
Not Azure (much better container, docker/kubernetes)
Not Win Server (much better unix/linux)
Not C#/XAML/ASP.NET (much better Javascript, HTML, CSS, NodeJs, ReactJs, Angular)
Not SQL Server (much better for NoSQL (mongodb, couchdb, cassandra) or even Postresql/MySQL
Not Visual Studio (much better Webstorm/Atom)
Not IIS (much better nginx)
If you take those alternatives you’ll spend less, from 1M to 1K only, I know this because I’d been to both sides, the “restricted/closed” side and “free/open” side
First Visual Basic 6.0, FoxPro and now this. This is the difference when people are building a company and when others just take over and run it into ground. MS has been plagued by bad decision makers for a long time now. The revenue from Server division and Office Apps continue to give false sense of confidence and security to the other mediocre executives who cant see the big picture and run on quarterly goals it seems. Loyalty of developers is the most important currency in software platform world and no wonder iOS and Android are the dominant platforms left. Perhaps MS has decided to be just a SAAS company and a hosting company and no longer a Software company.
The way LS was handled is deplorable. No one should believe them anymore.
I guess we have all been waiting for this announcement for the last year. For early adopters this is very hard, the investment and cost is high, the disappointment is clear, MS does it again. It is hard to consider Microsoft technologies as a whole when after 2 years they abandon a technology without providing continuity. Yeah right, go to PowerApps. I second the “fact” that PowerApps may get the same treatment as Lightswitch. Another proof that the Darwinian Law applies application development, without the evolution part just the extinction. Enough with the whining. Let look at the future.
I understand that, as Klaus mentioned, but the Lightswitch “framework” should be move to the Open Source just like many other technologies, that even, Microsoft adopted from other open source community. There is enough in the framework that with the “right consortium” and LS community, it could be taken to the next level and compete with any other technology out there.
We have a lot of LightSwitch apps. The killing of LightSwitch is very disappointing. HTML was a good alternative for Silverlight. PowerApps cannot replace LightSwitch apps in our company. MS what are you doing, can we still trust MS?
Now that the lightswitch was officially buried, please leave it open source developer to improve it is not lacking in the community
I agreed with Marden LR
“Now that the lightswitch was officially buried, please leave it open source developer to improve it is not lacking in the community”
I’m crying…
Please! “Now that the lightswitch was officially buried, please leave it open source developer to improve it is not lacking in the community”
Very glad I didn’t expose my customers to this. We we’re seriously considering as an alternative to IronSpeed.
We would have been capable of delivering business-focused applications for our customers, on par effort-wise against our Indian and China competitors.
Now, you only leave me and my team to compete with them with the “alternatives”, which take significantly more time.
Sad. It would have worked – would have been a good replacement for Access development for us and our clients, but again the decision was made to just “move on” – remember VB6?
I wish consultants had more of a voice in Microsoft technology direction. We are the boots on the ground. We are the people who put our reputation on the line. We are the people who sing the “Microsoft song” of the year.
It is unfair to just rip and replace.
Why stay singing MS Songs,
You can learn to sing “Rock Song”, those with solid foundation and will not leave you behind. Lol
You just kick me out of business…. I started my own business developing apps with LS. I quit my job trusting you guys… thanks for this!!! At least you should open source LS…. you own us!!!
I meant you owe us!!! My English is not very good looking… pero aún así está es la peor decisión que han podido tomar… háganlo Open Source!!! No lo maten y ya
But still your statement is correct for this context.
“LS owned us!!”
Very bad decision! At least do try to keep alive all the tools until 2020 (Bing Maps Control, etc.)
Please! “Now that the lightswitch was officially buried, please leave it open source developer to improve it is not lacking in the community”
Powerapps is that good that it cannot and probably will never be able to replace any of the production lightswitch html apps that we have produced.
…nor PowerApps can not replace lightswitch for desktop application
and in the first place, why even trust power apps,
After 6 years they can turn this down again
Because everything else has been said repeatedly for over two years, I have two words…OPEN SOURCE NOW! Okay that’s three words – point is, we need the tooling source opened so the community can make the bridge ahead. At least open the build templates.
First, Silverlight is the best on the market and is favored by Microsoft. Then it is Silverlight with LightSwitch the best on the market. Then it is HTML 5 with LightSwitch the system of the future and is sold to one of its Microsoft consultants. And always the same great promises.
And now it’s PowerApps. How long 1 year, 2 years or how long?
Promises about promises!
And now Powerapps for LOB projects. This is a bad joke. The requirements for LOB projects can not powerapps with its star contours.
It is better to look for something else!
Maybe it is time to bail out of Visual Studio entirely before Microsoft does.
DO NOT throwing the baby out with the bathwater
Silverlight all over again.
I hope people, after this, have the good sense to adapt only open source frameworks, such as Express over NodeJS, with Angular, etc. There are good NodeJS drivers for SQL Server.
Microsoft always comes up with really cool ideas and technologies, but has a bit of an Attention Deficit problem, and quickly moves on to the next shiny thing. Visual Studio has excellent NodeJS support, so even if you’re a Microsoft shop, moving to more open tech doesn’t mean you have to leave the tools you know behind.
Microsoft nowadays is just a “follower” of innovation, they just follow or buy the cool technologies
My grandpa told me, during old days they are the “leader” of innovation, they create technologies, that other follows them.
I have hundreds of hours invested in Lightswitch and my clients have thousands of hours and dollars invested. Is there anything that will remotely match the “Goodness”. What are these “more…relevant choices”? PowerApps, at first glance, seems rather powerless in comparison. Someone, anyone, have any suggestions?
I’m researching Electron and NodeWebkit for desktop LOBs. I’m researching Laravel and the MEA/RN stack for web app LOBs. It appears React is gaining popularity over Angular 2. I find it interesting that React focuses on a view only approach.
“We’re also researching how to bring the ‘Web Sites’ project model from ASP.NET into the Core framework by supporting something we’re calling ‘Controllerless Views’.” https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/webdev/2016/06/27/announcing-asp-net-core-1-0/
Whether asp.net core is the way to go is up for debate. I am watching to see if asp.net core gains developer traction with the cross platform play and MS continues to port more libraries to the core.
I’m doing MeteorJs for WebApps, using ReactJs and GraphQL, still reviewing the Electron. and learning only single language, Javascript!
From a more objective perspective….. If you use LS now, nobody is going to stop you using it in the future. Critical bug fixes will still be available for another 4 years. LS hasn’t had any significant upgrades for a while now, it’s just an extension to that status as far as I can see.
I know people who still write stuff in VB6 and other even older languages (RPG3) which were killed off years ago.
Microsoft, we the Lightswitch Community officially challenge you to a LOB DEVELOPMENT DUAL.
You should be a formible opponent as you say “There are now more connected and relevant choices from Microsoft …”.
You must have a secret weapon, some fantastic tools that you have yet to share with the developer world.
Also, “PowerApps offers a modern, intuitive experience for LOB application development…”, which is odd. Nobody in the Lightswitch Community has been able to build anything with PowerApps that vaguely resemblies a creable LOB app.
So we wonder if PowerApps v.next.next.next is your secret weapon?
Perhaps the answer is far simpler. Microsoft have redefined the LOB acronym? Any suggestions what it stands for now if not Line-Of-Business?
So, Microsoft, stand-up and bring it on! We are ready to develop the pants off you in the LOB app world!
… obviously I meant LOB DEVELOPMENT DUEL.
For some reason I think the same is going to happen to Universal Windows Platform (UWP)
Microsoft is not consistent in their projects, I have undergoing projects with LS, It’s so frustrating… I guess I have no more option but move to open source tools like Angular (JS)
Shame on Microsoft for their poor common sense, I don’t trust none of their products and tools anymore!
Only trust MS for Office (and only for Doc, Sheet and Presentation) and Windows 10 (for gaming OS) nothing else.
Not Azure (much better container, docker/kubernetes)
Not Win Server (much better unix/linux)
Not C#/XAML/ASP.NET (much better Javascript, HTML, CSS, NodeJs, ReactJs, Angular)
Not SQL Server (much better for NoSQL (mongodb, couchdb, cassandra) or even Postresql/MySQL
Not Visual Studio (much better Webstorm/Atom)
Not IIS (much better nginx)
If you take those alternatives you’ll spend less, from 1M to 1K only, I know this because I’d been to both sides, the “restricted/closed” side and “free/open” side
What a story about a next/new sunset. it is not understandable how MS can kill such a good web HTML Tool for AZURE, and where they want to make money in the future. And for their cash cow SQL they do not have a Web based alternative for business apps. And with respect PowerApps or Access Services is not a business tool! Well I can’t see any sunrise.
With full apologies to those who found LS useful and especially those who built their businesses around it. But I found it a disaster and I’m glad it’s (now formally) dead.
For me the key to a good LOB app is not being able to manipulate data, it’s being able to describe a process. And LS was just to data-centric. I repeatedly found it ‘getting in the way’ of the processes I needed to implement.
“That said, we will continue to support users with existing LightSwitch applications, including critical bug fixes and security issues as per the Microsoft Support Lifecycle.”
I thought you had lost the source-code….
Why else take this kind of decision.
Regards Roger.
Apologies to those using it to support or build their businesses, To me it’s really not a standard tool if you are thinking long term with your business solution. It stays so much on your way and you don’t have full control, no unit testing, no continuous integration, you can’t replicate files easily, you can’t really do code versioning, Worked with LS for a year plus in a tech company, but it’s not worth investing in it as far as a developer’ career is concerned. As for the new PowerApp, I would say it’s better to just stay with ASP.Net web forms, MVC, and Web Api for any development.
I feel sorry about that , but I suggest that Microsoft open the source code of the Lightswitch project and put it in github so community will continue supporting it.
They won’t open it, as it uses many components from VS, that’s many lines of propietary code.
WPF / WinfForm is good replacement for LS, and few lines of code won’t be problem, and won’t be rejected quickly (especially newer WPF).
This is why I will NOT be adopting/developing for UWP.
I was burned a couple of years ago by Silverlight – never even considered LightSwitch.
Looks like that was a good decision.
But if you where on our shoes, 5 or 4 years ago (no UWP, silverlight is still good) you’ll jump into conclusion that LS is a good choice.
Quanta Estupidez, Microsoft!!!!
Bad decision. Lightswitch was a great tool that radically reduced coding while being extremely extensible. My app supports 1000+ users and millions of records while incorporating uploads, printing, security, dynamic menus… There is nothing like it available. Power Apps is a joke. Trust Microsoft? No way. Open source the tool please!
It was written on the wall…
The last article in the lightswitch blog was 2 years ago. Than a long period of silence, than an “update” which translate to abandonment.
PowerApps? Interface with a USB barcode reader? Proper printing support? LOB you know…
And why should we devs trust MSFT again with PowerApps?
You redirected us from Silverlight to LightSwitch HTML5, just to abandon it 2 years later.
Now, we have to change direction again… this time away from Microsoft.
And it was a good decision not to adapt UWP, because it is in a similar state of silence… an “Update” will follow.
Hi, I too like other developers who have posted their comments are surprised and chagrined. I lost about 2/3 years to study and try LS as substitute to Visual FoxProw. I created applications I installed at customers, not plugging the fact that it was an innovative and stable. Now I have to pretty much start over from scratch using a product (PowerApps) not sure that follow the same path of LS. I am deeply disappointed by this attitude on the part of Microsoft, a company whom I respect, but lately he’s creating many problems to individual developers like me.
I hope there is an afterthought.
voltar ao lightswtich
LS was a bad decision with a bad timing. While the rest of the corporation was moving to Metro, these guys got stuck with Silverlight.
If MS had merged Metro with Silverlight, as they should’ve have with Windows Phone 7, LightSwitch would have been a key technology.
Alas the excuse the things got mobile and cloud is a very bad one considering that the title of the page is
“Visual Studio LightSwitch: easiest way to create modern business applications for the Cloud and Office 365”
Your right, I overlooked that.
It still reads
“easiest way to create modern business applications for the Cloud and Office 365 ”
and directly underneath they are telling us they ditched LightSwitch because everything moves to the cloud. How hilarious.
Awesomely hilarious. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The funniest part about any of this is that the same people that created this mess are still implanted and working somewhere in this organization, meaning it’s just a matter of time before another cluster like this happens again.
Sadly, I have given up on Microsoft developer relations. This isn’t the first, nor will it be the last. This is our primary motivation for moving away from languages based on Microsoft technologies. We can’t justify re-writing our entire code base every 2-4 years when Microsoft abandons yet another language/framework.
“To date, we know many of you have asked whether you should continue to use LightSwitch & Cloud Business Apps. If the support we have in Visual Studio 2015 meets the needs of your application, then you should feel confident in developing with LightSwitch or Cloud Business Apps as we build out the roadmap.” – Dec 2014, https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/lightswitch/2014/12/05/where-we-are-and-the-road-ahead/
I wouldn’t mind them ditching great technologies IF they had an even greater technology as the replacement. I don’t see any better replacements for things like Silverlight.
I’m guessing that Silverlight and LightSwitch don’t recall selling through the store and so it doesn’t make MS money. Hence the ditching. And they think everyone will make UWP apps instead or something.
I don’t see any good technology at the moment.
That was supposed to be “require” not “recall”
bring back the ls
ls is much more complete, and I have many projects developed and running in ls
I won’t miss LightSwitch personally, but do agree Microsoft’s behavior in this space (including InfoPath) erodes trust in PowerApps as a solution. I have lots of customers who want a “easy to use forms and small app builder”, but keep investing in platforms that get discontinued with no migration strategy to the “next big thing”. Keeps me in business as a .NET developer I suppose, but I think Microsoft is under-serving a segment of enterprise IT.
InfoPath was (still is!!) a great tool and it suffered the same miscommunication, etc.
LightSwitch wasn’t ever a good fit for what I want but I can completely understand why people are annoyed with how things have turned out.
Like Silverlight, Microsoft probably tells a few key industry people on the sly that the product is disappearing, but those people can’t just come out and say “product X is definitely dead”. Instead they have to talk around it and suggest it no longer be used. Then finally we get proper public confirmation. When Beth Massi left LightSwitch it was pretty obvious the product was going nowhere but Microsoft couldn’t just come out and say that for whatever reason 🙁
Open sourcing the runtime would be good. I can see why the tools can’t be open sourced although it’s a bit of a shame.
Anyone who worked with Visual FoxPro over the years and saw what Microsoft did with that will currently be permitting themselves a wry smile and experiencing a distinct feeling of deja vu.
+1 for some kind of afterlife for LightSwitch.
Maybe it is best if you open source it, so we could freely evolve it.
And sorry, no, PowerApps is not an alternative.
Looking to learn more about Powerapps? There’s an upcoming webinar this Thursday 10/20 at 10:00 AM PDT, you’re welcome to join! Please register under https://aka.ms/customizepowerappswebinar. I’ll showcase how to build an app from scratch, wire in controls like camera and how to bind datasources spread across different backends. Also I’ll showcase a few rich experiences like barcode scanning and integrating with PowerBi and Flow. Looking forward to hearing your questions along the webinar!
Fine.
And you really think, that all that new shiny … things … (not to call it rubbish) will help the developer in real live situations as LS did ??? In which ivory tower do you live ?
Sorry, couldn’t resist
Thanks Laura
But the most important question is hardly to be answered in your webinar: How long will it last this time? LS was introduced in 2011, after 3 years it got no real maintenance anymore, the blog and all other official channels went silent and another two years later it was ditched. MSFT just did it again.
So why would you expect us developers to jump at Powerapps and trust you in this one?
Hi Laura,
no, I definitely do not want to learn anything about your brand new shiny tool (that is very likely half-baked, with no community support and that will again die before it becomes usable for serious development). You (in MS) must be thinking we are a horde of lunatics with suicidal tendencies that have nothing better to do than to learn new tools over and over again.
For me personally this was the very last experience with MS technologies (after VB and FoxPro), no more SBS (or whatever it’s called now) server nor SQL server licenses, no Visual Studio anymore – there are other sw vendors and a lot of open source technologies. LS+SL were great technologies and development in one language was a pure pleasure (compared to HTML5+JS+jQuery+bunchofotherframeworks mess) but both were killed by some nobrainers, so there is nothing interesting anymore that MS can offer.
I suggest to at least open source the lightswitch silverlight client dlls, that way the community can take a stab at converting them to wpf client dlls for Lightswitch.
What’s left is…
– Core MS development tools / platforms which should last 10+ more years
– C#
– .NET core
– SQL Server
– VS 2015
– End user applications or servers (office, exchange, azure)
– Second tier MS development tools which should last 5+ years
– ASP MVC – 5 to 10 years
– WinForms – 5 years (maybe)
– XAML – 5 to 10 years
– F# – should last but will be third class or largely ignored by VS tooling
– .NET non-core
– .NET based remote procedure calls (latest generation)
– Third tier MS development tools, add-ins or tooling (maybe…maybe)
– Tools for Cordova – 2-3 years or less
– Xamarin – 3-5 years
– UWP – what happens when the MS stops building phones?
– VS addins or tooling around open source tools/libraries – the underlying tool/library will likely be unsupported/dead/zombie in 2.5 years
– .net media file / image handling APIs (risky)
– older .NET based remote procedure calls (earlier generations)
– Typescript once the new ECMA script standard is released in 1 year
– End user applications outside of office, exchange and azure
– Fourth tier MS development tools, add-ins or tooling (-run away-)
– Anything outside the C++ ISO/ANSI/Posix standard libraries
– MS office for the Mac
Sounds right! Stay away from anything Microsoft-GUI.
Lightswitch lasted 5 years before the end of life blog post – July 2011 to Oct 2016.
Given there have been non decent improvements in the last 2 years, LightSwitch had actual support with significant new features for 3 years.
Why would anyone spend $500,000+ developing a decent sized business application with any new MS technology?
Plain old C#, .NET, SQL Server with ASP MVC or XAML only.
Our team will be sure to mention this to the IT governance board of our Fortune 1000 company when approving technology.
First no server software updates in 2001-2006, then end of life Silverlight after 2 years of usable functionality (v2.0 added actual forms controls), then end of life Lightswitch in under 5 years with no updates in the last 2 years, …
for anyone who is looking for a replacement for the lightswitch, see Cuba platform
https://www.cuba-platform.com/
Many improvements applied the platform were suggested by members of the community and there have several developers who left the lightswitch to create their applications in CUBA platform
And best of all is OPEN SOURCE
If you need to develop true LOB apps then take a look
if someone has some other more viable replacement, please comment there, we will come together and find a tool that will not disappoint us in the coming years
Hello friends!
Almost four months ago I started doing work with CUBA. For me it is an incredible platform. I have been programming .NET, my knowledge of Java was null, and Microsoft Lightswitch and Visual Studio were my only tools.
As you may know, Microsoft Lightswitch was (and I say WAS because Microsoft killed it) a language for LOB applications-oriented companies, allowing you to develop applications very simple and in record time. more!
After promising feedback about cuba platform I bumped on this https://github.com/cuba-platform/cuba-vision-clinic. It is microsoft sample for lightswitch moved to Cuba. I tried to move my small application by generating model from database using cuba studio and from the second try it worked. So, I have my first application running on java. All that looks very promising.
I’ve had pretty good luck using Code On Time – http://www.codeontime.com. It runs on ASP.NET and you can add custom .NET, SQL, JavaScript, and email business rules. It is definitely worth checking out…
Hello friends!
Almost four months ago I started doing work with CUBA. For me it is an incredible platform. I have been programming .NET, my knowledge of Java was null, and Microsoft Lightswitch and Visual Studio were my only tools.
As you may know, Microsoft Lightswitch was (and I say WAS because Microsoft killed it) a language for LOB applications-oriented companies, allowing you to develop applications very simple and in record time. more!
P.S. CUBA has a migration tool hugely helping to move legacy lightswitch application to their architecture.
Sorry, my last post not copied all post…. 😉
Hello friends!
Almost four months ago I started doing work with CUBA. For me it is an incredible platform. I have been programming .NET, my knowledge of Java was null, and Microsoft Lightswitch and Visual Studio were my only tools.
As you may know, Microsoft Lightswitch was (and I say WAS because Microsoft killed it) a language for LOB applications-oriented companies, allowing you to develop applications very simple and in record time.
After months and months of searching for an alternative, I decided to try CUBA. At first, like any language, it seemed a bit laborious to learn.
As I progressed, I could see the examples of code, sample projects, and other materials which helped to learn JAVA, and also that specifically applied to LOB applications, the area which I think we all are most interested in.
I could make two applications for internal use of our company in record time, and now we are developing a billing application. I can tell you that in two weeks we had an application that many micro companies could use to make their bills.
The reason for making this application is to learn and to migrate the applications we have in Lightswitch to CUBA, especially as now it has Multi Database support.
I want to thank for the work done by the entire team of CUBA and send a big hug from Spain and encouragement to make this project a success.
And also say thanks as every day I get answers to my questions in the forum, that is what has inspired me more to work with this tool.
I hope that just as I have a commercial subscription for the add-ons many people do it too! We must support the team to continue working properly.
And I hope that more interesting plugins will come, no doubt I’ll buy!
P.S. CUBA has a migration tool hugely helping to move legacy lightswitch application to their architecture.
Hi Everybody,
My team will continue developing with Lightswitch. I invested so much hours and money to get the productivity, development standardization and business satifsfaction I have within my company.
I don’t mind if Microsoft gives us support or not. I only expect that MS changes of opinion. It’s common sense.
I encourage everybody to continue using Lightswith. MS should continue including Lighswitch within new VS versions like Windows Forms. We must push it.
Microsoft has a compromise with their customers. In other case, we will change of Software vendor, because Power Apps is not a serious enterprise solution.
If Microsoft doesn’t respond my company, we will have to move Oracle enterprise RAD solutions for example. We would give up Microsoft software. My company needs trusted vendors.
Best regards from Spain.
Juan Carlos
Microsoft will only three thinks:
– Azure (cloud) (MS)
– Office 365 (cloud) (MS
– Store Apps (MS)
Deskop apps not the target from Microsoft. In the next years you get not support for desktop apps. You believe it not. There are a tool from Microsoft to convert desktop apps to Store Apps. Why! The goal is to allow only Store Apps on Windows 10.
Powerapps is for Azure and Office 365 (cloud).
The lightswitch does not fit into the concept. As simple as that.
And we should develop nothing else.
Can we PLEASE have a statement from the team about open sourcing all or part of LightSwitch?
Thank you
No one hears your screams, or cares.
It would also be interesting to know what will happen to lightswich software that use the Bing Maps Silverlight control since November 30, 2016 will be decommissioned
希望LS能继续发展，成为一个开源、更加好用的开发工具。
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Hope LS can continue to develop, become an open source, more user-friendly development tools.
Too bad. PowerApps is nothing compared with LS.
I saw that some guy claimed patent rights on a UI generator concept – apparently this put a serious dent in the apatite for the tool at Microsoft.
What if you could prove that this was prior art and nullify the patent? A company in Auckland, New Zealand developed a product called ‘Bullit’ in 2000 and built many products with it – some of which are still running. I worked for them. That company has since ceased to operate but I know the guy who designed the tool and at least one client who still uses it – it generated java Servlet user interfaces from a database that stored the definitions.
I’ll give all the necessary info to Microsoft if they will act on it – gratis and free of charge.
Stupid patent trolls…
The amount of negative infuriated comments in this post is enough to get someone fired, after all these people invest time, effort and risk there reputation on the framework BAM! they are left with powerapp, the new mobile friendly thing.
RIP LS, this is the Microsoft way.
PowerApps sucks very much compared to LS.
There is a good alternative to LightSwitch. It’s called the Serenity project. Check it out here: http://serenity.is/
This technology looks very interesting!
I find this very disappointing. Hundred, or even thousand hours invested.
Microsoft needs start learning to respect and protect its more important customers, those who bring water to the mill… DEVELOPERS.
And this is not the first time. I spent more than 20 years using MS development software.
We’re growing angry, really angry, because we feel insulted and underestimated. Perhaps, as I read somewhere in this blog, it’s time to steer the boat in another direction.
Only trust MS for Office (and only for Doc, Sheet and Presentation) and Windows 10 (for gaming OS) nothing else.
Not Azure (much better container, docker/kubernetes)
Not Win Server (much better unix/linux)
Not C#/XAML/ASP.NET (much better Javascript, HTML, CSS, NodeJs, ReactJs, Angular)
Not SQL Server (much better for NoSQL (mongodb, couchdb, cassandra) or even Postresql/MySQL
Not Visual Studio (much better Webstorm/Atom)
Not IIS (much better nginx)
If you take those alternatives you’ll spend less, from 1M to 1K only, I know this because I’d been to both sides, the “restricted/closed” side and “free/open” side
Common MS Guys.. Wake up. Where is Beth no words from her? With sweet words and demos you stolen hundreds of hearts. Now everyone is Broken. MS scared to comment and Its their Responsibility to Answer to all devs community. They can’t hide further. Make LS as Open Source and prove your commitment to community.
Open Source Lightswitch
https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio-ide/suggestions/8766244-open-source-lightswitch
Seems corporate development has no practical choice other than to wait 3-5 years before choosing to develop on new platforms from Microsoft just to wait and see if Microsoft will not change their minds about their longevity. 🙁 That mentality then MUST apply to PowerApps, UWP and everything else that’s come out in the last couple of years – wouldn’t it just make sense?
I see a lot of talk suggesting Microsoft should either keep supporting LightSwitch or release it to open source. There is a 3rd option and that is to split it from Visual Studio into it’s own standalone product and charge for it. I’m sure that there are plenty of people and enterprises that would pay about $100-200/developer to keep the product active if Microsoft would get behind that.
On the other hand, I suppose as long as you don’t have any serious compliance/audit requirements and security issues don’t crop up, you can continue to use this forever as long as your backend data sources and client browsers continue to cooperate within the solution.
To save our develop language we need to try any possibility.
Maybe, one of this possibility, is to write a post the Corporate Vice President, reporting our regret regarding the decision..
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/visualstudio/2016/11/16/visual-studio-family-of-products/
Thank You.
This is a real shame, after about 18 months I have managed to achieve a great deal with LightSwitch HTML. it easily integrates with OneDrive, SSRS Reporting, Internal Emails, File Management and the plugins from companies like SyncFusion really do make this an all round package. This wont put me of using it for the next few years though. based on this statement above I am failing to see what is replacing it. Sharepoint has turned out to be a complete disaster in my opinion, and has so many bugs that it doesn’t even warrant wasting any more of my time yet.
PowerApps has the potential to be good, however only on phones and tablets, so there is still a whole left behind by Lightswitch, its a shame the 2 applications cannot work together. Now that would make for some interesting development!
Nothing to add that other have not already said, except ask how could Microsoft miss the clear opportunity to replace the generated Silverlight desktop output with a XAML based WPF or UWP output?
But, don’t you think, though, that you could just do it yourself?
It is very clear. Microsoft products are not for developers. We should learn from our mistakes.
I am new to web development, wanted to use Lightswitch to prototype a new app for our company. Can anyone recommend another alternative for building windows and web database applications? I just find .NET and other technologies/tools to be too difficult and time consuming for building a database application, maybe for other types of apps. their OK, but I find it to be overkill and over complex if you want to build a prototype or even a production database application. With moves like these Microsoft shoots itself in the foot and makes many developers look for open source or non-Microsoft solutions.
Yes, http://serenity.is/
Sure, have a look here https://www.cuba-platform.com/
Because Ligthswitch has improved over the last years (thanks to it’s HTML5 support) this is a very disappointing decission made by the Visual Studio Team.
Exercise and diet without thought and feeling alignment
is simply pushing poop up the proverbial hill. Most men who are suffering from gynecomastia are in great confusion and dilemma that
they often wonder what they will become when they walk around with those women-like breasts.
Come Sunday, March 7, 2010 pop icon Mariah Carey will appear
on the red carpet at the 2010 Academy Awards ceremony, to support her film
“Precious”, and if her past predicts her future – Carey’s voluptuous bustline will
more than likely be on display.
MS is an attack on productivity. No one at MS has cared about users getting work done for – decades.
From the insane act of walking away from VB6 I knew the firm was heading for trouble. The fiasco of Win8, the lame idiocy of IE, the phone, the trashing of Access(I’m more productive in the 2003 version than anything since) , the Ribbon nonsense (no choice in keeping the menus we all knew! Who does this? Would you do this to your customers? Or would you give them a choice?), the nonsense of caring more for cosmetics than functionality in Office -all confirmed this. I have avoided MS as best I can for decades now. I almost got on board with LS. Glad I knew better than to trust MS.
I once thought the cause was the HR hell of stacked ranking or the mind of Steve Ballmer – but it must go much deeper into the culture of MS.
Its been asked often what are alternatives to Lightswitch. I have tried several and find them all lacking… Though I have found a true lightswitch alternative, I have found Python’s Flask microframework really excellent and there is now a Flask Diamond (flask-diamond.readthedocs.io) that is an alternative to Django’s “Everything Included” Framework.
Flask Diamond includes scaffolding, is easy to build, fast, and is open source. So check it out and contribute to this project if it suits your need.
Last, hey Microsoft join in on this project and make it super usable. You could drive projects like this extremely far…
7 years from today – when they announced people predicted exactly what has happened (https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jasonz/2010/08/03/introducing-microsoft-visual-studio-lightswitch/#comment-33735).
Read the comments section of the link.
I thought I was just learning.It’s a pity I lost with LS.
Does not Microsoft ever extend flowers(PowerApps) without putting the hive(SharePoint-Azure)?
There are flowers in other forests too.
Thanks microsoft (!)
I have been using this lately:
https://www.dotvvm.com
Very impressed by the reasoning behind it and the guys involved in the team.
Since I ditched LS a few years back I have been developing with NancyFx and DNN with custom modules.
But I’ve struggled with the JS frameworks. I can’t get myself to commit to something like Angular for small projects.
I want to keep browser JS to a minimum. Just some validation and AJAX posts for CRUD.
Dotvvm has been a joy to play with so far.
The only thing that concerns me about dotVVM is getting the architecture of an app right at the start. But this is something that is common to all web apps.
It’s easy to end up with business/domain rules/logic or whatever you choose to call them all over the place.
For a given entity you end up with a DB table, a model, a ViewModel and a form and they all share the same fields.
But it’s not a simple problem and there are arguments for keeping abstraction to a minimum.
At least with DotvvM you don’t have to write any of the ViewModel or binding js code and validation and security are a breeze.
Once I’ve nailed a structure I like I think it will be great.
Gus, the DotVVM team has plans to build something like LightSwitch based on top of DotVVM, with the architecture done right.
Find this more viable https://www.cuba-platform.com/blog/migrate-lightswitch-application-to-cuba. Just found on Quora.
Powerapps is not Lightswitch. Please insert support for WPF in lightswitch or set lightswitch as open source for community for create lightswitch app for Windows with wpf. Think.
I hope we can soon expect a info from Microsoft if LS will come out as open source for all the folks who whants to go on with this cool HTML5 Web App Tool for Azure etc …
Sad that Microsoft continues to ignore the developer community and head off in a direction with no direction. kind of like being lost in the ocean while everyone moves to other solutions showing some kind of stable support and direction.
Silverlight, wait… no silverlight
Infopath, wait… no Infopath
Lightswitch, wait… PowerApps… Uhhh
Powerapps, wait.. Uhhh… Yeah Powerapps… not yet.
Tired of Waiting… Bye Microsoft…
Way to go guys.
I invested quite a bit to learn LightSwitch a few years ago and have rolled out several apps.
The very least Microsoft can do is incorporate the LightSwitch tooling into one or two more Visual Studio releases. As it is, I have to tell app owners (aka customers) they have to pay again to have them rebuilt. As other users have commented, MS has pulled the plug on way too many of it’s initiatives leaving developers and related parties high & dry after buying the MS sales pitch.
I originally set out to learn WPF years ago but was wisely counseled that it wouldn’t last (so I didn’t). A year or so later, I was surprised to hear the MS announcement that it would not be developed further! At least WPF tooling is still supported.
PowerApps may be useful (but so is LS.) I will definitely look elsewhere for a vibrant community on another product before considering PowerApps. Unless of course, MS wants to release a LS to PowerApps migration tool!
Powerapps is not a valid alternative. In an enterprise environment where servers and databases are locked down, the developer does not have global control. It is impossible to do any powerapps development unless everything is moved into the cloud, which many businesses cannot / will not do for security reasons.
So it’s a non-starter. Lightswitch was a great tool for non-technical people to create polished web applications. It’s a shame to lose such a powerful tool. It’s just a matter of time before someone invents a UI for Ruby / Django and MS gets left in the dust.
When I told a friend of my about LS, and my decision to develop a LOB module with it, he advised me not to use it, “Microsoft will eventually kill any thing but VB” he told me. I invest a Year in this App, it was so easy and fast to develop and it worked in cell phones, tablets and desktops like a charm. Now what surrender before the false generosity of Microsoft in throwing away time and effort that it is not theirs?
Sadly there is NOTHING that even comes close to what we were able to achieve with LightSwitch!
Where is Microsoft for us to introduce a new product to the lightswitch style of development?
For the love of God, come back with ls, I have a company with several clients and several users using the system, with an erp system for hospitable products, which it can not stop. I hope you have some solution on the web to upload the ls, please help me, I hope the translator wrote my request, I do not speak English, I’m in Brazil. Thank you all ls
With the new microsoft fluent design for multiplatform development will we have some Lightswitch style IDE to develop business applications for window 10, tablet and smartphone using your preferred “VB. Net / C #” programming language?
I want to develop my application and publish it on any windows server I want.
Will someone answer this question!
Forgetting PowerApps as they are useless, has anyone else seen MSFT’s latest offering and considered it?
It is open source and built on MVVM pattern……sounding familiar?
https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2017/05/16/announcing-windows-template-studio/#twbZuGZlxf30mkSQ.97
I’m waiting for my Windows 10 machine before I download it but it is sounding very similar to what we are all asking for.
Windows Template Studio ? No !!
I would have understood if you had published lightswitch as open-source. But again only with Microsoft. No! I can not recommend anyone.
What’s up everyone, it’s my first pay a visit at this site, and piece
of writing is really fruitful for me, keep up posting such posts.
And yet another Microsoft app goes into the trash can, along InfoPath, Expression Web, SharePoint Workspace, CardSpace, Codename “Geneva” and many others. It is as if Microsoft is incapable of innovation and lacks foresight.