Microsoft Has Killed Widgets Six Times. Here's Why They Keep Coming Back. 30 years of Windows widgets - from Active Desktop to the Widget Board. Six implementations, six deaths, and the scar tissue that shapes the platform you'd build on today.

If you think Microsoft breaking Windows is a new thing - think again🤭

They've killed their own widget platform 6 times in 30 years. Each one died from a different spectacular failure.

But the last iteration might actually be done right

Read the full history:
xakpc.dev/windows-widg...

apparently most current LLMs suck in C#

it figures

I'm almost at the point where I could use my own LLM chat app to develop my own LLM chat app

art by @ironlily.bsky.social

I'm building my own LLM client as a native Windows app because every app from major vendors is painfully slow

as for today's background, I chose the coolest art from @ironlily.bsky.social

The main feature of my 🪟 app is done - a truly instant quick chat.

Here's a comparison of desktop apps from different providers versus what you can get when cutting out all the noise (next post ⬇️)

I think it's good, what do you think?

Today I decommissioned the last piece of my late startup

This .NET Framework 4 web app, hosted on Azure, worked for 8 years total, and the last 5 almost by itself

Now, when the last user no longer need it, it can finally go to rest. Thanks for all your work, small app 🫡

Why does copilot sometimes suck? Here's example N+1:

I simply asked it to add docs.

`inheritdoc` is OK, but what's with this `min` method that doesn't even exist in C#?

As soon as I expanded my ChatGPT subscription, I set myself a recurrent task

So far it's not bad, so I'll create more 'summarize news' tasks

*weekly limit

o3-mini-high was quite good, but I spent my 50-message daily limit 😁

o3-mini - not sure yet if it's even on the same level as Claude

The same code was produced by ChatGPT o3-mini (not high) and Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Both produced the result after 2-3 steps of dialog with clarifications

Let me try some LLM clients from windows store

Oh, okay...

Instead of going for a walk, I'll add shallow support for ollama.

I'll regret it later, but for now it's quite fun

And before I wrap for a day, some funny shit

Because why not, it's my app in the end

You probably have around 10GB of RAM and most likely a GPU of some kind on your windows machine.

Your chats with LLMs should NOT take several seconds to load couple messages. This is the speed we need 🎞👀

(forgot to shut off some BGM I was listening to while coding, so enjoy)

You know your project is good👌
when you install Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting NuGet to it

Test your app with proper prompts

Starting to look like an actual app

Enterprise grind is done for this week; back to building desktop apps

The R1 model is funny to follow through all of that

But wait!
But wait!
But wait, there is more

I kinda gave up on 🦋 lately, but I haven't given up on building stuff.

Here is an early version of a Windows app (the ugliest one): an LLM app outperforming both Copilot and ChatGPT native apps in speed on the same 4o-mini model.

I might even ship it soon with BYOK or with some kind of sub

A couple of TRAXX P160 AC2

Hiking is my greatest discovery this year

Day spent.. interesting

Now that's a remarkable achievement

/s

Danube is marvelous

I think Carson is not here so there is no one to push htmx content

The last 9-5 day this year just ended

it's time to lie down and do nothing for a day or so