WinRT, a replacement for Win32

Paul Thurrott: “Microsoft has an unfortunately inaccurate high-level diagram showing the relation between WinRT and the environments its replacing (which are shown as IE, Win32, and .NET). But the important thing to note is that there’s the NT kernel and then, right on top of it (like Win32) is WinRT. This WinRT has an application model and three boxes of capabilities that are expressed by APIs (Communications & Data, Graphics & Media, and Devices & Printing). “Above” WinRT is the two sets of presentation layer/programming language couples: XAML and various high level programming languages (C#, VB, and so on) and HTML/CSS and JavaScript, respectively. (DirectX is left out, but this sits on top of WinRT too.)”

In an earlier post, Windows 8 Speculation, I had diagrammed some options for WinRT. It looks like Microsoft went with the middle choice, making WinRT a peer to Win32. This is a very good thing.

Now I’m pretty excited to see what the API’s look like.