Charlie Kindel, Partner Group Program Manager for the Windows Phone Application Platform & Developer Experience, wrote an article explaining the design approach for Windows Phone 7 series.
He notes the their purpose was:
.. to harness the energy, talent, and attention of developers and designers with a platform and ecosystem that delivers on the developer experience end to end; that, combined with the phone’s end-user experience, results in a winning virtuous cycle.
To implement this long-term vision some of their development principles were:
- Every decision we make must be made mindful of the effect on end-users.
- We will do a few things and do them very, very well; we are better off not having a capability than doing it poorly. There are always future versions.
- No API will be created or documented without a clear use case; “build it and they will come†APIs almost always do nothing but create bad legacy.
- We will build on the shoulders of giants; where possible integrate instead of create.
- We will strive to not show our organizational boundaries to developers.
We can see clear evidence of the principles in action in terms of the integration Windows Phone 7 brings between Xbox, Zune and Microsoft’s Live services. However we also see the downside of reduced functionality in initial releases. “We are better off not having a capability†may result in Windows Phone 7 having many less features than Windows Mobile 6.x had, no matter how poorly implemented.
To get more into the head of the development team read more at Charlie Kindel’s blog here.
Via LiveSide.net