Last Friday, the C++ team in Redmond released source code for “Project Austin” a skunk works project that is essentially a note taking app. Check out the team’s announcement blog here.
This app is one great example of the power of C++ allowing you to code in a largely ISO-C++ code base and then interface with the Windows Runtime API. The app uses the XAML-DX SwapChainBackgroundPanel type and uses XAML to layer UI elements over the “main Window”. It also uses C++AMP and extensively uses DirectX and all of the native goodness that is present in C++ and Windows 8.
I could go on and on but I would defer you to the blog post above. And yes, all this goodness in graphics, performance, inking etc without the overhead of GC.
Enjoy!
Now we just need some tasty ARM hardware to run it on. In the mean time I’ll just be nosing through the code with my learning hat on!
Oct 26th never appeared to be so far away 🙂 Even though i have been using Windows 8 on a HP Elitebook 2740p, i am twiddling my fingers waiting for ARM hardware to hit the Stores.