Windows Phone Thoughts: Windows Phone 7 Development Tools Preferred by Experienced Developer

"My thoughts on iPhone coding a master-detail set of two views on iPhone versus Windows Phone 7 and why the designer-developer story is better with the Microsoft toolset thanks to Expression Blend and the C# language.. This is just an opinion piece, but realize I am not a newbie at either platform. I was using Interface Builder on NeXT boxes in 1993-1994 and unfortunately in my opinion not enough has changed, to put real design into the hands of the iPhone coder."

Don Burnett over at Don's Blog has done an excellent comparison of developing an application for the iPhone vs. Windows Phone 7. In the slide presentation that he has created, Don demonstrates creating a simple menu system using both Interface Builder (for the iPhone) and Expression Blend (for Windows Phone 7). After completing the process, Don finds that using Expression Blend to create a simple application takes about half the time (12 minutes vs. 7 minutes). I've mentioned in a previous post that using Visual Studio, XNA, and Expression Blend with a familiar and popular programming language really do give Windows Phone 7 developers an incentive to give the platform a chance. Hopefully this will lead to a large selection of applications at launch.