Know your terminology

What’s the deal with Windows apps terminology? I know it got messed up and easy to confuse, especially when you are not inside the Windows world, and platform resets done by Microsoft in the last few years certainly didn’t help. But there are quite a lot people who should understand it and they don’t. They just don’t want to invest that little time needed to understand what they are working with, and that’s the reason for this post.

The state of Windows apps

Since I’ve been dealing with Windows (Phone) apps since they appeared, I can testify there was quite a lot of confusion with people who weren’t into the platform. Microsoft is once again resetting the platform, ditching the “Phone” part of the name for mobile OS and not providing any official name for it. I see this as their intention to make sure people understand that it’s the same one OS, one Windows 10. And while it really is one OS, one build can run on all kind of devices, people are now confused even more. Clients and project managers will say: “How do you mean it’s not Windows Phone? I want an app that runs on phones”.

True story

I know there was at least one such confusion when Windows Phone 7 came around and client wanted an app for it. Now I’m not familiar if the client couldn’t communicate it well, or project manager didn’t bother to understand the requirement, but somehow a new project for Windows Mobile was created. You can see from example like this why it’s crucial that people who make decisions really understand the terminology they are dealing with.

Not only Windows

Unfortunately, this kind of “I don’t care, get it done” attitude is not limited to Windows apps development, or software development at all. When you are dealing with some business, you should make sure you understand at least the basic terminology, there are simply no excuses. Especially when you want to do a project and make some money from it.