WinUIpad: AI to the Rescue ⭐

It's been three months since my last WinUIpad update, though I've never really stopped working on this project. It's been frustrating. The Windows App SDK is a classic double-edged sword, in that it's the only framework that makes sense if I want to use the latest WinUI 3 controls and capabilities and stick with C#, but it's also a nightmare of missing functionality that's available and/or much easier to use in the older Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) framework.

The central irony here is that I switched to the Windows App SDK specifically so I could implement multiple tabs and documents, as the tabs implementation in WPF is decades old and not designed for modern, multi-document apps. But knowing that I had to figure out the Windows App SDK to some degree, I started with a basic, single document version of the app first. And then consistently struggled to get it up to speed with the features in the WPF version of the app (called .NETpad). In fact, it was so bad, I just started stripping features out so I get a solid if limited base with which to move forward.

I had hoped to complete that more limited version of WinUIpad by late 2025 or early 2026, but I never felt good about the state of this project. And so I kept going in and out of the code, continued being frustrated, and started considering my options. For example, I could start over, yet again, with another framework, but that would take time and I can't claim that doing so with the Windows App SDK this past year has been in any way rewarding.

I did spend time on that, of course. I brought my MacBook Air to Mexico specifically with the idea that I would spend some time trying to learn Swift and SwiftUI, though whatever apps I would make would only run on the Mac or some other Apple platform. For what feels like the hundredth time, I looked into React Native, another way I could use WinUI 3 for a Windows app, but with JavaScript, which feels like three steps back. I could try to stick with C# and go cross-platform with Uno Platform, which admittedly is somewhat appealing. Or I could just give up. Honestly, I was at the point where that was almost the most appealing option of all. The Windows App SDK is terrible, and doubly so because we all know Microsoft is never--never, never, never--going to fix this mess. Ever.
?‍? Pair programming experiments
I have used various pair programming tools, mostly GitHub Copilot, to help me get past some issues in WinUIpad. I long ago lost track of my efforts in this space, and I never really took good notes anyway. But the way I remember this is that GitHub Copilot started off very promising and then devolved into something beyond useless.

The workflow, such as it was, is that I would ask it to solve a very specific code issue, it would suggest changes, I would approve those changes, and then I'd try to compile the code but it would produce a new error. Which I would present to GitHub Copilot and then be told, a bit too jauntily...