Ask Paul: May 29 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Here’s another round of questions and answers to kick off the weekend as we bid adieu to May.
Pixel imperfect
wolters asks:

Paul...given the recent news on the Pixel 4 sales, key Pixel executives leaving and the delayed 4a, how do feel about the future of Pixel phones? Do you think we'll get a 5XL this October? Should we camera enthusiasts be looking for a new "preferred" phone?

Based on all the current rumors, it looks like the Pixel 4a, which will not be provided in a larger XL version, has been delayed yet again, possibly to July now, and that the Pixel 5 will ship in both normal and XL models. (I can’t explain why there’s not going to be a 4a XL beyond maybe Google wanting to simply offer the lowest possible price point.)

If the Pixel 5 ships with basically the Pixel 4 camera plus an ultra-wide lens, they’ll be in good shape. But Google, like OnePlus, always makes some quirky decisions---Motion Sense, seriously?---so you never know. I’m always interested in what they do, and I’ve really liked the Pixel (and before that, Nexus) camera experience overall and over time. But the defections are definitely a worry. If they give up their computational photography advantages, I won’t be getting a Pixel 5 XL.
Short takes
lenh51 asks:

Paul - have you abandoned “Short Takes”? The last one was in late March and there have been only 5 posted this year. I can’t say it is a big deal, but I have always enjoyed them as they are usually lighter and somewhat irreverent compared to the normal day to day pieces. So, I am asking in Microsoft language if this feature is being deprecated? Thanks.

No, I just haven’t felt very irreverent this year, mostly because of the COVID-19 pandemic. But I did post one today and will try to keep it going in the future.
Programming series
bschnatt asks:

Paul, I'm a recent Premium initiate, and have enjoyed reading your programming series. Are you going to do a web programming series? I've spent a lot of time recently learning how to do this myself, so if you do, you're in for some fun ;)

Yes, but I’ll be working with Xamarin.Forms, which is a mobile framework, first. I’ve mostly written but have yet to publish an early peek at my work with that. If I can complete something useful, I’ll document it in a series here as I did with the WinForms, WPF, and UWP versions of .NETpad.

After that, yeah, I’ll be moving to the web at some point. I’m not sure exactly what form that will take---JavaScript/TypeScript with some framework, Electron, Blazor Web Assembly, or whatever----but I’ve been reading up on this to figure out which direction to take. I did so web development, with the original pre-.NET version of Active Server Pages (ASP) in the late 1990s, but it’s been a while.

I have a long history of Win32 development (I practically worship Delphi), and found that getting into web programming was like walking into the ocean and getting carried away by...

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