Microsoft Announces the Open Sourcing of Windows Calculator

cageymaru

cageymaru

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Microsoft has announced that it has open sourced the Windows Calculator on GitHub under the MIT License. Microsoft is seeking more community contributions and ideas in the development of Windows Calculator. Reviewing the Windows Calculator code will allow developers to learn how to work with Microsoft technologies.

Reviewing the Calculator code is a great way to learn about the latest Microsoft technologies like the Universal Windows Platform, XAML, and Azure Pipelines. Through this project, developers can learn from Microsoft's full development lifecycle, as well as reuse the code to build their own experiences. It's also a great example of Fluent app design. To make this even easier, we will be contributing custom controls and API extensions that we use in Calculator and other apps, to projects like the Windows Community Toolkit and the Windows UI Library.
 
cageymaru said:
Reviewing the Calculator code is a great way to learn about the latest Microsoft technologies like the Universal Windows Platform, XAML, and Azure Pipelines. Through this project, developers can learn from Microsoft's full development lifecycle, as well as reuse the code to build their own experiences. It's also a great example of Fluent app design. To make this even easier, we will be contributing custom controls and API extensions that we use in Calculator and other apps, to projects like the Windows Community Toolkit and the Windows UI Library.
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Jesus H.

Can we please go back to the simplicity of 1996?
 
seanreisk said:
Microsoft has announced a new initiative for generating press release coverage using anything that isn't broken in Windows 10.
P.S. I still have an old school calculator on my desk. I hate tabbing when I'm programming.
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You're not the only one.

upload_2019-3-6_19-25-40.png


I've had an Hp48 on my desk for decades. Still use it almost daily for quick maths / conversions, and I have a few macros which really help random things I'm working on. Yes, they could be done in something else, but this is super easy and doesn't disrupt anything I have on the screen.
 
PhaseNoise said:
You're not the only one. I've had an Hp48 on my desk for decades.
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Do you speak the Reverse Polish Notation 'out loud' (but only in your head) when you're using it? :D

"52, 14, divide, store ..." I can't break the habit.
 
seanreisk said:
Do you speak the Reverse Polish Notation 'out loud' (but only in your head) when you're using it? :D

"52, 14, divide, store ..." I can't break the habit.
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Haha, yes, actually. I'm the Calculator Whisperer!
 
Um is this the first mainline software from Microsoft to go open source? Maybe? Damn!
 
seanreisk said:
Microsoft has announced a new initiative for generating press release coverage using anything that isn't broken in Windows 10.


P.S. I still have an old school calculator on my desk. I hate tabbing when I'm programming.
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I use a scientific/programmers calculator on my cell phone instead of the Win 10 calculator.
 
seanreisk said:
Do you speak the Reverse Polish Notation 'out loud' (but only in your head) when you're using it? :D

"52, 14, divide, store ..." I can't break the habit.
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Heh, I've written a number of forth interpreter/compilers in my career so a stack oriented language or calculator is pretty much second nature to me.
 
In a related news blurb, big blue has decided to take the Linux "cat" command and make it closed source so you can better understand how they roll.
 
It has a currency converter, so it's going on the "Internets" to look up currency prices, so it's complicated... hence -> "Reviewing the Calculator code is a great way to learn about the latest Microsoft technologies"
 
Using Windows 10 LTSC here. It doesn't have UWP (thankfully). It has the classic calculator.

I imagine the best thing to come out of Microsoft open-sourcing the Windows calculator is that people will now release it as a Win32 program so that non-LTSC plebeians don't have to use awful UWP.

Seriously, just get LTSC. It makes everything better.
 
Is this the proof that MS has let quality control slip so much that they need other people to fix something as simple as a calculator because they can't do it?
 
You people never heard of set /a in windows or for linux expr? Meh waste of code
 
I wouldn't be surprised if someone finds a serious bug in the calculator code, like a privilege escalation o worse. Microsoft has a talent for those kind of things.
 
This is the big one! Microsoft shows their commitment to open source by releasing the one piece of software we thought we 'd never see blown wide open!
 
Absalom said:
I mean I knew that the latest Calculator used WPF/XAML or whatever, but Azure? Why the hell is Windows Calculator using Azure?!
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It's using Azure Pipelines, which is Microsoft's automated build/release mechanisms. "Azure DevOps" is their rebranding of both Visual Studio Team Services and Team Foundation Server (on-premises local server). It's just their code building / executable deployment mechanism - it offers a bunch of tools/checks for their developers to make sure that releases are being pushed out as they expected.

As for the OP, as a developer - this is pretty cool. Always good to be able to see real world applications to base applications off for reference if you're unsure on how to do something (whether it's the framework [UWP], structure, etc.) - better than a lot of those "demo" apps out there online that aren't complex at all and don't give a good "feel" for how to structure things in complex applications.
 
PhoenixGenesys said:
It has a currency converter, so it's going on the "Internets" to look up currency prices, so it's complicated... hence -> "Reviewing the Calculator code is a great way to learn about the latest Microsoft technologies"
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LOL sure enough. I see it has a ton of converters besides just currency. cool
 
PhoenixGenesys said:
It has a currency converter, so it's going on the "Internets" to look up currency prices, so it's complicated... hence -> "Reviewing the Calculator code is a great way to learn about the latest Microsoft technologies"
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Google does that also...
 
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kju1 said:
Google does that also...
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It was a slice of my premium sarcasm ;)

Now it's sarcasm squared :D

wyqtor said:
What next? Paint? Minesweeper?
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I really need to see the Paint source code... because we had Gimp for eons that started out as a Photoshop knock-off, and almost no one ever cared to look at that source code. But please Microsoft put the Paint source code on GitHub!
 
PhoenixGenesys said:
It was a slice of my premium sarcasm ;)

Now it's sarcasm squared :D



I really need to see the Paint source code... because we had Gimp for eons that started out as a Photoshop knock-off, and almost no one ever cared to look at that source code. But please Microsoft put the Paint source code on GitHub!
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LOL I missed that sorry.

As for paint that would actually BE awesome. The new replacement is garbage.
 
Delicieuxz said:
Using Windows 10 LTSC here. It doesn't have UWP (thankfully). It has the classic calculator.

I imagine the best thing to come out of Microsoft open-sourcing the Windows calculator is that people will now release it as a Win32 program so that non-LTSC plebeians don't have to use awful UWP.

Seriously, just get LTSC. It makes everything better.
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I was looking into switching to the LTSC edition a few weeks ago but the (as far as I can tell) removed OneDrive integration was a dealbreaker for me.
 
You have to wonder what skills MS have left.
Since the Fisher Price calculator its been clear they lost the plot, but to outsource a calculator because they "still" struggle with it?
School apprentices could show them the ropes.
 
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Finally!!! I've waited my entire post-Windows 3.0 life for a chance to peek into the code of the Windows calculator. My friends all thought I was crazy. They told me "They'll never do it!" I said, "You wait and see! MS will see reason eventually, and give us the code that we deserve." Guess who's laughing now guys!! I can finally get it.




Sooooooo....
 
XJDHDR said:
I was looking into switching to the LTSC edition a few weeks ago but the (as far as I can tell) removed OneDrive integration was a dealbreaker for me.
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LTSC comes with OneDrive and to me seems like it does what it does in the non-LTSC versions of Windows 10 - but I'm not really a OneDrive user.

It doesn't run itself if you don't want it to. But, it can be set to automatically run at startup.

OneDrive LTSC.jpg
 
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