Open source hacker extraordinaire Miguel de Icaza muses about the state of GUI APIs in light of Avalon:

I just had a realization today.

Microsoft’s Avalon is the J2EE of GUI APIs.

Its God’s way of punishing us for replacing the ten commandments with the Design Pattern fad.

We will have to wait a couple of years for the “Rails” of GUI toolkits to come into existance. In the meantime programmers will pay for their sins.

Avalon marks the end of the American Dream.

Now that’s not a happy programmer speaking.