alt Hacker NewsI think Microsoft coming out with XAML/WPF created too much complexity for most of the developers that were working with WinForms. Although the code had better separation from the interface, it also took quite a bit more effort to get an application up and running quickly. They took the "R" out of RAD, and then kind of put both WinForms and WPF on life support, while continuing to tout cross-platform on .NET Core without a first-party GUI platform. Now it just looks like Azure was always going to be the solution, to tie users into a platform they don't fully control.
I ran into all of this with the first few years of my career. Even after years, MAUI has struggled to gain traction and Avalonia has grown and is far more the de-facto choice for .NET cross-platform GUI. Both work collegues and myself have ran into XAML/WPF Styling horrors where it's all one giant aggregation/inheritance nightmare generated by Blend (and done by someone that didn't quite know what they were doing)