We’ve been hearing for some time that Microsoft is aiming to make app development across Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8 dead simple, but it’s anotherthing completely to see that in action.
Rick Walrond, developer of the Windows Phone word game AlphaDrops, reports that he was in a position to use 90 percent of his original code when porting the game more than to Windows 8. You can take a appear at the port in action below.
Walrond says that he managed to full the port in just two weeks, even though for now it only supports the single player mode of AlphaDrops. It’s a sign that other Windows Telephone app developers could simply reuse their code on Windows 8, and it’s also the sort of issue that could attract far more developers to Microsoft’s struggling mobile platform.
“The great news for existing Windows Phone Silverlight developers is that the underlying code is very similar,” Walrond stated in an e-mail interview with VentureBeat. “I suspect that if you have an XNA game [the Windows telephone development atmosphere for more graphics intensive games] that it wouldn’t be that simple, but developers will save a lot of time when porting from Windows Phone Silverlight. I was able to wire up the Windows 8 App to the exact identical internet services and databases which would enable for cross platform competition and leader boards.”
Still, the Windows 8 development process wasn’t entirely rosy for Walrond. He says that the development environment was “buggy and incomplete,” and that some of the functions he wanted to implement in the app had been only achievable by making use of HTML and Javascript (which Microsoft is pushing for Windows 8 apps).
I asked Walrond if there’s a opportunity Microsoft will ever consider producing it simple for devs to port apps from Windows 8 back to Windows Telephone. “In terms of porting from Windows 8 to Windows Phone, things begin to get intriguing,” he stated. “Remember that Microsoft is pushing HTML/Javascript. I suspect that Microsoft will add this combination to Windows Phone as well and also with the introduction of Visual Studio 11, I’m hoping they will also add far more of the Asynchronous programming functionality to the Windows Phone dev kit. If they do these two things, porting from Windows 8 to Windows Phone will be dead straightforward with the exception of user interface and resource differences. But with HTML/Javascript, porting from other platforms like the internet may possibly be just as simple”
As far as items stand right now, Walrond says he’d likely be in a position to use a decent quantity of his code if he initial began constructing AlphaDrops on Windows 8 and wanted to port it to Windows Telephone.
Filed below: dev, games, mobile, VentureBeat 
