Are you experienced with both ASP.NET and WPF coding? If so, I'll be grateful if you'll share your experience, please.
We are estimating a 100-screen WPF project. Our estimation methodology involves characterizing the complexity of each screen. We then apply a standard number for the development time, based on the complexity and the technology. The standard number is based on the developer being good, not a super-star.
For example, here's a screen:
The user selects a row in the master grid, then edits the data in the detail and saves the changes. Ajax is used to populate and save the detail without a postback. The data layer is already there, and styling will be handled by someone else. The task includes writing an appropriate suite of unit tests; integration testing is separate.
We would characterize this screen as medium and allocate X hours for the task, for classic ASP.NET (as opposed to MVC).
We need help figuring out what X should be for WPF.
My question:
If the screen was being created in WPF, by someone good at WPF -- would it take X hours, or .7 X, or 1.3 X? What is the relative productivity of WPF vs classic ASP.NET?
Asking another way: If a task takes (picking a number) 10 hours of ASP.NET coding, how many hours would it take to do it with WPF? 5? 15?
We'd like to know if WPF is (picking a number) 50% more productive than ASP.NET, so we can propose a lower price and be confident that we will be able to do the project within budget.
[Edit] Asking yet another way: This discussion ASP.Net or WPF (C#)? has a bunch of responses. The selected "correct" answer is "Reasons to choose WPF" and the first reason is "Much faster and easier development than ASP.NET and jQuery".
Is that answer true? How much faster?
From personal experience:
ASP.NET is easier to get into than WPF. ASP.NET quite similar to other web server side technologies. WPF breaks with and adds many features to classic desktop development, that takes time getting used to.
That said, actual development by experienced developers might be a lot faster in WPF. My personal stress factor is browser compatibility (getting it to render exactly the same way in multiple (versions of) browsers; it simply takes too much time.)
You are not going to get any numbers from me as it is much to hard to give them based on the input you have given.