"No they are not electron apps. They are compiled to native code.
It's now finally one toolchain(#webpack)
It's one codebase and it compiles to:
Web
Android
IOS
MacOS
UWP
WIN32 (only one that uses electron)
7:52 AM · Jun 13, 2018"
comment seems to be saying -- in modern windows (UWP) it'll be using native code, but microsoft is taking the easy path on win32. i guess some people are surprised that despite years of telling people that win32 is going away microsoft is finally making good. but I am not, I'm more excited than anything at another good sign that Microsoft is finally done with legacy windows.
I’m an engineer in Office. This is not the case. The desktop app’s are fully native, and will remain so. They utilize React Native for a few components, but otherwise are written in C & C++.
In my experience most people in Microsoft have only a vague idea of what other teams are doing, even when none of it is really secret. If Office is starting to adopt React Native for some of its new UI components, and meanwhile there's a lot of work happening on the Office 365 web portal and Office web apps, internal telephone rumor circulation can morph that into "all of Office is being rewritten in javascript"
Nobody who truly participated in or contributed to the "complete" rewriting of Office in JS would be capable of expressing the positive emotions the subject of OP does...their soul would have been drained of the capacity to express joy long before the project would be completed. The tone smacks of the delusional cluelessness that MSFT's culture seems to uniquely foster.
Whoever makes the first neural model capable of returning interesting insights after being installed in the telephone switchboard/backbone is going to have a most unique life.
Edit: Just realized ISPs have probably been trying to do this for years. I'm talking about the first individual. It'll probably happen routinely in 20 years or so.
The whole thread and all later clarifications just look like a guy spewing random stuff loosely related with what he's working on at Microsoft. There's not much meaningful information to take from there.
UWP doesn't run on win7. If you think getting rid of WinXP was hard, wait to see the phasing out of Win7. If you write for the desktop, chances are you are writing an internal app. Lots of large enterprises (including my present employer) just switched to Win7. Win10 is a looong way ahead. A significant part of your userbase won't be able to touch a UWP app for a long time.
From what I understand they are using React Native.
I too find it hard to believe they would drop the native Windows and OSX versions of Outlook, Word, Excel, for apps written in React Native. But Microsoft has offered many surprises lately...
This isn't Office for Windows the suite. WIN32 is a platform they're not really supporting any more, I think they're basically saying if you're on WIN32 then you're getting the web version in future, not the real deal.
edit, since there seems to be some confusion: I am explicitly talking about the WIN32 variant, which he confirmed to be based on Electron.