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I am 29, started coding at 14, I've built UIs based on mIRC Scripting, VB/Winforms, C++/Qt, C#/WPF, Java/Android layouts. Using IDEs such as Visual Studio, Ecli

by Kunix 11y ago

I am 29, started coding at 14, I've built UIs based on mIRC Scripting, VB/Winforms, C++/Qt, C#/WPF, Java/Android layouts. Using IDEs such as Visual Studio, Eclipse, Qt Creator and Android Studio. I must say: Atom Editor is great. Using HTML/CSS/JS to build desktop/mobile apps really makes sense to me, especially given that: - You only have to support one rendering engine. - You have access to the latest Web Components/ES6/CSS3 features. - You can rely on native Node.js modules when needed. It's good for portability, HTML/CSS became better at UI, JS becomes a better language, current IDEs are great, live debugging tools are great.

vdaniuk 11y ago
The fact that you are being(edit: was) downvoted for constructive opinion shows unwarranted prejudice of HN hivemind towards web technologies. HN discussions on this topic are effectively useless, any constructive truth finding is drowned. edit: I'll take my downvotes with pleasure. The fact that I am able to use Atom or Nylas N1 or Nuclide on linux with 0 problems alone is enough to welcome proliferation of web tech on desktop.
- grinich 11y ago
  Thanks for your support of N1. :) Feel free to ping me if you have feedback. I'm mg@nylas.com
- paulddraper 11y ago
  Your decry of prejudice would be more believable if it weren't only unsorted generalizations (i.e. prejudices)
scrollaway 11y ago
You also forget: - There are far fewer native components, leaving accessibility down to the developer of the app and making it nonexistant. - Platform integration is impossible, which means there is no way for the framework, for example, to create widgets differently on OS X, Windows or Linux (these platforms have many different conventions) - Theming globally becomes impossible. If you want to write a dark theme for your desktop, you go from writing a theme once for GTK and once for Qt to once for each and every app you run. Uuuurgh. But only supporting one rendering engine, yay! Much better than the 6 different engines we have to support in Qt (huh?). And having access to all the latest JS additions! ... that were copied from other languages you could develop desktop apps in, because JS is a terrible hack. And relying on native Node.js modules, yay! As opposed to native modules for literally every other better language out there. I'm not sure what you're actually comparing this workflow to. Maybe one day writing HTML apps will be great, but today is not that day. Today, writing HTML apps is only beginning to be an idea that doesn't completely suck. But for the user, it does massively suck. Massive apps that ship their own copy of webkit/blink/whathaveyou, with security flaws that won't get patched, disgusting performance on low-end hardware, atrocious battery usage and decades of UX knowledge thrown out of the window just because the app developer doesn't have the knowledge to see it. I don't look forward to this. And I'm younger than you.
- stonemetal 11y ago
  >I'm not sure what you're actually comparing this workflow to. He is comparing it to what they have now, XUL + CSS + JavaScript. Replacing it with html isn't as big a change as it sounds, their UI is already written in XML and rendered by Gecko, all they are doing is moving from a custom XML like XAML(MS) or FXML(Java) to standard HTML rendered by Gecko.
  - walterbell 11y ago
    In that case, could the XUL dependency be removed from Thunderbird?
    - scrollaway 11y ago
      Unlike the original parent post I don't think this announcement anything to do with XUL. Thunderbird just doesn't have the userbase Mozilla expects it to at this point because, surprise, the people who want an email client are a small subset of the people who want a web browser. <rant> This is lost in a sea of replies now but I'm sure pissed off Mozilla is completely losing their root mantra of fighting for the free web. Persona, Thunderbird, two critical components of a "free web": free global authentication, free email client. I'm sure next mozfest the same suits as every year will talk about how they're so proud of "keeping the web open". What a crock of crap. Firefox isn't even that good of a browser anymore. </rant>
      - walterbell 11y ago
        It is easy to forget that freedom and creativity are not a numbers game. There are benefits to a majority when a minority is free to create. An argument could be made that the majority consumption patterns are made possible by the minority creator patterns, hence it makes economic sense to fund the minority out of majority profits. This is one of the reasons why iPads have stalled - pro developers can't make money, for well documented reasons. The web equivalent will be the starving of open communication, thought and creativity, leading to homogeneous noise as a poor substitute for ground-breaking content.
creshal 11y ago
> - You only have to support one rendering engine. - You have access to the latest Web Components/ES6/CSS3 features. - You can rely on native Node.js modules when needed. So, developer convenience trumps user experience? Who cares about your battery run time, how hot your PC runs, the bandwidth overhead, the massive attack surface from all the useless components shipped, how badly the webapp integrates into your OS, as long as we can ship faster and faster?
- hmokay 11y ago
  JavaScript programmers are truly delusional sometimes.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    It’s not really JavaScript, I’d argue it’s a different reason. node-webkit apps are cheaper to develop. Far cheaper. Everyone can write a webapp, a native application requires professional developers. The payroll looks completely different. And then the devs who have only worked with node-webkit don’t know how much better they could have it. I know devs who refuse to use map, reduce and filter, because "it’s black magic and we always used for".
- Kunix 11y ago
  As a user, my experience with HTML/CSS/JS apps is great. Look at the excellent feedback the Atom Editor is getting. As a developer, I feel that it's easier for me to create good user experience (nice UI, easy non-blocking I/Os by default, etc). I don't say it's flawless, I say it's now becoming a very good alternative.
  - creshal 11y ago
    Oh, I'm writing web apps myself, but Gods, am I hating myself for it. OS integration is somewhere between a nightmare and impossible – and yes, it is desirable, unless you're on like Gnome 3 –, the resource requirements are abysmal (400 MB for an app that consists of a single input form, a table, and a search field, really Chrome?), performance is actually pretty lacklustre (non-blocking is one thing, actual multithreading another!), the UI isn't actually all that nice if you want to use it, not just look at it (say goodbye to accessibility; hell, even just proper keyboard navigation is black magic for most frameworks); and if you ship the engine yourself, you're now responsible for orchestrating and shipping bi-weekly browser updates to your customers to make sure your browser engine stays patched. Is all that bullshit really worth… whatever we're saving? (Our company is mainly saving in developer salaries, because we can force kids fresh out of school to work for minimum wage, instead of hiring experienced developers… we'll see how long this keeps working.)

by Kunix 11y ago

vdaniuk 11y ago

The fact that you are being(edit: was) downvoted for constructive opinion shows unwarranted prejudice of HN hivemind towards web technologies. HN discussions on this topic are effectively useless, any constructive truth finding is drowned. edit: I'll take my downvotes with pleasure. The fact that I am able to use Atom or Nylas N1 or Nuclide on linux with 0 problems alone is enough to welcome proliferation of web tech on desktop.

grinich 11y ago
Thanks for your support of N1. :) Feel free to ping me if you have feedback. I'm mg@nylas.com
paulddraper 11y ago
Your decry of prejudice would be more believable if it weren't only unsorted generalizations (i.e. prejudices)

scrollaway 11y ago

You also forget: - There are far fewer native components, leaving accessibility down to the developer of the app and making it nonexistant. - Platform integration is impossible, which means there is no way for the framework, for example, to create widgets differently on OS X, Windows or Linux (these platforms have many different conventions) - Theming globally becomes impossible. If you want to write a dark theme for your desktop, you go from writing a theme once for GTK and once for Qt to once for each and every app you run. Uuuurgh. But only supporting one rendering engine, yay! Much better than the 6 different engines we have to support in Qt (huh?). And having access to all the latest JS additions! ... that were copied from other languages you could develop desktop apps in, because JS is a terrible hack. And relying on native Node.js modules, yay! As opposed to native modules for literally every other better language out there. I'm not sure what you're actually comparing this workflow to. Maybe one day writing HTML apps will be great, but today is not that day. Today, writing HTML apps is only beginning to be an idea that doesn't completely suck. But for the user, it does massively suck. Massive apps that ship their own copy of webkit/blink/whathaveyou, with security flaws that won't get patched, disgusting performance on low-end hardware, atrocious battery usage and decades of UX knowledge thrown out of the window just because the app developer doesn't have the knowledge to see it. I don't look forward to this. And I'm younger than you.

stonemetal 11y ago
>I'm not sure what you're actually comparing this workflow to. He is comparing it to what they have now, XUL + CSS + JavaScript. Replacing it with html isn't as big a change as it sounds, their UI is already written in XML and rendered by Gecko, all they are doing is moving from a custom XML like XAML(MS) or FXML(Java) to standard HTML rendered by Gecko.
- walterbell 11y ago
  In that case, could the XUL dependency be removed from Thunderbird?
  - scrollaway 11y ago
    Unlike the original parent post I don't think this announcement anything to do with XUL. Thunderbird just doesn't have the userbase Mozilla expects it to at this point because, surprise, the people who want an email client are a small subset of the people who want a web browser. <rant> This is lost in a sea of replies now but I'm sure pissed off Mozilla is completely losing their root mantra of fighting for the free web. Persona, Thunderbird, two critical components of a "free web": free global authentication, free email client. I'm sure next mozfest the same suits as every year will talk about how they're so proud of "keeping the web open". What a crock of crap. Firefox isn't even that good of a browser anymore. </rant>
    - walterbell 11y ago
      It is easy to forget that freedom and creativity are not a numbers game. There are benefits to a majority when a minority is free to create. An argument could be made that the majority consumption patterns are made possible by the minority creator patterns, hence it makes economic sense to fund the minority out of majority profits. This is one of the reasons why iPads have stalled - pro developers can't make money, for well documented reasons. The web equivalent will be the starving of open communication, thought and creativity, leading to homogeneous noise as a poor substitute for ground-breaking content.

creshal 11y ago

> - You only have to support one rendering engine. - You have access to the latest Web Components/ES6/CSS3 features. - You can rely on native Node.js modules when needed. So, developer convenience trumps user experience? Who cares about your battery run time, how hot your PC runs, the bandwidth overhead, the massive attack surface from all the useless components shipped, how badly the webapp integrates into your OS, as long as we can ship faster and faster?

hmokay 11y ago
JavaScript programmers are truly delusional sometimes.
- kuschku 11y ago
  It’s not really JavaScript, I’d argue it’s a different reason. node-webkit apps are cheaper to develop. Far cheaper. Everyone can write a webapp, a native application requires professional developers. The payroll looks completely different. And then the devs who have only worked with node-webkit don’t know how much better they could have it. I know devs who refuse to use map, reduce and filter, because "it’s black magic and we always used for".
Kunix 11y ago
As a user, my experience with HTML/CSS/JS apps is great. Look at the excellent feedback the Atom Editor is getting. As a developer, I feel that it's easier for me to create good user experience (nice UI, easy non-blocking I/Os by default, etc). I don't say it's flawless, I say it's now becoming a very good alternative.
- creshal 11y ago
  Oh, I'm writing web apps myself, but Gods, am I hating myself for it. OS integration is somewhere between a nightmare and impossible – and yes, it is desirable, unless you're on like Gnome 3 –, the resource requirements are abysmal (400 MB for an app that consists of a single input form, a table, and a search field, really Chrome?), performance is actually pretty lacklustre (non-blocking is one thing, actual multithreading another!), the UI isn't actually all that nice if you want to use it, not just look at it (say goodbye to accessibility; hell, even just proper keyboard navigation is black magic for most frameworks); and if you ship the engine yourself, you're now responsible for orchestrating and shipping bi-weekly browser updates to your customers to make sure your browser engine stays patched. Is all that bullshit really worth… whatever we're saving? (Our company is mainly saving in developer salaries, because we can force kids fresh out of school to work for minimum wage, instead of hiring experienced developers… we'll see how long this keeps working.)