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I don't see much competition between apps and the web, they have very different use cases and evolution characteristics. The web will never be able to compete

I don't see much competition between apps and the web, they have very different use cases and evolution characteristics. The web will never be able to compete with an app SDK for performance, OS integration, and ease of development. But on the other hand, no app SDK will ever be able to target all platforms the way the web can as a defacto standard which all vendors must implement to be considered a general purpose computing device. I see the web as a sort of unstoppable blob of a standard which moves forward slowly, but is constantly growing in use cases. No vendor or even a consortium has the power to supplant it. The only thing that would kill the web is something which makes it irrelevant, but apps will not be that thing, it will be some other force or trend which we aren't really seeing yet.

bobajeff 10y ago
I think it can get close to competing with a native SDK in performance. With WebGL2, SIMD.js, JavaScript shared memory threads and WebAssembly it could get close enough that few will care about the difference. I think ease of development really depends on the developer and tools. I can't speak for OS integration as it has never interested me to a great extent as a user. I'm sure some users care but I don't.
- rimantas 10y ago
  Anyone making such claims usually has no idea what native SDK are capable of.
  - bobajeff 10y ago
    I admit that I don't know what I'm talking about. Care to enlighten me on what native SDK's are capable of?
    - dasil003 10y ago
      Controlling audio by headset, background processing, serverless data syncing, register capabilities to make the app auto-open for a specific intent, direct connection to the hardware capabilities, etc, etc. Note that it's not impossible for these things to exist for the web, but by virtue of how these products and standards are developed, web standards will never catch up unless Apple and Google somehow decided that web standards were the way forward and to nerf their native SDK development efforts.
      - bobajeff 10y ago
        Thanks for your answer. I was asking mainly about performance related capabilities. What can native SDK's do that SIMD, shared memory multi-threading, and GL API's won't address?

bobajeff 10y ago

I think it can get close to competing with a native SDK in performance. With WebGL2, SIMD.js, JavaScript shared memory threads and WebAssembly it could get close enough that few will care about the difference. I think ease of development really depends on the developer and tools. I can't speak for OS integration as it has never interested me to a great extent as a user. I'm sure some users care but I don't.

rimantas 10y ago
Anyone making such claims usually has no idea what native SDK are capable of.
- bobajeff 10y ago
  I admit that I don't know what I'm talking about. Care to enlighten me on what native SDK's are capable of?
  - dasil003 10y ago
    Controlling audio by headset, background processing, serverless data syncing, register capabilities to make the app auto-open for a specific intent, direct connection to the hardware capabilities, etc, etc. Note that it's not impossible for these things to exist for the web, but by virtue of how these products and standards are developed, web standards will never catch up unless Apple and Google somehow decided that web standards were the way forward and to nerf their native SDK development efforts.
    - bobajeff 10y ago
      Thanks for your answer. I was asking mainly about performance related capabilities. What can native SDK's do that SIMD, shared memory multi-threading, and GL API's won't address?