4 ms·

Reading that post feels like sincere but wishful thinking. Both major mobile platforms provide the developer with sandboxed access to a more or less complete un

Reading that post feels like sincere but wishful thinking. Both major mobile platforms provide the developer with sandboxed access to a more or less complete unix machine. This means complete access to things like underlying network interfaces (via sockets), Full File API access to local storage (inside the sandbox), threads, memory management (via JVM/ObjC or at a lower level in Native C), Graphics hardware via OpenGL just to name a few. Just because there's now the web standard has some half-hearted attempt at notifications doesn't change the fact that the HTML/javascript based machine available in web applications is a severely crippled platform for app development and always will be.

icebraining 10y ago
Yes, the web platform has more limitations, but it's a bit like when people wrote software for DOS (or bare metal) because Windows didn't give them direct access to all hardware features. They weren't wrong, but how many bare metal software do you see today? Eventually the platform provides support to the needs of 99%+ of software, and more unrestricted access becomes a special case, not the default. All of the things you've pointed out are either mostly available (File API, WebGL, ServiceWorkers, memory management using Typed Arrays like asm.js does) or will be soonish, and when all you can point to is stuff like CUDA, native apps will become the new "bare metal".
- pjmlp 10y ago
  I see it everywhere. On my computers the only web based software is related to online travel agencies, discussion forums not based on email and news sources. When there is a native alternative, it gets installed.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    Sure, and I use Debian on all my machines, and read my email with Alpine over ssh. But I don't think that tells me much regarding the overall tendencies of software development and use.
    - pjmlp 10y ago
      Well, the last three years I have gotten lots of nice projects coding greenfield native applications. Outside the HN bubble not everyone is sold on web.
- chetanahuja 10y ago
  "They weren't wrong, but how many bare metal software do you see today?" Umm... This discussion is about mobile devices right? Almost all my usage of my phone is on native apps.

icebraining 10y ago

Yes, the web platform has more limitations, but it's a bit like when people wrote software for DOS (or bare metal) because Windows didn't give them direct access to all hardware features. They weren't wrong, but how many bare metal software do you see today? Eventually the platform provides support to the needs of 99%+ of software, and more unrestricted access becomes a special case, not the default. All of the things you've pointed out are either mostly available (File API, WebGL, ServiceWorkers, memory management using Typed Arrays like asm.js does) or will be soonish, and when all you can point to is stuff like CUDA, native apps will become the new "bare metal".

pjmlp 10y ago
I see it everywhere. On my computers the only web based software is related to online travel agencies, discussion forums not based on email and news sources. When there is a native alternative, it gets installed.
- icebraining 10y ago
  Sure, and I use Debian on all my machines, and read my email with Alpine over ssh. But I don't think that tells me much regarding the overall tendencies of software development and use.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    Well, the last three years I have gotten lots of nice projects coding greenfield native applications. Outside the HN bubble not everyone is sold on web.
chetanahuja 10y ago
"They weren't wrong, but how many bare metal software do you see today?" Umm... This discussion is about mobile devices right? Almost all my usage of my phone is on native apps.