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That's not true universally. While there is a hot market for startups based on Angular ( or is React these days?) and microservices or other such things the mar
by rdtsc 9y ago
That's not true universally. While there is a hot market for startups based on Angular ( or is React these days?) and microservices or other such things the market for enterprise desktop software is still there.
Try writing a serious CAD application in HTML5/JS for example.
- colek42 9y agoI don't think writing a browser based, professional, CAD application is out of the question. Especially with WASM gaining support in modern browsers and WebGL2. I think this was done a few years ago, but it still amazes me. http://www.meshlabjs.net/ http://www.meshlabjs.net/
- mcast 9y agoFor a company like Palantir, I would imagine most of their clients are running older browsers, possibly even IE <10 still. I'm not familiar with their product, but a web app would certainly introduce more developer time spent on keeping cross-compatibility with older browsers while a Java/native app is practically WYSIWYG.
- lmeyerov 9y agoMaybe two fun data points: -- We achieve magnitudes higher visual scale via GPU client/cloud computing... while running in a browser -- We intersect with some of Palantir's customers (though we're more fortune 2000 sec/fraud/etc.), and are deploying fine. WebGL is ~5 years old. This may also be a good point to note.. The Graphistry team is ~doubling! If scaling visual analytics for cybersecurity, anti-fraud, etc., sounds worthwhile, please send your CV/LinkedIn/Github to build@graphistry.com !
- pjmlp 9y agoWebGL2 is a nice toy for writing blog posts, nothing more. All my mobile devices have OpenGL ES 3.x running intensive native games without issues. Yet for mobile browsers I have to specifically enable the WebGL 2 support. No user without technical skills is ever going to deep dive in the browser flags to enable WebGL content on computers that don't have any issue playing 3D games.
- bootloop 9y agohttps://www.onshape.com https://www.onshape.com Build by some Solidworks people offering basically the same experience but in the browser with server side computation. Very promising as it tries to solve problems which the older CAD players can't tackle with there current desktop tech.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoGod, I have such mixed feelings after viewing the product overview video on their site. On the one hand, you can't deny the wins that comes from bullshit-free operations - no installing, no permissions, no need to deal with sysadmins to approve a new program[0], and updates do themselves. Files are backed up and trivially shared across devices. On the other hand, you're now locked in to a vendor system, with vendor software doing file management, version control and sharing. You need constant access to Internet to do anything at all. Then there's also issue of performance. I actually registered for a free personal account and started playing with this software. I saw more-less what I expected: it kinda works, like most such web tools kinda work - good enough to do something, but laggy and slow enough to piss me off if I were to spend more than 10 minutes designing anything in it. -- I can understand all the cloud nonsense (though I prefer regular files, thank you very much). But from the quick experience, the application would feel much better if it was a desktop/mobile native program, not a webapp. It's like with Google Office suite - looks cool to have it in a browser and it sorta can help with the basic things, but try to build a reasonably-sized document, spreadsheet or slideshow, and the performance drop will make you tear your hair out. -- [0] - How security is done on work machines is ridiculous, though it's a separate topic. I'll just leave this: https://xkcd.com/1200/ https://xkcd.com/1200/.