5 ms·
Microsoft has tremendous resources, it's definitely costlier to build a great desktop UI than a great Web UI What? Let's not rewrite history. I has been easy a
by danieldk 9y ago
Microsoft has tremendous resources, it's definitely costlier to build a great desktop UI than a great Web UI
What? Let's not rewrite history. I has been easy and cheap to create desktop UIs for decades, literally. I was using Borland Delphi 1.0 as a 13 year old and could have a basic Windows UI app up and running in ten minutes.
There have been many great cross-platform and platform-specific toolkits that are easy to use. E.g. you can teach someone with some Python knowledge how to make basic Qt desktop applications in one hour or so. It's literally as simple as dragging some widgets to a window and writing some lines of wrapper code.
I recommend anyone who thinks that developing applications using web UIs is easier/cheaper to look at some Delphi 1.0 videos. E.g.:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_3K_0vjUhk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_3K_0vjUhk
This was how we developed desktop applications 22 years ago on machines with 4 or 8 MB RAM. And it is still a whole lot easier and more efficient than a web app.
- freshhawk 9y agoI agree, but the previous comment did say "a great desktop UI". Simple ones are definitely easier in something like QT of course, great ones are not.
- mixedCase 9y agoOnly if your measure for great is "looks and behaves in a bug-compatible manner exactly like the native toolkit". Otherwise, no, I'd very much disagree.