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No. I don't think we do. Writing native apps is a huge waste of time and resources. While the big players in the OS space were squabbling the web browsers snuck

by _5meq 8y ago

No. I don't think we do. Writing native apps is a huge waste of time and resources. While the big players in the OS space were squabbling the web browsers snuck in and drank their milkshake. Browsers / web apps are a more portable, and more productive method of distributing GUIs. Full stop. When deciding to go native or not, you have to decide: Will you hire several designated IOS application developers, several Android application developers, and have them re-implement your website? Or will you hire the equivalent amount of front-end engineers and have them collaborate and develop the codebase together using a shared toolkit? People moan about how it's slow, but they tend to miss the point: I don't work for a "writing native apps and make the apps fast" company. I work for a software company that builds a product and sells it to users. Developer familiarity == Speed == Money And really: Do you honestly believe spending 300k a year on engineers to re-implement the same shit we've already written, but in a different language with completely different semantics is a good investment? Rewriting all of the work we've ALREADY done for our mobile view in CSS and HTML and Javascript in Objective-C and Java? Unless you're writing software with INTENSE graphical requirements, and even THEN there is webgl, writing a native app brings no value. You could spend that time optimizing your website written in JS you've packaged as an IOS/Android app. Or, I don't know, implementing new features and actually bringing value to your company. PWAs are much slower, but as time goes on this will be improved. As for the electron haters: Show me a more productive way to implement GUI applications. Show me the applications and frameworks that are putting out GUIs that look even remotely as good as the Electron applications. I think we're going to see a rise of PWAs and apps that are simply web browsers in disguise. Edit: I'll also add that the "not always online" or "bandwidth" argument is bunk. Crazy idea: Package your web application as an app, and include it's dependencies and everything it needs to run. Once you do that, the "download once" advantage of a native app is bunk.

dzonga 8y ago
yeah, I agree too. One of the cofounders of Figma wrote some webGL demos. Damn those things are fantastic. Even Figma too, is an excellent piece of web software that can easily replace too.
eadmund 8y ago
> People moan about how it's slow No, I moan about how it's an abuse of my privacy, an abuse of my security & an abuse of the web itself. Web pages which use JavaScript enable all sorts of malicious nastiness which plain websites do not. They are impossible to properly secure (in that I get a new version every time I open it up). They are not what the WWW was meant to be. No thank you.
- p3llin0r3 8y ago
  OK so how is a native application different? You can do the exact same things in a native app.
  - eadmund 8y ago
    Because it's possible for a native app to be secure. I can audit it, pay someone else to audit it for me or rely on someone's free audit. I download the code once, and run it many times, rather than downloading a fresh version each time, and hoping the provider hasn't tampered with it. I can even run it offline, on an airgapped computer. And a native app is using the APIs of its platform as intended, rather than violating its entire raison d'être, like single page apps violate the Web.
chrisco255 8y ago
I love electron, and it's definitely leveled the playing field for cross platform desktop apps. However, Electron apps are difficult to do with high performance and low memory overhead. I still think that native matters on mobile, though. I have yet to see any Cordova-wrapped app that works as good as native. There are ways to get native performance and still write in a cross platform manner (React Native, Xamarin, etc).

by _5meq 8y ago

dzonga 8y ago

yeah, I agree too. One of the cofounders of Figma wrote some webGL demos. Damn those things are fantastic. Even Figma too, is an excellent piece of web software that can easily replace too.

eadmund 8y ago

> People moan about how it's slow No, I moan about how it's an abuse of my privacy, an abuse of my security & an abuse of the web itself. Web pages which use JavaScript enable all sorts of malicious nastiness which plain websites do not. They are impossible to properly secure (in that I get a new version every time I open it up). They are not what the WWW was meant to be. No thank you.

p3llin0r3 8y ago
OK so how is a native application different? You can do the exact same things in a native app.
- eadmund 8y ago
  Because it's possible for a native app to be secure. I can audit it, pay someone else to audit it for me or rely on someone's free audit. I download the code once, and run it many times, rather than downloading a fresh version each time, and hoping the provider hasn't tampered with it. I can even run it offline, on an airgapped computer. And a native app is using the APIs of its platform as intended, rather than violating its entire raison d'être, like single page apps violate the Web.

chrisco255 8y ago

I love electron, and it's definitely leveled the playing field for cross platform desktop apps. However, Electron apps are difficult to do with high performance and low memory overhead. I still think that native matters on mobile, though. I have yet to see any Cordova-wrapped app that works as good as native. There are ways to get native performance and still write in a cross platform manner (React Native, Xamarin, etc).