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JavaScript is also taking over because it's a way to deliver cross-platform GUIs painlessly. The alternatives are much slower to develop with, not necessarily t

by api 8y ago

JavaScript is also taking over because it's a way to deliver cross-platform GUIs painlessly. The alternatives are much slower to develop with, not necessarily that much less bloated, and have questionable future support. Not only that but once you develop a native app you must ship a native app. Words cannot describe the pain and suffering that is shipping native code on Windows (installers) or Linux (dependency and distro hell). Mac is better due to uniformity and app bundles but if you want the App Store you have to deal with that bureaucratic nightmare, and you never know if Apple will just arbitrarily destroy your business one day. The web just works. Things that "just work" always win over superior alternatives that have a higher level of friction. Here's a rule of thumb: every installation step roughly halves adoption. So a 5-step setup or deploy process takes the number of initial impressions and reduces adoption to (I/2^5).

sirjaz 8y ago
Oddly enough, There are things like Xamarin forms, QT, etc … Look, Xamarin.Forms 3.0 fully supports all platforms. Build once and deploy everywhere: https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2018/05/07/build-conference.aspx https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2018/05/07/build-c...
- api 8y ago
  I tried Xamarin forms. After an hour I could not get a project started. It was painful in the extreme. Visual Studio crashed once during the install. I tried to create a project and got several non-descript errors that looked like vomit from Visual Studio internals. When I encounter such things I toss them in the trash... not because I can't figure them out but because I no longer have any patience for it. If you can't be bothered to make your software installable / on-ramp-able then I can't be bothered to use it. I also see it as indicative of how the whole experience is going to go. If installing a development stack is painful then debugging, shipping, upgrading, etc. are also going to be painful.
  - sirjaz 8y ago
    When was the last time you tried Xamarin.Forms? Visual Studio 2017 doesn't have these issues, and Visual Studio for Mac rocks.
bitL 8y ago
> you must ship a native app I believe this is the main reason Autodesk is doing this.
sidlls 8y ago
"[P]ainlessly." "The web just works." "Cross platform." "Mac is better." These are all just not accurate. The last is objectively not true in the context you use it (Macs account for a tiny fraction of all desktop and laptop computers in use, the vast majority of which run Windows or Linux in the case of servers). There are a number of web "applications" which only work on one or a small number of browsers, which have complete features on just one browser (e.g. Slack and calls, which work on Chrome, not Firefox on Mac), and many if not most such "applications" have a lot of very complicated, poorly conceived JavaScript code backing them.
- api 8y ago
  You're missing the point. If a web application is well written it does "just work" from most users' perspective. Whether or not the code behind it is a mess is not relevant to the user. They don't see it. They just go to a URL and they're in business. A superior native app requires a download and an install. That's 2-3 more steps. In a corporate environment that may require an IT support ticket and an argument with a sighing grumbling IT person about supporting "more software" that will "break your machine" and "has it been scanned for malware?" I know that I am very picky about what I install on my computer. That's because I need my computer to work and I've had broken apps and junky installers wreck machines or introduce instability. Even if they don't wreck machines they leave clutter everywhere and are sometimes a pain to uninstall. Then there's the security surface area issue. So there's many reasons users resist native apps: hassle, security, system integrity, etc. It's a tough problem. Mobile OSes made a serious attempt to solve it and made a lot of headway there, but even that has collapsed. Look at the security/privacy nightmare that is mobile today. I am now very resistant to installing mobile apps because I assume they'll be reporting my location to advertisers, sucking down all my contacts, etc., so I only install them if I really need them. I prefer the web for most things because the web is a VM that strongly limits access and when I close the browser the app is gone.
  - sidlls 8y ago
    I'm not missing the point. I've just been around a while and have seen this fat client/thin client, "painless" cross platform, and other related buzzword soup discussion time and again. Too many times to be suckered by the modern incarnation.

by api 8y ago

sirjaz 8y ago

Oddly enough, There are things like Xamarin forms, QT, etc … Look, Xamarin.Forms 3.0 fully supports all platforms. Build once and deploy everywhere: https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2018/05/07/build-conference.aspx https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2018/05/07/build-c...

api 8y ago
I tried Xamarin forms. After an hour I could not get a project started. It was painful in the extreme. Visual Studio crashed once during the install. I tried to create a project and got several non-descript errors that looked like vomit from Visual Studio internals. When I encounter such things I toss them in the trash... not because I can't figure them out but because I no longer have any patience for it. If you can't be bothered to make your software installable / on-ramp-able then I can't be bothered to use it. I also see it as indicative of how the whole experience is going to go. If installing a development stack is painful then debugging, shipping, upgrading, etc. are also going to be painful.
- sirjaz 8y ago
  When was the last time you tried Xamarin.Forms? Visual Studio 2017 doesn't have these issues, and Visual Studio for Mac rocks.

bitL 8y ago

> you must ship a native app I believe this is the main reason Autodesk is doing this.

sidlls 8y ago

"[P]ainlessly." "The web just works." "Cross platform." "Mac is better." These are all just not accurate. The last is objectively not true in the context you use it (Macs account for a tiny fraction of all desktop and laptop computers in use, the vast majority of which run Windows or Linux in the case of servers). There are a number of web "applications" which only work on one or a small number of browsers, which have complete features on just one browser (e.g. Slack and calls, which work on Chrome, not Firefox on Mac), and many if not most such "applications" have a lot of very complicated, poorly conceived JavaScript code backing them.

api 8y ago
You're missing the point. If a web application is well written it does "just work" from most users' perspective. Whether or not the code behind it is a mess is not relevant to the user. They don't see it. They just go to a URL and they're in business. A superior native app requires a download and an install. That's 2-3 more steps. In a corporate environment that may require an IT support ticket and an argument with a sighing grumbling IT person about supporting "more software" that will "break your machine" and "has it been scanned for malware?" I know that I am very picky about what I install on my computer. That's because I need my computer to work and I've had broken apps and junky installers wreck machines or introduce instability. Even if they don't wreck machines they leave clutter everywhere and are sometimes a pain to uninstall. Then there's the security surface area issue. So there's many reasons users resist native apps: hassle, security, system integrity, etc. It's a tough problem. Mobile OSes made a serious attempt to solve it and made a lot of headway there, but even that has collapsed. Look at the security/privacy nightmare that is mobile today. I am now very resistant to installing mobile apps because I assume they'll be reporting my location to advertisers, sucking down all my contacts, etc., so I only install them if I really need them. I prefer the web for most things because the web is a VM that strongly limits access and when I close the browser the app is gone.
- sidlls 8y ago
  I'm not missing the point. I've just been around a while and have seen this fat client/thin client, "painless" cross platform, and other related buzzword soup discussion time and again. Too many times to be suckered by the modern incarnation.