7 ms·

The most obvious counter-argument: one shared codebase vs. your five. Native is awesome when you have the money.

arcticwombat 8y ago
Meh, I write cross platform applications, single code base, and compile to native executables on Windows, Linux, and Mac with no problem and no extra Chromium bloat. FreePascal + Lazarus.
- TomMarius 8y ago
  How do I run that on web, the most important platform today? I'm also not aware of any comparable community like Node.js has. And I say that as someone who was writing Pascal professionally ~5 years ago.
  - arcticwombat 8y ago
    We're not talking about web applications, we're talking about Electron. But sure, if you want to do Pascal on the web there are things like Smart Pascal.
    - TomMarius 8y ago
      We're talking about ways to do multiplatform applications, which includes the web. You suggested Pascal but that doesn't run on the web without changing the code. Enclosing the application in Electron shell does not mean it's the only way it's going to be ran, actually most of the time you do it because you already have a web application and a server.
      - arcticwombat 8y ago
        You can't run an Electron app on the web without changing code either, seeing as it's a browser AND a webserver combo. You also don't take a webapp and separate server and just drop the two into a folder and run it as an Electron app without changing code
        TomMarius 8y ago
        Not true. You can code the app in a way that allows you to share code completely between web, server and Electron app; there will just be a little boilerplate in the Electron app around it.
- cztomsik 8y ago
  I've done delphi in the past but I haven't heard about it for a while. How big is the community nowadays? What about libs? Package manager? Dependency-hell? Unit-testing frameworks and other toolings? How easy is it to stop the whole application and inspect everything, evaluate some code in parent stack and see if the issue was resolved so that you know exactly what to do? It's not only about GUI designer and fast cross-platform compiler.
  - arcticwombat 8y ago
    Online package manager can search, download, and install packages. I have libs/packages for everything I need, dunno about your needs. Not sure about the community size but it's plenty big and plenty helpful, lots of cool new stuff going on. Plenty of debuggers available and you can pause things and inspect stuff. Lazarus has seen loads of updates the last few years, it's worth taking the time to set it up to fit your needs and learn the shortcuts.
ken 8y ago
False dichotomy. There are plenty of ways to share code across these platforms, without writing everything in JavaScript.
izacus 8y ago
People have been writing shared codebase apps for decades even before the Javascript craze. What do you think the cross-platform browsers you're packaging in Elecron are written in?!
- pcwalton 8y ago
  > What do you think the cross-platform browsers you're packaging in Elecron are written in?! The cross-platform browsers are written in a whole lot of platform-specific code.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
Much less difficult if you follow basic software engineering practice when writing your software - split out platform-dependent parts and abstract them away, write remaining 90%+ of your codebase without worrying about the platform.
c-smile 8y ago
Not exactly. I am building HTML-NOTEPAD (https://html-notepad.com https://html-notepad.com) from the same sources ( https://github.com/c-smile/sciter-sdk/tree/master/notepad https://github.com/c-smile/sciter-sdk/tree/master/notepad ) for all desktop platforms. It uses sciter (https://sciter.com https://sciter.com) which is sort of micro-electron if you wish. Distribution of the app is 2mb rather than 200mb.

Meh, I write cross platform applications, single code base, and compile to native executables on Windows, Linux, and Mac with no problem and no extra Chromium bloat. FreePascal + Lazarus.

TomMarius 8y ago
How do I run that on web, the most important platform today? I'm also not aware of any comparable community like Node.js has. And I say that as someone who was writing Pascal professionally ~5 years ago.
- arcticwombat 8y ago
  We're not talking about web applications, we're talking about Electron. But sure, if you want to do Pascal on the web there are things like Smart Pascal.
  - TomMarius 8y ago
    We're talking about ways to do multiplatform applications, which includes the web. You suggested Pascal but that doesn't run on the web without changing the code. Enclosing the application in Electron shell does not mean it's the only way it's going to be ran, actually most of the time you do it because you already have a web application and a server.
    - arcticwombat 8y ago
      You can't run an Electron app on the web without changing code either, seeing as it's a browser AND a webserver combo. You also don't take a webapp and separate server and just drop the two into a folder and run it as an Electron app without changing code
      - TomMarius 8y ago
        Not true. You can code the app in a way that allows you to share code completely between web, server and Electron app; there will just be a little boilerplate in the Electron app around it.
cztomsik 8y ago
I've done delphi in the past but I haven't heard about it for a while. How big is the community nowadays? What about libs? Package manager? Dependency-hell? Unit-testing frameworks and other toolings? How easy is it to stop the whole application and inspect everything, evaluate some code in parent stack and see if the issue was resolved so that you know exactly what to do? It's not only about GUI designer and fast cross-platform compiler.
- arcticwombat 8y ago
  Online package manager can search, download, and install packages. I have libs/packages for everything I need, dunno about your needs. Not sure about the community size but it's plenty big and plenty helpful, lots of cool new stuff going on. Plenty of debuggers available and you can pause things and inspect stuff. Lazarus has seen loads of updates the last few years, it's worth taking the time to set it up to fit your needs and learn the shortcuts.

ken 8y ago

False dichotomy. There are plenty of ways to share code across these platforms, without writing everything in JavaScript.

izacus 8y ago

People have been writing shared codebase apps for decades even before the Javascript craze. What do you think the cross-platform browsers you're packaging in Elecron are written in?!

pcwalton 8y ago
> What do you think the cross-platform browsers you're packaging in Elecron are written in?! The cross-platform browsers are written in a whole lot of platform-specific code.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

Much less difficult if you follow basic software engineering practice when writing your software - split out platform-dependent parts and abstract them away, write remaining 90%+ of your codebase without worrying about the platform.

c-smile 8y ago

Not exactly. I am building HTML-NOTEPAD (https://html-notepad.com https://html-notepad.com) from the same sources ( https://github.com/c-smile/sciter-sdk/tree/master/notepad https://github.com/c-smile/sciter-sdk/tree/master/notepad ) for all desktop platforms. It uses sciter (https://sciter.com https://sciter.com) which is sort of micro-electron if you wish. Distribution of the app is 2mb rather than 200mb.