4 ms·

Serious question, Are the days of native applications UI (be it Windows/Mac/Linux) are numbered? Does it make sense to develop a native application now days? (g

Serious question, Are the days of native applications UI (be it Windows/Mac/Linux) are numbered? Does it make sense to develop a native application now days? (games and heavy CAD software aside)

jeffreportmill1 8y ago
If you really use an app all day long, you're going to want a dedicated desktop version. The browser app-in-an-app model is convenient for casual use, but not optimal for long stretches and doesn't integrate as well with the desktop for real workflow. When you think about it, iOS and Android apps are desktop apps (in full screen mode), not browser apps. And they may be more popular than web apps, for now (though I hate the toll imposed on them). Maybe someday soon, you'll be able to click on a web app and turn it into a desktop app, with better native platform integration. That might be a reason to stop desktop development.
vollmond 8y ago
I think there are a lot of other software categories to add to your parenthetical, but I think you're right that it'll be only those things that require a really rich interface (I'd add music production software, for example). I know for myself (15-ish year Java dev), even if software I'm writing will only ever be used on my local laptop, if I need UI I'm likely to do a Spring Boot app with a web frontend and Bootstrap.
ben509 8y ago
Cross-platform UIs have been around for ages; QT goes back 30 years. The pattern that Electron and such are continuing is that they do a base set of things well, but then integrating with OS services is non-existent, even though for any given OS it's relatively trivial. Don't be too impressed that it can run anywhere at acceptable speeds; Java solved that 20 years ago. Rather, it's more fundamental: as you add in all the functionality provided by various OS's you have to model all that functionality and it has to be comprehensible to your users and maintainable by you. Some of that functionality is flatly contradictory and much of it is peculiar to a small audience. You can theoretically engineer around it, but in practice, you won't be able to maintain it and no one will want to use it. That's an intractable problem. That's why I think cross-platform framework authors have consistently been leaving various bits of functionality out for decades. They'd rather deliver "second class" applications than nothing at all, and that's a smart trade-off. But that does leave a lot of space for native apps.

Serious question, Are the days of native applications UI (be it Windows/Mac/Linux) are numbered? Does it make sense to develop a native application now days? (games and heavy CAD software aside)

jeffreportmill1 8y ago

If you really use an app all day long, you're going to want a dedicated desktop version. The browser app-in-an-app model is convenient for casual use, but not optimal for long stretches and doesn't integrate as well with the desktop for real workflow. When you think about it, iOS and Android apps are desktop apps (in full screen mode), not browser apps. And they may be more popular than web apps, for now (though I hate the toll imposed on them). Maybe someday soon, you'll be able to click on a web app and turn it into a desktop app, with better native platform integration. That might be a reason to stop desktop development.

vollmond 8y ago

I think there are a lot of other software categories to add to your parenthetical, but I think you're right that it'll be only those things that require a really rich interface (I'd add music production software, for example). I know for myself (15-ish year Java dev), even if software I'm writing will only ever be used on my local laptop, if I need UI I'm likely to do a Spring Boot app with a web frontend and Bootstrap.

ben509 8y ago

Cross-platform UIs have been around for ages; QT goes back 30 years. The pattern that Electron and such are continuing is that they do a base set of things well, but then integrating with OS services is non-existent, even though for any given OS it's relatively trivial. Don't be too impressed that it can run anywhere at acceptable speeds; Java solved that 20 years ago. Rather, it's more fundamental: as you add in all the functionality provided by various OS's you have to model all that functionality and it has to be comprehensible to your users and maintainable by you. Some of that functionality is flatly contradictory and much of it is peculiar to a small audience. You can theoretically engineer around it, but in practice, you won't be able to maintain it and no one will want to use it. That's an intractable problem. That's why I think cross-platform framework authors have consistently been leaving various bits of functionality out for decades. They'd rather deliver "second class" applications than nothing at all, and that's a smart trade-off. But that does leave a lot of space for native apps.