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This is a very nice piece of work, and I think very important: it shows that it's very much possible to make slick interfaces without using javascript/web techn
by mmm_grayons 6y ago
This is a very nice piece of work, and I think very important: it shows that it's very much possible to make slick interfaces without using javascript/web technologies. It's also just as hackable as something like vscode or vim. I hope there's a shift back to native or semi-native applications as opposed to web-based stuff. It's certainly not perfect yet (it has some scaling/rendering issues and is slow to open large files), but is still a pretty great start. My two cents.
- lykr0n 6y agoI 100% agree with you, but the R&D time for something like this would eclipse an equivalent effort in Javascript/web tech. There needs to be focus on building tooling that enables rapid development of native applications. GTK is a good example. Glade is a perfectly fine editor, but the underlying tooling for GTK is a mixed bag.
- dazzawazza 6y agoI'm not sure I agree. There needs to be a focus on building "quality everything" and not "quickest to make anything". Move fast and break things has become the cancer of software engineering.
- smolder 6y ago> the R&D time for something like this would eclipse an equivalent effort in Javascript/web tech. I think this is less true when you don't assume people know all about web tech already, IOW there would be less of a difference for someone coming into software dev completely naive of web tech. > There needs to be focus on building tooling that enables rapid development of native applications. Fully agree.
- rplnt 6y agoThe time and resources users waste on using such application eclipses the difference in development. One could be folding enzymes instead of waiting for syntax highlighting to finish rendering in vs code.
- cwyers 6y agoIt's written in Lua and doesn't use the OS GUI APIs and widgets anywhere. I'm not sure I understand what makes this more "native" than Javascript.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- samtheprogram 6y agoThere’s way less abstraction going on in Lua app that has a hand-rolled GUI versus an app built on top of a web browser like Electron. Hand rolling you’re own UI doesn’t make it less native — is Ableton Live not-native? Or are you drawing the line because Lua is a scripting language?
- nwienert 6y agoYou seem to be the one drawing the line saying Electron isn’t vs something like this is. Is a WASM app that renders to WebGL native? I guess the point is native should probably mean “using the toolkit the OS provides” and we should just use “performant” in most cases.
- rhlsthrm 6y agoCan you make WASM apps using js toolkits that compiles to native desktop yet? Seems like that will be a huge step forward from electron apps.
- sp332 6y agoWhat would the defining difference be between the two? "Forward" along what dimension?
- SahAssar 6y agoSure, as native as any language that runs in a VM. There is no reason a WASM app can or can't be any more or less native than something running on lua (like in this case), jvm or anything else. People don't use Electron to get a js runtime, they use it to get a web-like runtime. Any javascript (including WASM) app can run without electron in either node or in the bundled runtimes that OSX/Windows/Gnome/Whatever has, but the point of electron isn't to write JS, it's to write web-like code. For that it requires a browser in a predictable version, which is what electron gives you (albeit at a high cost.)
- codegladiator 6y agoI completely dislike the "isn't made is js/web/electron tech" argument Because as you said "It's certainly not perfect yet"