4 ms·

The problems with the modern web (over-complicated cookie consent, advertising/ad-blocker arms races) are not those the author describes (performance of native

The problems with the modern web (over-complicated cookie consent, advertising/ad-blocker arms races) are not those the author describes (performance of native web apps). Functionality of most downloaded apps with good performance should be easily possible in a browser. If that's not the case, developers of those apps are not doing it well. Native apps allow them to continue this bloat without such a strong performance hit.

lifty 6y ago
> Functionality of most downloaded apps with good performance should be easily possible in a browser. I don't understand how someone can make such a statement. Maybe I am more sensitive to subtle slowdowns but I rarely see web applications that can match the responsiveness and feel of native applications. And when I say native, I don't mean electrons apps. While there are some web apps that manage to squeeze out decent performance out of a browser but those are few and far between. I don't know if you used computers in the 90's, but they felt really snappy. We lost that with modern OS's, but even those are much better than the glorified virtualised OSs that the browsers are.
- stupidcar 6y ago
  Can you provide some examples of complex web apps you consider to be substantially slower than their native equivalents? [Edit] I'll take the downvotes as evidence you can't. For example, I use https://app.diagrams.net/ https://app.diagrams.net/ for diagramming. I don't find it to be any slower than native equivalents like Visio. I use https://www.figma.com/ https://www.figma.com/ for UI design. I don't find it to be any slower than native equivalents like Sketch. I use Google Docs for word processing. I don't find it to be any slower than native equivalents like Word.
  - lifty 6y ago
    Ok, I think there really is a difference in how people perceive slowdowns. - Google Docs is substantially slower than MS Word, especially when you have more content inside. - app.diagrams.net seems to be quite good with the few shapes I added - gmail is much slower for me than the native Mac email app - Slack is very slow compared to something like Telegram native on the mac, or even Zoom. - VS Code feels worse and worse with every release. They are adding more feature but I feel its less and less responsive. - Google Calendar is slower than the native Mac calendar app. These are a few apps that I heavily use on a daily basis. I won't say the web apps can't get decent performance. But I think on average you get better performance on native, and if you put the same amount of effort in performance tuning, the results you get on native are unachievable on web apps.
Narishma 6y ago
> Functionality of most downloaded apps with good performance should be easily possible in a browser. If that's not the case, developers of those apps are not doing it well. Assuming that's true, if the vast majority of those developers don't do it well, isn't it a problem with the platform?

lifty 6y ago

> Functionality of most downloaded apps with good performance should be easily possible in a browser. I don't understand how someone can make such a statement. Maybe I am more sensitive to subtle slowdowns but I rarely see web applications that can match the responsiveness and feel of native applications. And when I say native, I don't mean electrons apps. While there are some web apps that manage to squeeze out decent performance out of a browser but those are few and far between. I don't know if you used computers in the 90's, but they felt really snappy. We lost that with modern OS's, but even those are much better than the glorified virtualised OSs that the browsers are.

stupidcar 6y ago
Can you provide some examples of complex web apps you consider to be substantially slower than their native equivalents? [Edit] I'll take the downvotes as evidence you can't. For example, I use https://app.diagrams.net/ https://app.diagrams.net/ for diagramming. I don't find it to be any slower than native equivalents like Visio. I use https://www.figma.com/ https://www.figma.com/ for UI design. I don't find it to be any slower than native equivalents like Sketch. I use Google Docs for word processing. I don't find it to be any slower than native equivalents like Word.
- lifty 6y ago
  Ok, I think there really is a difference in how people perceive slowdowns. - Google Docs is substantially slower than MS Word, especially when you have more content inside. - app.diagrams.net seems to be quite good with the few shapes I added - gmail is much slower for me than the native Mac email app - Slack is very slow compared to something like Telegram native on the mac, or even Zoom. - VS Code feels worse and worse with every release. They are adding more feature but I feel its less and less responsive. - Google Calendar is slower than the native Mac calendar app. These are a few apps that I heavily use on a daily basis. I won't say the web apps can't get decent performance. But I think on average you get better performance on native, and if you put the same amount of effort in performance tuning, the results you get on native are unachievable on web apps.

Narishma 6y ago

> Functionality of most downloaded apps with good performance should be easily possible in a browser. If that's not the case, developers of those apps are not doing it well. Assuming that's true, if the vast majority of those developers don't do it well, isn't it a problem with the platform?