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Presumably - Sketch is great software, well built, but the fact that in late 2020 they still have to write "And soon, the ability to collaborate in real-time" i

Presumably - Sketch is great software, well built, but the fact that in late 2020 they still have to write "And soon, the ability to collaborate in real-time" is the the best counter-argument to building native for me personally.

Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
Ability to collaborate in real-time is not something exclusive to web apps.
- cawlin 6y ago
  Correct, but as a feature it is exclusive to "apps other than Sketch"
- CognitiveLens 6y ago
  of course not, but the effort to bring real-time collaboration to native apps is much higher, e.g. MS Office's still-poor current experience compared with Google Docs's capabilities 5 years ago
  - ywei3410 6y ago
    How does the existence of Google Docs and Word say anything about how hard it is to create real-time collaboration on a web application versus a native application?
    - outworlder 6y ago
      It doesn't. It's a non-sequitur.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
    Not really. It all comes down to a network protocol to sync changes. I collaborated with others just fine in desktop-first apps like CounterStrike or Diablo long before web became a viable platform. The reason MS Office struggles with this is that rebuilding an app that wasn't originally supposed to work in such mode is way harder than building from scratch, and they probably don't really need it that much to push themselves in such an adventure.
    - edgyquant 6y ago
      Counter Strike and Diablo are built with collaboration (multiplayer) in mind.
  - wrs 6y ago
    There’s no technical reason why that would be true. What is true is if you have an app and doc format that weren’t designed for real-time collaboration, it’ll be really hard to retrofit, regardless of your choice of app platform.
mortenjorck 6y ago
This is somewhat orthogonal, but I don’t understand the draw of real-time collaboration. As a designer, I’d much rather collaborate via the Git-like system of Abstract, committing changes and merging pull requests than have things happening elsewhere in the file I’m working on with no versioning or notification. Real-time collaboration has never been in demand among developers, has it?
- danielrd 6y ago
  Collaboration doesn’t necessarily mean designing at the same time, it’s not really how any designers I know use it. It’s being able to walk through a design, leave comments, use it for quickly showing off an idea within a file, having another designer point you to a shared component/asset/prototype. We even use it for retrospectives and hangouts.
- Griffinsauce 6y ago
  Real time collaboration is hard to get right so it not being in demand might be a chicken and egg problem. VSCode's liveshare feature is getting very close though and it does feel great to attack a challenge together from time to time.
- s17n 6y ago
  I think the reason that people want real-time collaboration has been that merging diffs, which is already a hassle for code, has historically not really been possible for designers. With realtime collaboration, you can have people working in parallel without having to solve the merging problem.

Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago

Ability to collaborate in real-time is not something exclusive to web apps.

cawlin 6y ago
Correct, but as a feature it is exclusive to "apps other than Sketch"
CognitiveLens 6y ago
of course not, but the effort to bring real-time collaboration to native apps is much higher, e.g. MS Office's still-poor current experience compared with Google Docs's capabilities 5 years ago
- ywei3410 6y ago
  How does the existence of Google Docs and Word say anything about how hard it is to create real-time collaboration on a web application versus a native application?
  - outworlder 6y ago
    It doesn't. It's a non-sequitur.
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
  Not really. It all comes down to a network protocol to sync changes. I collaborated with others just fine in desktop-first apps like CounterStrike or Diablo long before web became a viable platform. The reason MS Office struggles with this is that rebuilding an app that wasn't originally supposed to work in such mode is way harder than building from scratch, and they probably don't really need it that much to push themselves in such an adventure.
  - edgyquant 6y ago
    Counter Strike and Diablo are built with collaboration (multiplayer) in mind.
- wrs 6y ago
  There’s no technical reason why that would be true. What is true is if you have an app and doc format that weren’t designed for real-time collaboration, it’ll be really hard to retrofit, regardless of your choice of app platform.

mortenjorck 6y ago

This is somewhat orthogonal, but I don’t understand the draw of real-time collaboration. As a designer, I’d much rather collaborate via the Git-like system of Abstract, committing changes and merging pull requests than have things happening elsewhere in the file I’m working on with no versioning or notification. Real-time collaboration has never been in demand among developers, has it?

danielrd 6y ago
Collaboration doesn’t necessarily mean designing at the same time, it’s not really how any designers I know use it. It’s being able to walk through a design, leave comments, use it for quickly showing off an idea within a file, having another designer point you to a shared component/asset/prototype. We even use it for retrospectives and hangouts.
Griffinsauce 6y ago
Real time collaboration is hard to get right so it not being in demand might be a chicken and egg problem. VSCode's liveshare feature is getting very close though and it does feel great to attack a challenge together from time to time.
s17n 6y ago
I think the reason that people want real-time collaboration has been that merging diffs, which is already a hassle for code, has historically not really been possible for designers. With realtime collaboration, you can have people working in parallel without having to solve the merging problem.