3 ms·

Likely an unpopular opinion. But anyway. I think the presented thingy is fundamentally wrong. It's just another attempt to put the square peg in a round hole.

Likely an unpopular opinion. But anyway. I think the presented thingy is fundamentally wrong. It's just another attempt to put the square peg in a round hole. The point is: "The web" is not, and never was, a framework for application development! It's the wrong tool. No matter how hard you try. You want to build applications? Use tools that where build from the ground up to support application development. On mobile people realized mostly by now that "native" is the way to go. Because native apps are superior along any dimension compared to "web-apps". The same is of course true on the desktop. Mature and full featured technology to build "native" cross desktop applications exists since forever. Just have a look at great tools like IntelliJ IDEA or Bitwig Studio for example. Hotwire on the other hand is just another try to misuse "the web" as an application development platform. It's closer to what the web actually is (namely HTML pages) but it's still wrong on the fundamental level (as it tries to build an app framework on top of something that was meant to be only a hyper-text system). Let's see how long it'll take until people realize this truth - and we're really full circle.

interpol_p 6y ago
I agree with this. My favourite thing about the web is reading content with links to other content Wikipedia is a great example of a perfect web site: simply presented content linked together in a way that encourages exploration People keep hijacking this experience to make it "better" or more like an "app" but that detracts from what makes the web so magical
- still_grokking 6y ago
  Even if Wikipedia had some interactive content (to explore some topics by playing around with stuff) it would be still fine. I'm not arguing against "interactive documents". I'm arguing that "the web" is not for full blown applications.
bird_monster 6y ago
Best of luck getting paying users to install each individual desktop application, as opposed to installing a browser and then navigating to multiple applications without any additional desktop/native work. I guess there might be space for something like Steam, but for business apps, but I just don't see it. The argument "This isn't what the web was made for" is kind of a cowpath argument. The web is being used to (among other things) browse applications. Whether or not that's what anyone planned is irrelevant. That's what's happening right now. I think it's fair to suggest paths forward that both accommodate users and also bring sanity, but tagging every attempt at progressing applications-in-browser as "Square peg, round hole, need native app" just totally dismisses most of the users these applications are trying to capture.
- still_grokking 6y ago
  People are installing apps for "everything" on mobile. Even for stuff where a web page exists and is fully sufficient. The rest is just: "But with a big enough hammer we get the square peg into the round hole, so what's wrong with that? People are doing that the whole time. Seems fine".
  - bird_monster 6y ago
    Right, and when there is a viable app store that might be possible for desktop environments (the exact reason I brought up steam). Until then, though, desktop apps are just a unanimous negative most of the time (from a "get users to actually use our software" perspective). edit I am speaking from the experience of trying to build a desktop app. I think people suggesting "Just build a desktop app" have no idea the amount of feedback that gets received to the tune of "Why do I have to download an app". It's staggering.
    - still_grokking 6y ago
      Doing an "apt install", or just clicking install in some GUI, isn't such a big deal as you're pretending. I've heard of systems where it's a bit more fuss. But that's a problem with their software distribution model respectively.
      - bird_monster 6y ago
        > Doing an "apt install", or just clicking install in some GUI, isn't such a big deal as you're pretending. To you. Software devs are rarely the targets of the products they build. Also, I am not pretending. It was my job for several years.
        still_grokking 6y ago
        I can just repeat: That's a problem with the specific manner of software distribution on some operating systems, and not a general argument in favor of web-apps.
nerdponx 6y ago
So what? Modern web browsers turned out to be a great application runtime and the Web turned out to be a great delivery platform. Nowhere else in software engineering would you see so much resistance to a perfectly good tool. Maybe the problem is that it's too good: people and organizations end up producing "web applications" instead of "web sites" just because the technology is so readily available and so widespread. If there's one thing to complain about, it's that sites don't gracefully degrade when JS is disabled. I don't care that your browser game doesn't work without JS, but I do care quite a bit that I can't read blogs, news websites, etc.
- still_grokking 6y ago
  If the status quo would work as great as alleged we wouldn't discuss the article as we just do... ;-) Modern browsers are completely crazy bloat-ware. Bigger by lines of code than most operating systems! Things like the JVM become small and lightweight compared to a modern browser. And still, it's not a "great application runtime" - as people still not even found out how to use it "properly" as one (as again: that's the point of the article we're discussing). That people everywhere do irrational stuff all the time is also no prove that anything of that stuff makes any sense at all. Things don't become smart only because there are more people out there doing the same thing. Actually the mass isn't doing the smartes things at all usually. So that's imho a quite bad benchmark for anything anyway. ;-)
resu_nimda 6y ago
I can't remember the last time I opened a native email or word processing application on desktop. I much prefer the web experience. What makes it the wrong tool? What's the point of these silly rules? You want to build applications? Use whatever freakin tool or platform your users will adopt. Don't be constrained by pointless prescriptivism.
- still_grokking 6y ago
  It's not a "silly rule" that the web is not for application development. It's about the technology as such! An example what I mean: One can use a stone to put nails into a wall. But a hammer is clearly the better tool for that task.
  - ziftface 6y ago
    But what about users who actually prefer some web applications, like the user you responded to? To them, the web application is the hammer. I mean really who gets to decide which is better besides the user?
    - still_grokking 6y ago
      For the user the underlying tech should be transparent. Users just want applications with common "look & feel". How that's done doesn't mater to them in the end. That's the lesson we've learned by now in the mobile space. But for the developers of those applications the how makes a big difference: Building apps with the right "look & feel" is much easier when using a tech stack that was purposely created for exactly that mater - instead of hacking something into existence by misusing some technology that was created in the first place to serve completely different needs. Because of this fact people mostly stopped trying to build "HTML apps" on mobile. The remaining question is why this wisdom isn't taken to its last consequence. Which is, of course, that it also applies exactly the same to desktop applications! That's actually the last step on our journey before going full circle. As most other comments point out we're straight on the way to "the past", "what's old is new again". What I'm pointing out is that what we're seeing here is just an intermediate step before the full realization of that fact.
satyrnein 6y ago
So if you want to build the next big social app, sure you build a native mobile app. But then what, you build a _desktop_ app, because that's better on certain technical dimensions than a webapp? Should facebook.com have simply offered Windows and Mac installers instead?
- still_grokking 6y ago
  Like Telegram Desktop? Why not if it would result in a similarly smooth experience.

interpol_p 6y ago

I agree with this. My favourite thing about the web is reading content with links to other content Wikipedia is a great example of a perfect web site: simply presented content linked together in a way that encourages exploration People keep hijacking this experience to make it "better" or more like an "app" but that detracts from what makes the web so magical

still_grokking 6y ago
Even if Wikipedia had some interactive content (to explore some topics by playing around with stuff) it would be still fine. I'm not arguing against "interactive documents". I'm arguing that "the web" is not for full blown applications.

bird_monster 6y ago

Best of luck getting paying users to install each individual desktop application, as opposed to installing a browser and then navigating to multiple applications without any additional desktop/native work. I guess there might be space for something like Steam, but for business apps, but I just don't see it. The argument "This isn't what the web was made for" is kind of a cowpath argument. The web is being used to (among other things) browse applications. Whether or not that's what anyone planned is irrelevant. That's what's happening right now. I think it's fair to suggest paths forward that both accommodate users and also bring sanity, but tagging every attempt at progressing applications-in-browser as "Square peg, round hole, need native app" just totally dismisses most of the users these applications are trying to capture.

still_grokking 6y ago
People are installing apps for "everything" on mobile. Even for stuff where a web page exists and is fully sufficient. The rest is just: "But with a big enough hammer we get the square peg into the round hole, so what's wrong with that? People are doing that the whole time. Seems fine".
- bird_monster 6y ago
  Right, and when there is a viable app store that might be possible for desktop environments (the exact reason I brought up steam). Until then, though, desktop apps are just a unanimous negative most of the time (from a "get users to actually use our software" perspective). edit I am speaking from the experience of trying to build a desktop app. I think people suggesting "Just build a desktop app" have no idea the amount of feedback that gets received to the tune of "Why do I have to download an app". It's staggering.
  - still_grokking 6y ago
    Doing an "apt install", or just clicking install in some GUI, isn't such a big deal as you're pretending. I've heard of systems where it's a bit more fuss. But that's a problem with their software distribution model respectively.
    - bird_monster 6y ago
      > Doing an "apt install", or just clicking install in some GUI, isn't such a big deal as you're pretending. To you. Software devs are rarely the targets of the products they build. Also, I am not pretending. It was my job for several years.
      - still_grokking 6y ago
        I can just repeat: That's a problem with the specific manner of software distribution on some operating systems, and not a general argument in favor of web-apps.

nerdponx 6y ago

So what? Modern web browsers turned out to be a great application runtime and the Web turned out to be a great delivery platform. Nowhere else in software engineering would you see so much resistance to a perfectly good tool. Maybe the problem is that it's too good: people and organizations end up producing "web applications" instead of "web sites" just because the technology is so readily available and so widespread. If there's one thing to complain about, it's that sites don't gracefully degrade when JS is disabled. I don't care that your browser game doesn't work without JS, but I do care quite a bit that I can't read blogs, news websites, etc.

still_grokking 6y ago
If the status quo would work as great as alleged we wouldn't discuss the article as we just do... ;-) Modern browsers are completely crazy bloat-ware. Bigger by lines of code than most operating systems! Things like the JVM become small and lightweight compared to a modern browser. And still, it's not a "great application runtime" - as people still not even found out how to use it "properly" as one (as again: that's the point of the article we're discussing). That people everywhere do irrational stuff all the time is also no prove that anything of that stuff makes any sense at all. Things don't become smart only because there are more people out there doing the same thing. Actually the mass isn't doing the smartes things at all usually. So that's imho a quite bad benchmark for anything anyway. ;-)

resu_nimda 6y ago

I can't remember the last time I opened a native email or word processing application on desktop. I much prefer the web experience. What makes it the wrong tool? What's the point of these silly rules? You want to build applications? Use whatever freakin tool or platform your users will adopt. Don't be constrained by pointless prescriptivism.

still_grokking 6y ago
It's not a "silly rule" that the web is not for application development. It's about the technology as such! An example what I mean: One can use a stone to put nails into a wall. But a hammer is clearly the better tool for that task.
- ziftface 6y ago
  But what about users who actually prefer some web applications, like the user you responded to? To them, the web application is the hammer. I mean really who gets to decide which is better besides the user?
  - still_grokking 6y ago
    For the user the underlying tech should be transparent. Users just want applications with common "look & feel". How that's done doesn't mater to them in the end. That's the lesson we've learned by now in the mobile space. But for the developers of those applications the how makes a big difference: Building apps with the right "look & feel" is much easier when using a tech stack that was purposely created for exactly that mater - instead of hacking something into existence by misusing some technology that was created in the first place to serve completely different needs. Because of this fact people mostly stopped trying to build "HTML apps" on mobile. The remaining question is why this wisdom isn't taken to its last consequence. Which is, of course, that it also applies exactly the same to desktop applications! That's actually the last step on our journey before going full circle. As most other comments point out we're straight on the way to "the past", "what's old is new again". What I'm pointing out is that what we're seeing here is just an intermediate step before the full realization of that fact.

satyrnein 6y ago

So if you want to build the next big social app, sure you build a native mobile app. But then what, you build a _desktop_ app, because that's better on certain technical dimensions than a webapp? Should facebook.com have simply offered Windows and Mac installers instead?

still_grokking 6y ago
Like Telegram Desktop? Why not if it would result in a similarly smooth experience.