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I've been convinced for a while that the only sane way to develop any gui app (including web apps) is have game developers in charge. They know how to make stu

I've been convinced for a while that the only sane way to develop any gui app (including web apps) is have game developers in charge. They know how to make stuff run fast, or at least interact snappily.

chromanoid 6y ago
Yeah, totally :D https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26296339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26296339 Most game developers will make it as fast as they have to... in fact most developers do that. Games are usually developed as abandonware. Do you want your apps to be developed as abandonware?
skohan 6y ago
I think this is actually something which Apple has done a fairly good job of. I remember even back in 2009 in the early iPhone days, the Cocoa API's were fairly well designed in terms of letting you create responsive, non-blocking UIs on hardware an order of magnitude slower than what we have today. Game engineers are wizards, but real general-purpose UI is a different problem than they are generally solving. A game UI is typically very limited in terms of what types of information has to be displayed and how. Many applications have to support what is essentially arbitrary 2D content which has to be laid out dynamically at runtime, and this is something different than the problems most games have to solve.
- hypertele-Xii 6y ago
  > Many applications have to support what is essentially arbitrary 2D content which has to be laid out dynamically at runtime, and this is something different than the problems most games have to solve. That sounds exactly like the problem most games have to solve. The age of fixed CPU speeds and screen resolutions is long gone. Games have to content with a plethora of dimensions along which to represent an interactive, dynamic, multimedia world.
  - kaba0 6y ago
    I think OP meant it more in terms of layouting, like vbox can be inside a hbox which has also a text object, and every object can change sizes which will cause a recalculation in everything. It is surprisingly more expensive than the GPU accelerated rendering of many many triangles. Games are complex, but the dimensions question is trivial there.
medstrom 6y ago
I disagree: think of how long it takes to bring up the PipBoy in Fallout 3. Or to open a door in Mass Effect. The amount of times I've had my character just be running into the door for multiple seconds before it finally opens...
reader_mode 6y ago
If you want buggy crap that's impossible to maintain filled with hacks to make something look like it works - game developers are the right choice. The requirements and practices in that industry are not comparable to standard app development and you would not want anything to do with that for app development. People here crying about load times and FPS rendering are completely out of touch with reality of SW development - getting stuff to function correctly and reliably with requirements constantly changing > performance, and that's hard enough with tools that simplify SW development. Optimising for performance is a luxury very few can afford.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  > getting stuff to function correctly and reliably Hilariously, I wouldn't even say that modern software does that well either.
  - reader_mode 6y ago
    But that's my point - it's hard just getting it to work. Getting it to work fast is next level. Games are notorious for garbage tier SW engineering practices, bugs, ship and forget, and it's all about making something look like you'd expect it vs. making it correct - just completely different goals.
    - hnuser123456 6y ago
      Half-life 2 is possibly one of the most impressive, in terms of combination of complexity, stability, flexibility and extensibility, pieces of software ever created. It spawned dozens of other games that all sold millions of copies and offered completely different but high-quality experiences. Sure, your typical AAA game isn't near this level of perfection, but your typical non-game software is hardly any better.
      - kaba0 6y ago
        I like hl2 and all, but I doubt it would be even close in complexity to a web browser/OS kernel/good performing virtual runtime, like the JVM, compilers. There are insanely complex programs out there.
lfowles 6y ago
And then they just end up using a middleware like Coherent[0] which is back to HTML+CSS! https://coherent-labs.com/ https://coherent-labs.com/
- chromanoid 6y ago
  Yeah or Flash :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaleform_GFx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaleform_GFx

chromanoid 6y ago

Yeah, totally :D https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26296339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26296339 Most game developers will make it as fast as they have to... in fact most developers do that. Games are usually developed as abandonware. Do you want your apps to be developed as abandonware?

skohan 6y ago

I think this is actually something which Apple has done a fairly good job of. I remember even back in 2009 in the early iPhone days, the Cocoa API's were fairly well designed in terms of letting you create responsive, non-blocking UIs on hardware an order of magnitude slower than what we have today. Game engineers are wizards, but real general-purpose UI is a different problem than they are generally solving. A game UI is typically very limited in terms of what types of information has to be displayed and how. Many applications have to support what is essentially arbitrary 2D content which has to be laid out dynamically at runtime, and this is something different than the problems most games have to solve.

hypertele-Xii 6y ago
> Many applications have to support what is essentially arbitrary 2D content which has to be laid out dynamically at runtime, and this is something different than the problems most games have to solve. That sounds exactly like the problem most games have to solve. The age of fixed CPU speeds and screen resolutions is long gone. Games have to content with a plethora of dimensions along which to represent an interactive, dynamic, multimedia world.
- kaba0 6y ago
  I think OP meant it more in terms of layouting, like vbox can be inside a hbox which has also a text object, and every object can change sizes which will cause a recalculation in everything. It is surprisingly more expensive than the GPU accelerated rendering of many many triangles. Games are complex, but the dimensions question is trivial there.

medstrom 6y ago

I disagree: think of how long it takes to bring up the PipBoy in Fallout 3. Or to open a door in Mass Effect. The amount of times I've had my character just be running into the door for multiple seconds before it finally opens...

reader_mode 6y ago

If you want buggy crap that's impossible to maintain filled with hacks to make something look like it works - game developers are the right choice. The requirements and practices in that industry are not comparable to standard app development and you would not want anything to do with that for app development. People here crying about load times and FPS rendering are completely out of touch with reality of SW development - getting stuff to function correctly and reliably with requirements constantly changing > performance, and that's hard enough with tools that simplify SW development. Optimising for performance is a luxury very few can afford.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
> getting stuff to function correctly and reliably Hilariously, I wouldn't even say that modern software does that well either.
- reader_mode 6y ago
  But that's my point - it's hard just getting it to work. Getting it to work fast is next level. Games are notorious for garbage tier SW engineering practices, bugs, ship and forget, and it's all about making something look like you'd expect it vs. making it correct - just completely different goals.
  - hnuser123456 6y ago
    Half-life 2 is possibly one of the most impressive, in terms of combination of complexity, stability, flexibility and extensibility, pieces of software ever created. It spawned dozens of other games that all sold millions of copies and offered completely different but high-quality experiences. Sure, your typical AAA game isn't near this level of perfection, but your typical non-game software is hardly any better.
    - kaba0 6y ago
      I like hl2 and all, but I doubt it would be even close in complexity to a web browser/OS kernel/good performing virtual runtime, like the JVM, compilers. There are insanely complex programs out there.

lfowles 6y ago

And then they just end up using a middleware like Coherent[0] which is back to HTML+CSS! https://coherent-labs.com/ https://coherent-labs.com/

chromanoid 6y ago
Yeah or Flash :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaleform_GFx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaleform_GFx