5 ms·

The ironic thing is that despite the emergence of more walled gardens and the decline of general purpose computing, high level tooling has exploded. Look at the

The ironic thing is that despite the emergence of more walled gardens and the decline of general purpose computing, high level tooling has exploded. Look at the amount of new JavaScript frameworks and tooling that come out every year. The areas that are most lacking in innovation are generally all difficult and boring with no quick pay-offs; VHDL/Verilog, cross platform GUI applications, low level code that can run on multiple hardware architectures. These are all important problems to tackle that would drastically improve general purpose computing but nobody's truly interested to work on those problems and make something production ready.

alpaca128 5y ago
> cross platform GUI applications That's handled by Electron already. Unfortunately in a very inefficient way, but I don't think web-based UIs on the desktop will disappear soon. The comfort of using the same tech as websites and compatibility with many systems is hard to beat. I just hope all those projects aiming to replace Electron with their smaller footprint hold what they promise.
- pabs3 5y ago
  There are lots of non-web solutions for this, for eg Qt, wxWidgets, Flutter etc.
  - edoceo 5y ago
    I've had not-terrible luck with PyGTK on Win,Mac,Linux. But my apps are simple.
  - FractalHQ 5y ago
    Tauri is a light and fast electron-esque platform written in rust. I’m pretty bullish on it, as it seems like the best of node and rust without the bloat. Using Svelte to write super light and fast cross-platform apps on Tauri is such a treat.
    - FlashBlaze 5y ago
      If possible, could you share some examples made using Svelte/React/Vue you've created or encountered?
  - bitwize 5y ago
    Those are too hard for beginning programmers. And the Web has all the best-in-class UI design tools (except for maybe Interface Builder, which isn't cross-platform). Plus there's thr fact that Qt apps need extensive cross-platform testing; by contrast, because Chrome works the same way everywhere, so too do Electron apps, so you can deploy to multiple platforms much more quickly. When it comes to TCO and time to market, none of the non-Web solutions come close to Electron.
- legends2k 5y ago
  Even web based but without Electron or Chrome e.g. rocket.
MelvinButtsESQ 5y ago
I remember in the late 80s when I started professionally ... the impending obsolescence of the programmer due to 4GL code generators was upon us. Those stinking edge cases though. Where 90% of the problem/requirement can be addressed by said tools, but the final 10% (the part that really matters) can't. I'm not so sure we are any closer now than we were then. Needless to say, I've had a fruitful career.
- TchoBeer 5y ago
  Interesting. What sorts of "10% problems" was 4GL unable to handle?
GoOnThenDoTell 5y ago
I thin WASM will help with the GUI problem Everyone wants to reuse their web app on the desktop, but soon it could flip the other way around if you can suddenly run your native app in a browser
- junon 5y ago
  This is exactly where it's going. You are right
  - teddyh 5y ago
    The Birth & Death of JavaScript https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-javascript https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death...
    - amelius 5y ago
      > (...) Death of JavaScript Don't worry, people will run V8 inside WASM.
- greggman3 5y ago
  I'm not yet totally convinced. There are no WASM apps that handle full unicode, with CJK input, right to left input, etc.... that I know of. I'm not looking forward to every wasm app having it's own quirks that are vastly different than the quirks of my OS.
- Oddskar 5y ago
  This is such a dull take at this point. I'm sorry, but WASM won't magically be able to port your UI app to the web. Just because it can convert some basic logic doesn't mean that it will be able to create a performant application that uses the underlying browser APIs correctly. Lets say there was some sort of framework that did this in your language of choice, there's still significant downsides in terms of interop with the rest of the JS ecosystem and debugging.
pabs3 5y ago
> low level code that can run on multiple hardware architectures I thought SIMD Everywhere was a pretty interesting project for that, lets you write x86 SSE/AVX code and run it on non-x86 architectures: https://github.com/simd-everywhere/simde https://github.com/simd-everywhere/simde
userbinator 5y ago
The ironic thing is that despite the emergence of more walled gardens and the decline of general purpose computing, high level tooling has exploded. Look at the amount of new JavaScript frameworks and tooling that come out every year. I think it's not "despite" but "due to". If all you have is a locked-down user-herding media consumption "device"[1], the web stuff is pretty much the easiest way to have access to something like a Turing-complete language. [1] the fact that a word which used to primarily refer to computer peripherals is now increasingly applied to a general-purpose computer itself is a telling sign of where things are going next. Destroying the general-purpose nature of computing little-by-little and selling you back small specific pieces of it seems to be the trend today.
amelius 5y ago
> The areas that are most lacking in innovation are generally all difficult and boring with no quick pay-offs; VHDL/Verilog, cross platform GUI applications, low level code that can run on multiple hardware architectures. Those are exactly the areas hindered by vendor lock-in.

alpaca128 5y ago

> cross platform GUI applications That's handled by Electron already. Unfortunately in a very inefficient way, but I don't think web-based UIs on the desktop will disappear soon. The comfort of using the same tech as websites and compatibility with many systems is hard to beat. I just hope all those projects aiming to replace Electron with their smaller footprint hold what they promise.

pabs3 5y ago
There are lots of non-web solutions for this, for eg Qt, wxWidgets, Flutter etc.
- edoceo 5y ago
  I've had not-terrible luck with PyGTK on Win,Mac,Linux. But my apps are simple.
- FractalHQ 5y ago
  Tauri is a light and fast electron-esque platform written in rust. I’m pretty bullish on it, as it seems like the best of node and rust without the bloat. Using Svelte to write super light and fast cross-platform apps on Tauri is such a treat.
  - FlashBlaze 5y ago
    If possible, could you share some examples made using Svelte/React/Vue you've created or encountered?
- bitwize 5y ago
  Those are too hard for beginning programmers. And the Web has all the best-in-class UI design tools (except for maybe Interface Builder, which isn't cross-platform). Plus there's thr fact that Qt apps need extensive cross-platform testing; by contrast, because Chrome works the same way everywhere, so too do Electron apps, so you can deploy to multiple platforms much more quickly. When it comes to TCO and time to market, none of the non-Web solutions come close to Electron.
legends2k 5y ago
Even web based but without Electron or Chrome e.g. rocket.

MelvinButtsESQ 5y ago

I remember in the late 80s when I started professionally ... the impending obsolescence of the programmer due to 4GL code generators was upon us. Those stinking edge cases though. Where 90% of the problem/requirement can be addressed by said tools, but the final 10% (the part that really matters) can't. I'm not so sure we are any closer now than we were then. Needless to say, I've had a fruitful career.

TchoBeer 5y ago
Interesting. What sorts of "10% problems" was 4GL unable to handle?

GoOnThenDoTell 5y ago

I thin WASM will help with the GUI problem Everyone wants to reuse their web app on the desktop, but soon it could flip the other way around if you can suddenly run your native app in a browser

junon 5y ago
This is exactly where it's going. You are right
- teddyh 5y ago
  The Birth & Death of JavaScript https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-javascript https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death...
  - amelius 5y ago
    > (...) Death of JavaScript Don't worry, people will run V8 inside WASM.
greggman3 5y ago
I'm not yet totally convinced. There are no WASM apps that handle full unicode, with CJK input, right to left input, etc.... that I know of. I'm not looking forward to every wasm app having it's own quirks that are vastly different than the quirks of my OS.
Oddskar 5y ago
This is such a dull take at this point. I'm sorry, but WASM won't magically be able to port your UI app to the web. Just because it can convert some basic logic doesn't mean that it will be able to create a performant application that uses the underlying browser APIs correctly. Lets say there was some sort of framework that did this in your language of choice, there's still significant downsides in terms of interop with the rest of the JS ecosystem and debugging.

pabs3 5y ago

> low level code that can run on multiple hardware architectures I thought SIMD Everywhere was a pretty interesting project for that, lets you write x86 SSE/AVX code and run it on non-x86 architectures: https://github.com/simd-everywhere/simde https://github.com/simd-everywhere/simde

userbinator 5y ago

The ironic thing is that despite the emergence of more walled gardens and the decline of general purpose computing, high level tooling has exploded. Look at the amount of new JavaScript frameworks and tooling that come out every year. I think it's not "despite" but "due to". If all you have is a locked-down user-herding media consumption "device"[1], the web stuff is pretty much the easiest way to have access to something like a Turing-complete language. [1] the fact that a word which used to primarily refer to computer peripherals is now increasingly applied to a general-purpose computer itself is a telling sign of where things are going next. Destroying the general-purpose nature of computing little-by-little and selling you back small specific pieces of it seems to be the trend today.

amelius 5y ago

> The areas that are most lacking in innovation are generally all difficult and boring with no quick pay-offs; VHDL/Verilog, cross platform GUI applications, low level code that can run on multiple hardware architectures. Those are exactly the areas hindered by vendor lock-in.