4 ms·

> (spoiler: this argument is dead and nobody will ever go back to native apps again) Ahaha, I don't touch web apps unless I really really have to. And even the

> (spoiler: this argument is dead and nobody will ever go back to native apps again) Ahaha, I don't touch web apps unless I really really have to. And even then it's lighter stuff, like chats. Can you imagine using an actual productivity application in the browser?? No thanks. The thought that Slack/Ms Teams/Discord all run slower than MSN Messenger did in 2005 despite my having a computer ~50x more powerful is depressing enough (and each of them consuming as much RAM as I had on my desktop back in the day!).

oneeyedpigeon 5y ago
> Can you imagine using an actual productivity application in the browser? I'm not sure what type of applications you're referring to, but if you're including word processing in that, then I can't imagine not using either Google Docs, or whatever might one day come along and be a reasonable alternative. If I'm using a word processor, it's because I want someone else to be able to read and, quite often, contribute to what I'm creating. That is far, far less painful using Google Docs than Pages or whatever the alternative might be.
- andrepd 5y ago
  I mean things like: Photoshop, Blender, video editing software, MuseScore, Ableton, etc. And of course, text editors / IDEs :P > If I'm using a word processor, it's because I want someone else to be able to read and, quite often, contribute to what I'm creating. Well, the vast majority of things I write, I write by myself. When I have to collaborate I (begrudgingly :)) use Overleaf / Google Docs.
  - nexuist 5y ago
    Isn't VS Code the most popular IDE currently?
    - SilverRed 5y ago
      Most likely. It's not the best IDE but it is likely the best free one. Out of the box VS Code is pretty much good to go while others are either paid or take a lot of config. I have attempted to use vim but I just can't be bothered working out how to turn it in to VS code. If I have to decide between multiple ways to install plugins with their own tradeoffs, its already too much work when vs code just works.
      - goatlover 5y ago
        Emacs is also free :-)
    - tsimionescu 5y ago
      Sure, as a local app that happens to use Electron instead of Qt. How is that relevant?
    - brabel 5y ago
      No. At least according to this: https://pypl.github.io/IDE.html https://pypl.github.io/IDE.html 1. Visual Studio 2. Eclipse 3. VS Code
    - kyberias 5y ago
      It's a code editor, not an IDE. ;)
      - golergka 5y ago
        With current state of the plugins, this distinction no longer makes any sense.
  - Normal_gaussian 5y ago
    Photopea is a browser based photoshop; it is very good. VS Code is an electron based IDE, also very good (and there are various web variants as well). There was some kind of high quality online video editor my old landlord (who has a small video production company) used to edit 4k video with his macbook air. I don't know about audio, though I suspect there are more than a few options - yet probably less than for everything else, I'm not sure how good those physical device interfaces are now. Aa for 3D stuff; it looks like solid works have some kind of cloud platform. How much of the workstation load is there I don't know.
    - verinus 5y ago
      I for one would not call VS Code an IDE. Too many features missing imho...
      - RugnirViking 5y ago
        such as? it has step-through debugging, automatic code building + running, source control integration. What else?
        stjohnswarts 5y ago
        I'm guessing elisp...
  - joeberon 5y ago
    Those are not productivity applications, they are all tailored to specific purposes. The only one that I can say might be considered a productivity application is text editors/IDEs, but even then it's tenuous. No one is going to call Blender or Ableton a productivity application
- Shorel 5y ago
  I was editing a Word Document in MS Word just this afternoon. It was very unresponsive after sentence selection. I decided to convert it to ePub, and edit it in the Calibre ePub Editor. Fast again. Responsive. I will convert it back to .DOC when I finish.
- goatlover 5y ago
  You can collaborate on office docs in Office365, Teams and Sharepoint. Also, Google will convert Word. Quite a few people and organizations still prefer the richer feature set and combined suite in Office, or even iWork. Excel is still king of the spreadsheet and doesn't look to be going anywhere.
Gene_Parmesan 5y ago
Electron apps definitely have performance issues and I do not defend them. I just also want to make sure we're recognizing that apps like MS Teams are doing a lot more than MSN Messenger did back then. Whether you use/need those features or not, the apps are much more capable. Our computers have gotten an order of magnitude faster for sure, but the workloads they're tackling have not stayed flat.
- andrepd 5y ago
  > I just also want to make sure we're recognizing that apps like MS Teams are doing a lot more than MSN Messenger did back then. Can you elaborate? MSN Messenger did text chat, voice chat, video chat. I don't see what more features MS teams has that explain the order-of-magnitude increase in footprint.
  - userbinator 5y ago
    It's more than one OOM, closer to two. From what I remember, MSMSGS used few dozen MB at most, since typical machines of the time had between 64 and 256MB of RAM. Meanwhile, I've seen Teams go over 4GB simply being idle, and others have reported much worse.
  - gmueckl 5y ago
    Teams does have quite a few extra features: multiplatform, easy meeting recording, media embedded in text chat (quite useful for my current work), shared editing of Word or Excel documents within calls, sharing of Powerpoint presentation controls within calls, per-channel wiki (a bit anemic, but it's there), pretty extensive Sharepoint integration, crazy extensibility... The downside is of course that you pay for all of that even if you don't use it.
    - tremon 5y ago
      Pay, how? I thought Teams came for free with every Office365 license? Do you mean paying in CPU cycles?
thethethethe 5y ago
I work at Google and I do all my work in chrome, email, chat, IDE, ssh, docs/slides/sheets, etc. I used to use iterm and vim but during wfh I converged all my work into the browser and it's been pretty convenient accessing everything from the same interface. I know Google is not like most places and that a lot of web apps suck, but when the web apps work well, it's pretty nice, at least for my workflow
mrweasel 5y ago
> Can you imagine using an actual productivity application in the browser? I can't, yet many people do.
- danielbarla 5y ago
  I am curious if people would generally consider an editor / IDE a productivity app. If so, VS Code's popularity seems to be more than "many people do", in certain segments, it's the leading development environment [1]. And oddly, if we consider it an IDE (I would, if the relevant extensions are installed for whatever you are doing), it seems to use less resources than most of the others I use on a regular basis, while seeming more performant. It's really an odd app. [1] https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#technology-_-most-popular-development-environments https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#technology-_-...
  - mrweasel 5y ago
    Personally I don't view browser based and Electron apps as equivalent. I don't really use any Electron apps, but to me they aren't as annoying as software which run within my browser window. Sometimes I just close my browser, because to many tabs have built up. I also want a Dock icon, PWAs and Electron apps will provide that and allow normal cmd+tab to work. PWAs are worse than Electron apps, because they die when you exit your browser. Google Chat is the worst, they had a standalone app, but now it's a PWA. So I either have to have Chrome running (a browser I don't actually use) or a window or tab open with the web-version. Electron apps are generally fine, from my perspective, they use more RAM and don't feel completely native, but in lack of better options they're completely fine.
    - adflux 5y ago
      Under the hood, Electron is powered by the Chromium rendering engine and NodeJS. So why do you view browser based and electron apps as different? Because you cant see the browser menu bar?
      - 5y ago

oneeyedpigeon 5y ago

> Can you imagine using an actual productivity application in the browser? I'm not sure what type of applications you're referring to, but if you're including word processing in that, then I can't imagine not using either Google Docs, or whatever might one day come along and be a reasonable alternative. If I'm using a word processor, it's because I want someone else to be able to read and, quite often, contribute to what I'm creating. That is far, far less painful using Google Docs than Pages or whatever the alternative might be.

andrepd 5y ago
I mean things like: Photoshop, Blender, video editing software, MuseScore, Ableton, etc. And of course, text editors / IDEs :P > If I'm using a word processor, it's because I want someone else to be able to read and, quite often, contribute to what I'm creating. Well, the vast majority of things I write, I write by myself. When I have to collaborate I (begrudgingly :)) use Overleaf / Google Docs.
- nexuist 5y ago
  Isn't VS Code the most popular IDE currently?
  - SilverRed 5y ago
    Most likely. It's not the best IDE but it is likely the best free one. Out of the box VS Code is pretty much good to go while others are either paid or take a lot of config. I have attempted to use vim but I just can't be bothered working out how to turn it in to VS code. If I have to decide between multiple ways to install plugins with their own tradeoffs, its already too much work when vs code just works.
    - goatlover 5y ago
      Emacs is also free :-)
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    Sure, as a local app that happens to use Electron instead of Qt. How is that relevant?
  - brabel 5y ago
    No. At least according to this: https://pypl.github.io/IDE.html https://pypl.github.io/IDE.html 1. Visual Studio 2. Eclipse 3. VS Code
  - kyberias 5y ago
    It's a code editor, not an IDE. ;)
    - golergka 5y ago
      With current state of the plugins, this distinction no longer makes any sense.
- Normal_gaussian 5y ago
  Photopea is a browser based photoshop; it is very good. VS Code is an electron based IDE, also very good (and there are various web variants as well). There was some kind of high quality online video editor my old landlord (who has a small video production company) used to edit 4k video with his macbook air. I don't know about audio, though I suspect there are more than a few options - yet probably less than for everything else, I'm not sure how good those physical device interfaces are now. Aa for 3D stuff; it looks like solid works have some kind of cloud platform. How much of the workstation load is there I don't know.
  - verinus 5y ago
    I for one would not call VS Code an IDE. Too many features missing imho...
    - RugnirViking 5y ago
      such as? it has step-through debugging, automatic code building + running, source control integration. What else?
      - stjohnswarts 5y ago
        I'm guessing elisp...
- joeberon 5y ago
  Those are not productivity applications, they are all tailored to specific purposes. The only one that I can say might be considered a productivity application is text editors/IDEs, but even then it's tenuous. No one is going to call Blender or Ableton a productivity application
Shorel 5y ago
I was editing a Word Document in MS Word just this afternoon. It was very unresponsive after sentence selection. I decided to convert it to ePub, and edit it in the Calibre ePub Editor. Fast again. Responsive. I will convert it back to .DOC when I finish.
goatlover 5y ago
You can collaborate on office docs in Office365, Teams and Sharepoint. Also, Google will convert Word. Quite a few people and organizations still prefer the richer feature set and combined suite in Office, or even iWork. Excel is still king of the spreadsheet and doesn't look to be going anywhere.

Gene_Parmesan 5y ago

Electron apps definitely have performance issues and I do not defend them. I just also want to make sure we're recognizing that apps like MS Teams are doing a lot more than MSN Messenger did back then. Whether you use/need those features or not, the apps are much more capable. Our computers have gotten an order of magnitude faster for sure, but the workloads they're tackling have not stayed flat.

andrepd 5y ago
> I just also want to make sure we're recognizing that apps like MS Teams are doing a lot more than MSN Messenger did back then. Can you elaborate? MSN Messenger did text chat, voice chat, video chat. I don't see what more features MS teams has that explain the order-of-magnitude increase in footprint.
- userbinator 5y ago
  It's more than one OOM, closer to two. From what I remember, MSMSGS used few dozen MB at most, since typical machines of the time had between 64 and 256MB of RAM. Meanwhile, I've seen Teams go over 4GB simply being idle, and others have reported much worse.
- gmueckl 5y ago
  Teams does have quite a few extra features: multiplatform, easy meeting recording, media embedded in text chat (quite useful for my current work), shared editing of Word or Excel documents within calls, sharing of Powerpoint presentation controls within calls, per-channel wiki (a bit anemic, but it's there), pretty extensive Sharepoint integration, crazy extensibility... The downside is of course that you pay for all of that even if you don't use it.
  - tremon 5y ago
    Pay, how? I thought Teams came for free with every Office365 license? Do you mean paying in CPU cycles?

thethethethe 5y ago

I work at Google and I do all my work in chrome, email, chat, IDE, ssh, docs/slides/sheets, etc. I used to use iterm and vim but during wfh I converged all my work into the browser and it's been pretty convenient accessing everything from the same interface. I know Google is not like most places and that a lot of web apps suck, but when the web apps work well, it's pretty nice, at least for my workflow

mrweasel 5y ago

> Can you imagine using an actual productivity application in the browser? I can't, yet many people do.

danielbarla 5y ago
I am curious if people would generally consider an editor / IDE a productivity app. If so, VS Code's popularity seems to be more than "many people do", in certain segments, it's the leading development environment [1]. And oddly, if we consider it an IDE (I would, if the relevant extensions are installed for whatever you are doing), it seems to use less resources than most of the others I use on a regular basis, while seeming more performant. It's really an odd app. [1] https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#technology-_-most-popular-development-environments https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#technology-_-...
- mrweasel 5y ago
  Personally I don't view browser based and Electron apps as equivalent. I don't really use any Electron apps, but to me they aren't as annoying as software which run within my browser window. Sometimes I just close my browser, because to many tabs have built up. I also want a Dock icon, PWAs and Electron apps will provide that and allow normal cmd+tab to work. PWAs are worse than Electron apps, because they die when you exit your browser. Google Chat is the worst, they had a standalone app, but now it's a PWA. So I either have to have Chrome running (a browser I don't actually use) or a window or tab open with the web-version. Electron apps are generally fine, from my perspective, they use more RAM and don't feel completely native, but in lack of better options they're completely fine.
  - adflux 5y ago
    Under the hood, Electron is powered by the Chromium rendering engine and NodeJS. So why do you view browser based and electron apps as different? Because you cant see the browser menu bar?
    - 5y ago