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> So, what did I do? I switched from Logic to Reaper for my live mixing. Reaper is very cheap ($65, and you can just use it for free if you want), extremely str

> So, what did I do? I switched from Logic to Reaper for my live mixing. Reaper is very cheap ($65, and you can just use it for free if you want), extremely streamlined (it weighs about 35 MB to Logic’s many GB), and has worked perfectly for me. I haven’t had one bad moment with it. It’s what they’d call robust. I’d recommend it for this purpose to anyone. Guess who created Reaper? Justin Frankel. Guess what else he created? Winamp. Software like this is missing in today's era. Just this one piece of software is the counter arguments to the gazillion gbs of electron apps making the rounds today. I wish we could go back to efficiency and small sized apps with big ambitions.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
What GUI library, if any, is used by Reaper and Winamp? Or is it low level graphics code? I feel like that's the biggest hurdle; you can get web developers by the dozens to craft specialized UIs, but any native GUI will be Windows only, some Mac but only because they're familiar with iOS, QT but they're likely a dying breed, etc. I don't feel like there's a strong alternative to cross-platform webapps (in electron) at the moment. That said, I do strongly believe that any serious company (think Slack, Discord, Spotify) has the financial resources available to create native applications for all platforms, with a web based version on top. The issue there is that it's really hard, if not impossible, to get a consistent style on all native development platforms; the designers will insist on their company wide design standards / language. Therefore, native GUI toolkits should allow for the flexibility of web/CSS styling.
- krageon 5y ago
  Electron applications almost never use native controls. As such, this part of the argument does not matter. Given that, there is GTK, QT and whatever Java thing is in now that you can use to make cross-platform applications that function perfectly fine without being a super-heavy disaster.
- danielvaughn 5y ago
  I've been trying to create a platform-agnostic styling language for UI designers. The idea is to create a flexible-enough representation of GUIs that each platform could implement it while maintaining their own visual identity. One thing that has held me back is that I'm strictly a web developer - never built a native GUI. So I have no idea how realistic, feasible, or even desirable that is. Your comment makes me think it could actually be useful.
  - pc86 5y ago
    It's certainly very desirable, which means the fact that it doesn't exist already is a huge red flag. Looking at the mobile space as a corollary, there still isn't a decent cross-platform Android/iOS UI library. Is Xamarin even still a thing? Not only would you have the same issues but more with Windows v. MacOS given the long legacy history of Windows UI compared to Android, but if you want it to be truly cross-platform you've got a couple thousand incantations of Linux-style systems to deal with as well. Based on market share alone[0] going Windows-only seems like a totally fine tradeoff if you want a native GUI. [0] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/ https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...
    - danielvaughn 5y ago
      The only cross-platform UIs I know of are Flutter and QT. Yeah the red flag scares me, especially since I'm not well versed in native/low-level graphics. There must be a good reason why it hasn't been created yet.
- telesilla 5y ago
  Check out JUCE, for audio related cross platform UI

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

What GUI library, if any, is used by Reaper and Winamp? Or is it low level graphics code? I feel like that's the biggest hurdle; you can get web developers by the dozens to craft specialized UIs, but any native GUI will be Windows only, some Mac but only because they're familiar with iOS, QT but they're likely a dying breed, etc. I don't feel like there's a strong alternative to cross-platform webapps (in electron) at the moment. That said, I do strongly believe that any serious company (think Slack, Discord, Spotify) has the financial resources available to create native applications for all platforms, with a web based version on top. The issue there is that it's really hard, if not impossible, to get a consistent style on all native development platforms; the designers will insist on their company wide design standards / language. Therefore, native GUI toolkits should allow for the flexibility of web/CSS styling.

krageon 5y ago
Electron applications almost never use native controls. As such, this part of the argument does not matter. Given that, there is GTK, QT and whatever Java thing is in now that you can use to make cross-platform applications that function perfectly fine without being a super-heavy disaster.
danielvaughn 5y ago
I've been trying to create a platform-agnostic styling language for UI designers. The idea is to create a flexible-enough representation of GUIs that each platform could implement it while maintaining their own visual identity. One thing that has held me back is that I'm strictly a web developer - never built a native GUI. So I have no idea how realistic, feasible, or even desirable that is. Your comment makes me think it could actually be useful.
- pc86 5y ago
  It's certainly very desirable, which means the fact that it doesn't exist already is a huge red flag. Looking at the mobile space as a corollary, there still isn't a decent cross-platform Android/iOS UI library. Is Xamarin even still a thing? Not only would you have the same issues but more with Windows v. MacOS given the long legacy history of Windows UI compared to Android, but if you want it to be truly cross-platform you've got a couple thousand incantations of Linux-style systems to deal with as well. Based on market share alone[0] going Windows-only seems like a totally fine tradeoff if you want a native GUI. [0] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/ https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...
  - danielvaughn 5y ago
    The only cross-platform UIs I know of are Flutter and QT. Yeah the red flag scares me, especially since I'm not well versed in native/low-level graphics. There must be a good reason why it hasn't been created yet.
telesilla 5y ago
Check out JUCE, for audio related cross platform UI