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Alright thanks, it's pretty sad we've handed cross-platform development to the web mostly. I see if I find something great along the way.

pjc50 5y ago
Cross-platform desktop development never really worked properly, partly because the platforms were competitors and had no interest in making it easy. The web is the "neutral zone" where platform-specific stuff has mostly been fought off, at least since we killed IE and Flash. If you want to make a native app, the first question has to be "native to what platform?"
- NeutralForest 5y ago
  True enough, I'll still hold onto a dream of cross-compatible GUI's which work on most platform. Maybe new advances in VM stuff will make that possible?
  - krapp 5y ago
    I think one big reason the web works as a GUI platform is that it wasn't designed with programmers in mind, but around a much simpler document and box-model paradigm with separate DSLs for layout, style and execution (HTML, CSS and JS respectively) - only one of which is (arguably) a programming language, and a simple one at that. It would be much different if anyone wanting to write an HTML document or GUI application had to do so in C++ using web APIs directly. Most GUI frameworks just aren't at a high enough level of abstraction to be as easy to work with as the web. Also, obviously, because browsers and the web stack are already ubiquitous. Electron is basically just shipping a web app with a standardized runtime (a Chromium instance) which is exactly what many other apps do (eg, most game frameworks and anything written in Python, Java, etc,) but Electron still needs a platform specific binary to distribute. TANSTAAFL. At the end of the day, nothing is truly cross platform.
    - NeutralForest 5y ago
      I agree with what you wrote, but at the same time I dislike how energy-intensive the web is. It doesn't _have_ to be, but it is nowadays. Going back to somewhat native GUI's is a step in the right direction in my opinion, at least in some aspects.

pjc50 5y ago

Cross-platform desktop development never really worked properly, partly because the platforms were competitors and had no interest in making it easy. The web is the "neutral zone" where platform-specific stuff has mostly been fought off, at least since we killed IE and Flash. If you want to make a native app, the first question has to be "native to what platform?"

NeutralForest 5y ago
True enough, I'll still hold onto a dream of cross-compatible GUI's which work on most platform. Maybe new advances in VM stuff will make that possible?
- krapp 5y ago
  I think one big reason the web works as a GUI platform is that it wasn't designed with programmers in mind, but around a much simpler document and box-model paradigm with separate DSLs for layout, style and execution (HTML, CSS and JS respectively) - only one of which is (arguably) a programming language, and a simple one at that. It would be much different if anyone wanting to write an HTML document or GUI application had to do so in C++ using web APIs directly. Most GUI frameworks just aren't at a high enough level of abstraction to be as easy to work with as the web. Also, obviously, because browsers and the web stack are already ubiquitous. Electron is basically just shipping a web app with a standardized runtime (a Chromium instance) which is exactly what many other apps do (eg, most game frameworks and anything written in Python, Java, etc,) but Electron still needs a platform specific binary to distribute. TANSTAAFL. At the end of the day, nothing is truly cross platform.
  - NeutralForest 5y ago
    I agree with what you wrote, but at the same time I dislike how energy-intensive the web is. It doesn't _have_ to be, but it is nowadays. Going back to somewhat native GUI's is a step in the right direction in my opinion, at least in some aspects.