3 ms·

It always strikes me that the angst around browsers comes largely from people who have given up on targeting OS’s for development and use the browser as their O

It always strikes me that the angst around browsers comes largely from people who have given up on targeting OS’s for development and use the browser as their OS. You all do realize that if you stop relying exclusively on the JS ecosystem, there is actually quite a bit of choice out there. You know, those native APIs or portable frameworks that some of us talk about occasionally. I get the economic incentive to develop once and run everywhere, and the education problem where we’ve somehow churned out tons of JS-only developers, but that seems to mean we’ve contributed to the problem that the Apple monoculture is revealing. Perhaps a solution to this is to not rely so much on browsers as our exclusive target platform, and take back some control? Nobody’s making us all move to an exclusively browser centric target for all development… I get it: native is more expensive, more time consuming, and excludes developers who don’t want to leave the comfort of their NPM/JS world, but it IS an option that one company and one browser engine can’t control. Even if you don’t go full native, there still are things like Qt, GTK, etc. that are at least decoupled from one OS and one engine. Do people really hate the idea of learning the languages and tools required to use those?

__alexs 4y ago
If you're developing for the web you probably care a lot about mobile users. If you care about mobile users your alternative options are even more of a walled garden than the web is.
EnKopVand 4y ago
Do you have any evidence that the angst you’re talking about comes from people who build tools on the JS ecosystem? In Danish digitalisation we’ve basically gone the route or having JavaScript (really Typescript) fronts for basically everything and I’ve yet to personally hear anyone working in that area complain about chrome becoming the dominant browser. And why would they? Frameworks like react, angular and vue make the underlying “OS” as you call it unimportant for the most part. Especially now that IE6 is almost dead. And if you do have certain needs that needs to control the environment you can always go the electron route. You sound like you’re not a fan of JavaScript, which is perfectly fair, but why would you go on a crusade for it? There are enough development jobs around that can keep you working with exactly the language you prefer and never care about any other languages.
qu4z-2 4y ago
I care not as a developer but as a user. If everything on the internet starts saying "Install this one specific program", that's a lot worse for me than being able to run whichever browser implements the privacy controls I prefer.
ketzu 4y ago
> but it IS an option that one company and one browser engine can’t control. How is that the case? Especially considering the fact that the company that controls that limited one browser engine also controls the execution of native code on the exact same platform.

__alexs 4y ago

If you're developing for the web you probably care a lot about mobile users. If you care about mobile users your alternative options are even more of a walled garden than the web is.

EnKopVand 4y ago

Do you have any evidence that the angst you’re talking about comes from people who build tools on the JS ecosystem? In Danish digitalisation we’ve basically gone the route or having JavaScript (really Typescript) fronts for basically everything and I’ve yet to personally hear anyone working in that area complain about chrome becoming the dominant browser. And why would they? Frameworks like react, angular and vue make the underlying “OS” as you call it unimportant for the most part. Especially now that IE6 is almost dead. And if you do have certain needs that needs to control the environment you can always go the electron route. You sound like you’re not a fan of JavaScript, which is perfectly fair, but why would you go on a crusade for it? There are enough development jobs around that can keep you working with exactly the language you prefer and never care about any other languages.

qu4z-2 4y ago

I care not as a developer but as a user. If everything on the internet starts saying "Install this one specific program", that's a lot worse for me than being able to run whichever browser implements the privacy controls I prefer.

ketzu 4y ago

> but it IS an option that one company and one browser engine can’t control. How is that the case? Especially considering the fact that the company that controls that limited one browser engine also controls the execution of native code on the exact same platform.