3 ms·

This sounds great, and yes is exactly the sort of GUI framework I'd want to use; I've also had the displeasure of using Qt/QML (though not at such scale/for as

by OJFord 4y ago

This sounds great, and yes is exactly the sort of GUI framework I'd want to use; I've also had the displeasure of using Qt/QML (though not at such scale/for as long)). ... But I can pretty much do this today with Tauri? The missing bit here IMO is why we need to rebuild webdev-like tooling in a Rust-only framework rather than just use it.

brundolf 4y ago
Everything has tradeoffs; web-based UIs have a performance cost (not a prohibitive one for most things, but a cost is a cost). So it's not a bad thing to have native options But you're definitely right that devex is one of the web's main strengths. It's really hard to replicate that without a massive community like the one the web has; that's going to be a sticking point for any native framework (which if we're honest, are going to remain a niche going forward) Even with cross-platform frameworks, there's a big fragmentation problem right now. And even if there weren't, native development as a whole is simply a smaller community these days
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  > It's really hard to replicate that without a massive community It's not the size of the community. It's the use of interpreted languages and strong introspection and a (relatively) consistent platform called "the browser". That's what make devex so different to native. Sure, the endless stream of new frameworks etc. also contributes to the difference, but it's not as fundamental IMO.
mattgreenrocks 4y ago
The web will not last forever. Better to build a foundation that is capable of bridging to the web if necessary than staking yet another UI layout engine atop a document markup syntax.
- adastra22 4y ago
  That is a very interesting viewpoint. I’m not a webaholic like a lot of the JS devs out there. It’s a shit platform. But I have no illusions about its lasting power. Why do you think the web stack is going to go away?
  - mattgreenrocks 4y ago
    It's not that it is going away anytime soon, it is more that it is a poor choice for 'conceptual bedrock.'
- sethaurus 4y ago
  Sure, the web will one day die — and it will certainly change a lot before that day! But even so, would you stake a current native UI toolkit to last longer, and provide more value, before that day? There are good reasons to write truly native UI. Performance is very persuasive. Longevity, perhaps less so.
  - adastra22 4y ago
    I'll wager the Win32 gui api will outlast your choice of web stack.
    - rat9988 4y ago
      Do the other native frameworks in the other OS have the same longetivity story?
      - adastra22 4y ago
        X11 does.
  - mattgreenrocks 4y ago
    The conceptual foundations of something like this are extremely important. If you stake the basic ideas of the framework on the DOM, then DOM details will become implementation details which will become details that clients will depend on. And you'll have just re-written React but with even more layers. It needs to be thought about in terms of first principles, ala SICP. There are basic primitives to be defined that are the "ground," and then it is built up from there.
PoignardAzur 4y ago
Building things in Rust is its own reward! More seriously though, that's a fair question. Anything that isn't the web has a lot of catching up to do before it can compare to the web. (Though browsers are increasingly relying on rust frameworks for low-level work, so there's some potential for code reuse.) My gut feeling answer would be "because things built for the web have a tendency to fail for no reason, and things built in Rust have a tendency to work on the first try". I'd have a hard time backing up that gut feeling with hard numbers, but I think it's a shared one. Web techs tend to have all sort of legacy cruft and small papercuts and stuff. Mature Rust crates are easy to install, work immediately and have an intuitive API. My hope is to get to a point where developing Rust GUI is just easy, no papercuts. (But again, lots of catching up to do first.)
- interactivecode 4y ago
  how do things on the web fail for no reason? My experience is the exact opposite. The web's html is very lenient and if you html makes somewhat sense it will render your document. If you're comparing legacy web code to new and modern rust crates of course it's not a fair comparison. just wait until the until the second wave of rust gui libs, it will be a similar pain of legacy code when the web industry went from Angular v1 to React. Legacy projects, outdated packages and brittle build processes, now with rust there will also be the added "benefit" of a more complicated programming language.
  - scns 4y ago
    Did you never see that infamous "undefined is not a function" error message?
    - interactivecode 4y ago
      Of course I've seen it. have you ever seen the `Syntax Error: expected SEMICOLON` error message while trying to do something completely unrelated?
- aliqot 4y ago
  > Building things in Rust is its own reward! Stop saying stuff like this. It's not true and it pushes people away bc you look fanatic

by OJFord 4y ago

brundolf 4y ago

Everything has tradeoffs; web-based UIs have a performance cost (not a prohibitive one for most things, but a cost is a cost). So it's not a bad thing to have native options But you're definitely right that devex is one of the web's main strengths. It's really hard to replicate that without a massive community like the one the web has; that's going to be a sticking point for any native framework (which if we're honest, are going to remain a niche going forward) Even with cross-platform frameworks, there's a big fragmentation problem right now. And even if there weren't, native development as a whole is simply a smaller community these days

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
> It's really hard to replicate that without a massive community It's not the size of the community. It's the use of interpreted languages and strong introspection and a (relatively) consistent platform called "the browser". That's what make devex so different to native. Sure, the endless stream of new frameworks etc. also contributes to the difference, but it's not as fundamental IMO.

mattgreenrocks 4y ago

The web will not last forever. Better to build a foundation that is capable of bridging to the web if necessary than staking yet another UI layout engine atop a document markup syntax.

adastra22 4y ago
That is a very interesting viewpoint. I’m not a webaholic like a lot of the JS devs out there. It’s a shit platform. But I have no illusions about its lasting power. Why do you think the web stack is going to go away?
- mattgreenrocks 4y ago
  It's not that it is going away anytime soon, it is more that it is a poor choice for 'conceptual bedrock.'
sethaurus 4y ago
Sure, the web will one day die — and it will certainly change a lot before that day! But even so, would you stake a current native UI toolkit to last longer, and provide more value, before that day? There are good reasons to write truly native UI. Performance is very persuasive. Longevity, perhaps less so.
- adastra22 4y ago
  I'll wager the Win32 gui api will outlast your choice of web stack.
  - rat9988 4y ago
    Do the other native frameworks in the other OS have the same longetivity story?
    - adastra22 4y ago
      X11 does.
- mattgreenrocks 4y ago
  The conceptual foundations of something like this are extremely important. If you stake the basic ideas of the framework on the DOM, then DOM details will become implementation details which will become details that clients will depend on. And you'll have just re-written React but with even more layers. It needs to be thought about in terms of first principles, ala SICP. There are basic primitives to be defined that are the "ground," and then it is built up from there.

PoignardAzur 4y ago

Building things in Rust is its own reward! More seriously though, that's a fair question. Anything that isn't the web has a lot of catching up to do before it can compare to the web. (Though browsers are increasingly relying on rust frameworks for low-level work, so there's some potential for code reuse.) My gut feeling answer would be "because things built for the web have a tendency to fail for no reason, and things built in Rust have a tendency to work on the first try". I'd have a hard time backing up that gut feeling with hard numbers, but I think it's a shared one. Web techs tend to have all sort of legacy cruft and small papercuts and stuff. Mature Rust crates are easy to install, work immediately and have an intuitive API. My hope is to get to a point where developing Rust GUI is just easy, no papercuts. (But again, lots of catching up to do first.)

interactivecode 4y ago
how do things on the web fail for no reason? My experience is the exact opposite. The web's html is very lenient and if you html makes somewhat sense it will render your document. If you're comparing legacy web code to new and modern rust crates of course it's not a fair comparison. just wait until the until the second wave of rust gui libs, it will be a similar pain of legacy code when the web industry went from Angular v1 to React. Legacy projects, outdated packages and brittle build processes, now with rust there will also be the added "benefit" of a more complicated programming language.
- scns 4y ago
  Did you never see that infamous "undefined is not a function" error message?
  - interactivecode 4y ago
    Of course I've seen it. have you ever seen the `Syntax Error: expected SEMICOLON` error message while trying to do something completely unrelated?
aliqot 4y ago
> Building things in Rust is its own reward! Stop saying stuff like this. It's not true and it pushes people away bc you look fanatic