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> We do this for Construct (www.construct.net) - a complete game development IDE - and I think it's worked out great. Mind sharing what you used for backend /

> We do this for Construct (www.construct.net) - a complete game development IDE - and I think it's worked out great. Mind sharing what you used for backend / frontend of your desktop PWA? I'm planning to work on a similarly complex UI and have been searching around for best-in-class (or best-trade-offs) technologies today Any books, tips, tutorials, whatever you can share that inspired your architecture decisions would be ___immensely___ appreciated.

AshleysBrain 4y ago
We have an in-house UI library, mainly because we started writing code in the mid-2010s and there was nothing good out there at the time. Maybe that's changed but while I haven't researched it thoroughly, I also haven't come across anything that looks like it does everything ours does. But our UI lib aims to be as simple and straightforward as possible, standard model-view-controller, no virtual DOM, making full use of HTML and CSS features. Personally I view a lot of modern CSS frameworks with suspicion as they all seem to massively overengineer this stuff. We have a whole desktop IDE running on basically old fashioned desktop app engineering style but on top of HTML, and it works great. Apart from a few extra services on the side, the main app is all static resources so no real backend to speak of. Again, engineered like a traditional desktop app with everything running locally, which also means the UI always responds promptly (no waiting for network) and it all works offline. Maybe I should write up a blog post about how it all works, but not sure how many people out there want to hear more!
- runlaszlorun 4y ago
  I’d love to see a writeup if yyou had a chance to write one!
- airstrike 4y ago
  If it's any indication, I posted a link on a related topic earlier today and it made the front page, so I think folks are definitely interested in the topic ;-) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34696635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34696635

AshleysBrain 4y ago

We have an in-house UI library, mainly because we started writing code in the mid-2010s and there was nothing good out there at the time. Maybe that's changed but while I haven't researched it thoroughly, I also haven't come across anything that looks like it does everything ours does. But our UI lib aims to be as simple and straightforward as possible, standard model-view-controller, no virtual DOM, making full use of HTML and CSS features. Personally I view a lot of modern CSS frameworks with suspicion as they all seem to massively overengineer this stuff. We have a whole desktop IDE running on basically old fashioned desktop app engineering style but on top of HTML, and it works great. Apart from a few extra services on the side, the main app is all static resources so no real backend to speak of. Again, engineered like a traditional desktop app with everything running locally, which also means the UI always responds promptly (no waiting for network) and it all works offline. Maybe I should write up a blog post about how it all works, but not sure how many people out there want to hear more!

runlaszlorun 4y ago
I’d love to see a writeup if yyou had a chance to write one!
airstrike 4y ago
If it's any indication, I posted a link on a related topic earlier today and it made the front page, so I think folks are definitely interested in the topic ;-) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34696635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34696635