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It's still trendy to hate on Electron? Give it up. The ship has sailed. I like native apps as much as anyone else but you've got to realise the absolute clust

It's still trendy to hate on Electron? Give it up. The ship has sailed. I like native apps as much as anyone else but you've got to realise the absolute clusterfuck that is cross-platform development. Plus building rich GUIs is actually feasible when using tools that are actually meant to build rich GUIs (i.e. HTML/CSS/JS).

crispinb 4y ago
I'd give up arguing with people about it! I agree web tech is going to stay on the desktop, so I'm happy to let them whinge at the moon while I continue to use sofware on Linux I otherwise would have no access to. And it's only going to get better. Tauri's promising. I don't know any more than the next punter what the future will be, but my own guess would be web tech getting more significant in desktop UIs, not less. The combinatorial explosion of multiple OSs plus fragmentation of UI toolkits on each desktop platform seems to make web UIs a likely continuing target of choice for many apps. No-one will stop using software they like or need because someone they will never meet dupes a sneer about it on the internet.
carapace 4y ago
> absolute clusterfuck that is cross-platform development TCL/Tk
smarkov 4y ago
> tools that are actually meant to build rich GUIs (i.e. HTML/CSS/JS) You had me until this part. If those 3 were meant to build rich GUIs we wouldn't have new JS frameworks and a load of bundling tools coming out every year. They were meant to give documents structure and style, that's it. We molded them into the monstrosity they are today. The appeal is not that they're a pleasure making GUIs with, it's that you go through the nightmare once and it works everywhere, rather than going through 3 different nightmares.
- phist_mcgee 4y ago
  Yeah and C was designed for writing operating systems on mini computers and now we've got c++, what's your point?
eviks 4y ago
There are plenty native terminal ships sailing nearby, so feel free to dunk on the ugly one
illiarian 4y ago
> tools that are actually meant to build rich GUIs (i.e. HTML/CSS/JS). These were never meant to build rich UIs. They were meant to build a text page with a few images. That's it. There's a reason why every single UI framework for these tools re-invents the same primitive controls like avatars and tabs.
- hardex 4y ago
  That ship has sailed 15 years ago. Web is (unfortunately) the most flexible and feature-complete crossplatform GUI framework.
  - illiarian 4y ago
    It is, of course, neither. The most feature-complete and flexible GUI framework is one that is: - flexible. The web is anything but. You can read, for example, how Figma struggled and how inflexible the web is here: https://www.figma.com/blog/building-a-professional-design-tool-on-the-web/ https://www.figma.com/blog/building-a-professional-design-to... - feature-complete. Once again, there's a reason all UI projects for this "most feature-complete framework" keep reinventing the most primitive controls. Because the web has none, and creating complex controls is a near-impossibility. Also, if it was feature complete, https://open-ui.org/ https://open-ui.org/ wouldn't exist. If you are actually looking for a flexible feature-complete GUI framework, then it's Qt.

crispinb 4y ago

I'd give up arguing with people about it! I agree web tech is going to stay on the desktop, so I'm happy to let them whinge at the moon while I continue to use sofware on Linux I otherwise would have no access to. And it's only going to get better. Tauri's promising. I don't know any more than the next punter what the future will be, but my own guess would be web tech getting more significant in desktop UIs, not less. The combinatorial explosion of multiple OSs plus fragmentation of UI toolkits on each desktop platform seems to make web UIs a likely continuing target of choice for many apps. No-one will stop using software they like or need because someone they will never meet dupes a sneer about it on the internet.

carapace 4y ago

> absolute clusterfuck that is cross-platform development TCL/Tk

smarkov 4y ago

> tools that are actually meant to build rich GUIs (i.e. HTML/CSS/JS) You had me until this part. If those 3 were meant to build rich GUIs we wouldn't have new JS frameworks and a load of bundling tools coming out every year. They were meant to give documents structure and style, that's it. We molded them into the monstrosity they are today. The appeal is not that they're a pleasure making GUIs with, it's that you go through the nightmare once and it works everywhere, rather than going through 3 different nightmares.

phist_mcgee 4y ago
Yeah and C was designed for writing operating systems on mini computers and now we've got c++, what's your point?

eviks 4y ago

There are plenty native terminal ships sailing nearby, so feel free to dunk on the ugly one

illiarian 4y ago

> tools that are actually meant to build rich GUIs (i.e. HTML/CSS/JS). These were never meant to build rich UIs. They were meant to build a text page with a few images. That's it. There's a reason why every single UI framework for these tools re-invents the same primitive controls like avatars and tabs.

hardex 4y ago
That ship has sailed 15 years ago. Web is (unfortunately) the most flexible and feature-complete crossplatform GUI framework.
- illiarian 4y ago
  It is, of course, neither. The most feature-complete and flexible GUI framework is one that is: - flexible. The web is anything but. You can read, for example, how Figma struggled and how inflexible the web is here: https://www.figma.com/blog/building-a-professional-design-tool-on-the-web/ https://www.figma.com/blog/building-a-professional-design-to... - feature-complete. Once again, there's a reason all UI projects for this "most feature-complete framework" keep reinventing the most primitive controls. Because the web has none, and creating complex controls is a near-impossibility. Also, if it was feature complete, https://open-ui.org/ https://open-ui.org/ wouldn't exist. If you are actually looking for a flexible feature-complete GUI framework, then it's Qt.