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What they really need to do is layoff BrightScript. They are certainly big in the streaming device space, but not enough to justify having a proprietary languag

What they really need to do is layoff BrightScript. They are certainly big in the streaming device space, but not enough to justify having a proprietary language. The rest of the industry is coalescing around portable apps based on web tech while Roku is derided and only begrudgingly supported due to their current market share. But Roku’s market share has been relatively flat while FireTV has grown to equal them, and Roku should be terrified of the cliff BrightScript puts them on. Every company would love to kill their oddball BrightScript app as soon as possible and that’s a dangerous position for a company without a defensible moat. See their lost battle with YouTube to see how much clout they actually have.

yamtaddle 4y ago
To be fair, not being webshit is part of why their UI is usable (if not great) on low-end hardware. BrightScript does suck, though—but it also already exists, and I doubt maintaining it's all that hard. Used to work on a dual-platform mobile app engine that was probably on par, difficulty-wise, with maintaining & developing BrightScript—that only needed like 3.5 devs, and not at coastal US wages. Meanwhile, the Big Boys get a C++(?) API, as I understand it. I assume that's why some of them behave weird or are glitchy, but do look a lot like the same apps on other platforms. [EDIT] However, they could probably do a good job making a comparably-snappy UI with JavaScript, as long as they didn't drag HTML and CSS along for the ride. Kinda like the JavaScript API on tvOS.
- marcellus23 4y ago
  > their UI is usable (if not great) on low-end hardware. This is not at all my experience using Roku.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Devices so bad that even Roku runs poorly on them do exist. Zero of them would do better if Roku switched to webtech for its applications.
- nvrspyx 4y ago
  > To be fair, not being webshit is part of why their UI is usable (if not great) on low-end hardware. I have a TV with Roku built-in. It ran great when I got it in 2020, but it has gotten slower and slower to the point of being unusable. I'm not even talking about apps, but the Roku home screen itself. Apps are even slower and crash all the time, sometimes crashing the TV itself. On the other hand, I have a Chromecast from 2016 that still runs just as well as it did when I bought it. I'd rather use my phone as a remote and have a movie playing in seconds with the Chromecast than wait 1+ minutes for Hulu or Netflix to even get to their respective home screens with the Roku. I also don't get ads with the Chromecast.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Oh, yeah, it's definitely possible to put Roku on hardware that's so incredibly shit that it runs poorly. And Roku's software (like everyone else's) has definitely been bloating for a long time. I discovered that when I bought a Hisense, because I needed a new TV and Costco didn't sell the previous brand of dirt-cheap Chinese Roku TV I'd bought before. God damn did that brand cheap out, the other brand's older TV that cost the same performed so much better. It even crashed sometimes, seemingly from OOM-like pressure, which I'd never once seen happen on the older one. But it's also the case that decently-performing Roku devices exist running on hardware that surely wouldn't do very well if its "apps" were Webtech-based. JavaScript, sure, that could probably be brought in (and would surely be an improvement over BrightScript, as far as dev-ex) but a whole browser engine? Nah, they'd have to greatly increase their min specs, and their whole niche is "runs twice as well as Android-based TV UIs, on half the hardware".
  - at_a_remove 4y ago
    I have a standalone Roku, third generation, so it is sitting on ten years now. It's dandy. My suspicion has been that building in anything into a television is fraught. Dumb TVs + some kind of box for the win.
  - mustacheemperor 4y ago
    >I have a Chromecast from 2016 that still runs just as well as it did when I bought it. Which, in my experience, is better than the new Chromecast with Android TV. I switched to it from an old school Chromecast and was just astounded at how badly the menus performed. Like the entire role of this device is to operate my TV, it's 2023, they can't make it do that without the UI animations dragging and occasionally crashing altogether? Not to mention the ads, ads everywhere, "recommendations" all over the home screen, crammed in every available space, and no doubt dragging performance themselves. I switched to an Apple TV and it's a bit better, but there's still a full-screen "recommendation" video at the top of the home screen and it still doesn't run perfectly, which sorry not sorry, would be my expectation for such an incredibly simple UI in this great year of 2023. Sorry to hijack the thread, but is there a single company making a set top box today that #1 consistently performs well in software and #2 isn't riddled with advertising disguised as "recommendations" for content I would never watch? Is that Roku? I haven't used one in years.
nickmain 4y ago
Having mentioned a brief Roku maintenance rotation on my resume I got to see how desperate the recruiters for BrightScript devs are. I did jokingly consider diving into it as a lucrative niche skill, like maintaining Cobol apps.
- devoutsalsa 4y ago
  I think COBOL devs don’t get paid all that much. They just train fresh grads in cheap markets. The premium wages for COBOL were certainly a thing in the Y2K days.
- nirav72 4y ago
  Did you get anyone interested?
kelseyfrog 4y ago
There's a huge opportunity for a Whatever->BrightScript transpiler. I briefly went down the path myself before declaring it too big to be a hobby project. It would however, massively improve the developer experience and be an easy acqui-hire op for anyone that likes transpiler design.
- nickmain 4y ago
  I did once create a GitHub repo to write a BS target for Haxe. Called it HorseScript, extending the BS pun. But, like you, I couldn't justify the time.

yamtaddle 4y ago

To be fair, not being webshit is part of why their UI is usable (if not great) on low-end hardware. BrightScript does suck, though—but it also already exists, and I doubt maintaining it's all that hard. Used to work on a dual-platform mobile app engine that was probably on par, difficulty-wise, with maintaining & developing BrightScript—that only needed like 3.5 devs, and not at coastal US wages. Meanwhile, the Big Boys get a C++(?) API, as I understand it. I assume that's why some of them behave weird or are glitchy, but do look a lot like the same apps on other platforms. [EDIT] However, they could probably do a good job making a comparably-snappy UI with JavaScript, as long as they didn't drag HTML and CSS along for the ride. Kinda like the JavaScript API on tvOS.

marcellus23 4y ago
> their UI is usable (if not great) on low-end hardware. This is not at all my experience using Roku.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Devices so bad that even Roku runs poorly on them do exist. Zero of them would do better if Roku switched to webtech for its applications.
nvrspyx 4y ago
> To be fair, not being webshit is part of why their UI is usable (if not great) on low-end hardware. I have a TV with Roku built-in. It ran great when I got it in 2020, but it has gotten slower and slower to the point of being unusable. I'm not even talking about apps, but the Roku home screen itself. Apps are even slower and crash all the time, sometimes crashing the TV itself. On the other hand, I have a Chromecast from 2016 that still runs just as well as it did when I bought it. I'd rather use my phone as a remote and have a movie playing in seconds with the Chromecast than wait 1+ minutes for Hulu or Netflix to even get to their respective home screens with the Roku. I also don't get ads with the Chromecast.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Oh, yeah, it's definitely possible to put Roku on hardware that's so incredibly shit that it runs poorly. And Roku's software (like everyone else's) has definitely been bloating for a long time. I discovered that when I bought a Hisense, because I needed a new TV and Costco didn't sell the previous brand of dirt-cheap Chinese Roku TV I'd bought before. God damn did that brand cheap out, the other brand's older TV that cost the same performed so much better. It even crashed sometimes, seemingly from OOM-like pressure, which I'd never once seen happen on the older one. But it's also the case that decently-performing Roku devices exist running on hardware that surely wouldn't do very well if its "apps" were Webtech-based. JavaScript, sure, that could probably be brought in (and would surely be an improvement over BrightScript, as far as dev-ex) but a whole browser engine? Nah, they'd have to greatly increase their min specs, and their whole niche is "runs twice as well as Android-based TV UIs, on half the hardware".
- at_a_remove 4y ago
  I have a standalone Roku, third generation, so it is sitting on ten years now. It's dandy. My suspicion has been that building in anything into a television is fraught. Dumb TVs + some kind of box for the win.
- mustacheemperor 4y ago
  >I have a Chromecast from 2016 that still runs just as well as it did when I bought it. Which, in my experience, is better than the new Chromecast with Android TV. I switched to it from an old school Chromecast and was just astounded at how badly the menus performed. Like the entire role of this device is to operate my TV, it's 2023, they can't make it do that without the UI animations dragging and occasionally crashing altogether? Not to mention the ads, ads everywhere, "recommendations" all over the home screen, crammed in every available space, and no doubt dragging performance themselves. I switched to an Apple TV and it's a bit better, but there's still a full-screen "recommendation" video at the top of the home screen and it still doesn't run perfectly, which sorry not sorry, would be my expectation for such an incredibly simple UI in this great year of 2023. Sorry to hijack the thread, but is there a single company making a set top box today that #1 consistently performs well in software and #2 isn't riddled with advertising disguised as "recommendations" for content I would never watch? Is that Roku? I haven't used one in years.

nickmain 4y ago

Having mentioned a brief Roku maintenance rotation on my resume I got to see how desperate the recruiters for BrightScript devs are. I did jokingly consider diving into it as a lucrative niche skill, like maintaining Cobol apps.

devoutsalsa 4y ago
I think COBOL devs don’t get paid all that much. They just train fresh grads in cheap markets. The premium wages for COBOL were certainly a thing in the Y2K days.
nirav72 4y ago
Did you get anyone interested?

kelseyfrog 4y ago

There's a huge opportunity for a Whatever->BrightScript transpiler. I briefly went down the path myself before declaring it too big to be a hobby project. It would however, massively improve the developer experience and be an easy acqui-hire op for anyone that likes transpiler design.

nickmain 4y ago
I did once create a GitHub repo to write a BS target for Haxe. Called it HorseScript, extending the BS pun. But, like you, I couldn't justify the time.