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I wish we would see more developers embrace desktop native apps again. We have such powerful machines, only to use them as glorified dumb terminals
by sirjaz 2y ago
I wish we would see more developers embrace desktop native apps again. We have such powerful machines, only to use them as glorified dumb terminals
- airstrike 2y agoCouldn't agree more. If anyone is thinking about writing fast, safe, cross-platform GUI apps, I'd encourage you to try iced. It's a breath of fresh air https://github.com/iced-rs/iced https://github.com/iced-rs/iced
- reactordev 2y agoIf I had a dime for every web framework... We need better desktop api's. It's hard enough having to abstract nuances of linux/unix vs osx and the like. A better, more robust, desktop framework is needed (and no, not just another web framework on top of it because UI is hard). Less Electron's, more OpenGL's - Less XML and more Swing (just not swing, plz).
- corytheboyd 2y agoSure, but learn from why the Electrons of the world are winning. It’s because browsers are already what you would get after reinventing the wheel all the way to its logical conclusion— a highly customizable, generic application runner. Let’s not throw that away and make an Nth new thing. HTML/CSS/JS are good enough abstractions with great implementations, and it’s easy to build applications against this. Portability is already solved too. Yes, we can do better than shipping each application with an embedded web browser executable, there are huge jumps being made all the time with native web view frameworks. Personally, I think the ship has sailed on making the “perfect” framework, let’s pick the one that’s already winning and make it the best we can.
- cosmic_cheese 2y agoElectron/web still has the glaring issue of its primitives being, well, too primitive. They’re great for documents and lighter “web 2.0” apps but have a long way to go for the purposes of replacing full fat desktop UI frameworks. This is actually a big factor in why web apps have the perception of being bloated. Basic widgets being missing means that everybody and their dog has their own custom implementations, nearly all of which are somewhat slapdash in nature due to speed of implementation being prioritized over quality. They never meaningfully improve either since there’s little sharing of efforts, with everybody instead preferring to reinvent wheels for themselves. If the platform provided a more robust set of widgets, much of these problems would go away since devs would be using those instead either as-is or with light cosmetic customizations. Over time the browser implementations would get better and all users would benefit with more performant, less buggy apps.
- corytheboyd 2y agoRight, that’s what I’m getting when I say this: > […] pick the one that’s already winning and make it the best we can. I agree, it can be much better. Tons of incremental improvements have been made, and should continue being made. I too would like to see browser close the gap completely, supporting everything needed to build real applications, not hacked together applications that accidentally work. We seem so close…
- prmph 2y agoThis is what I've been saying for a long time. HTML remains too primitive in its support for rich UI apps. The main problem I think is what you have identified: we need sophisticated composable widgets with practical and sensible defaults, that are also really customizable with scoped CSS, built right into the browser. This alone would be the biggest QOL improvement as far as web development goes, in several generations. I really don't know why this is not the highest priority for the W3C
- cosmic_cheese 2y agoThe only reason I figure that it hasn’t been prioritized is that it’s not flashy or sexy and has zero gee-whiz factor.
- arvinsim 2y agoPeople use their phones much more than their laptops/PCs. Think it boils down to supply and demand.
- closeparen 2y agoI understand why scrappy startups like Electron, but it's astounding that companies as large Spotify and Slack won't shell out for a couple of Windows/MacOS native developers.
- barbazoo 2y agoWhat difference would it make? The macOS app is fine as far as I can tell.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- sgt 2y agoThat's only after a tremendous amount of effort, with high CPU and mem utilization to add to it. The potential with native (at least on Mac) would be much higher.
- esafak 2y agoSlack is slow and bulky. It gives Teams a run for its money which, not surprisingly, is even worse.
- barbazoo 2y agoSlack is perfectly fine on any machine I’ve used it on in the past 5 or so years, I honesty don’t know what you’re experiencing or expecting.
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- andoma 2y agoAt work I've introduced various in-house tooling based on Dear Imgui and people are just blown away by how fast everything is. "I didn't know computers could be this fast and responsive". I say, well just think about the fact that the machine at your fingertips can do billions of calculations per second and it shouldn't be that much of a surprise really.
- andrewmcwatters 2y agoI wish operating system developers would make developing using their native UI systems not a pain in the ass and actually be competitive with the web as a platform.
- duxup 2y agoAnd yet we all want to be multi platform, and that with native comes costs. I get it, I work with some multi platform apps and I just don't want 20 layers between me and the damn device and some crazy build process ... I hate it. But I can't argue that going native everywhere isn't it's own hassle.
- pdimitar 2y agoI sympathize with small companies in this regard. But those like Microsoft and Slack have exactly zero excuses.
- taraindara 2y agoI’d argue that desktop native is also the most likely to introduce system breaking bugs, viruses, and malware. A web app is much safer from these types of issues. The result is people can use more efficient terminals to do most of what they need. And the powerful native machine is available when that extra power is justified.
- skydhash 2y agoThat's because the web browser is a sandbox. We have sandboxing technology for native apps.
- spacemanspiff01 2y agoWhat is a cross platform sandboxing technology for native apps?
- illegalmemory 2y agohttps://github.com/phylum-dev/birdcage https://github.com/phylum-dev/birdcage https://github.com/servo/gaol https://github.com/servo/gaol and several others ?
- stnmtn 2y agoThese clearly aren't comparable to the support of browsers. I know this metric isn't really an important signal, but they both have under 500 stars. If I'm a business evaluating whether to build my cross platform experience either on the web using the sandboxing of browsers vs smaller frameworks like this, it's basically not even a choice.
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- crazygringo 2y agoI don't. I hate installing, and I hate both apps and data that are tied to a single device. I like the security model of browsers, and I like using browser tabs to organize my apps like Gmail, Docs, etc. And webapps can use your CPU and GPU just fine. We have such powerful machines, but checking your email isn't going to use that power regardless of whether it's a desktop app or a webapp.
- marssaxman 2y agoFortunately for you, the world as it currently exists is well suited to your preference! It is less so for those of us who would prefer more control over our machines and our data.
- bdhcuidbebe 2y ago> I like the security model of browsers What security model? Relying on a third party cloud provider for your secrets is the opposite of a security model. If you are talking about the browser sandbox, then it helps nothing with keeping your data secure from actors you dont realize are bad.
- faust201 2y ago1. Easier to keep one program update. i.e browser. use firefox (or its nerfed clones) if you hate Google or Apple 2. For any decent software it needs update. Even most opensource tools are hundreds of MB. For example, a school teacher in Zambia does not need to download digikam or okular or notepad++ or ffmpeg every week to get security updates. > it helps nothing with keeping your data secure from actors you dont realize are bad Once you enter that then you have only https://www.raptorengineering.com/ https://www.raptorengineering.com/ and using terminal.
- tartoran 2y agoNot saying updates aren't necessary, especially security related but I loved we slowed down with the pace of updates, many times forceful updates that brake things that used to work. Many times users no longer have the latitude to make the choice when to update. They also brick devices that can't take up their updates rendering them obsolete. Updates aren't something inherently bad but they're being used in evil ways with no resort from users other than leave.
- eightysixfour 2y agoYou know, I go back and forth on this a lot these days. I have a a couple of high power machines across operating systems and I find that, lately, I barely trust installing a downloadable application on them anymore. Installation instructions have sudo commands everywhere, on windows everything wants to escalate to admin rights for the installer, etc. At some point applications completely broke my trust, and the OS manufacturers failed to protect us, and now we're all paying for it with inefficient garbage everywhere.
- cosmic_cheese 2y agoI have similar suspicions towards unknown web apps, because even with how good browser sandboxing has gotten it just takes a single click or less to set off a nasty chain of 0days. For native apps, I treat non-obvious need for sudo or admin priveleges as a smell. The way everything on Windows needs admin is actually one of the reasons why I don’t use it for anything but games.
- eightysixfour 2y agoInteresting - I perceive web zero days to be substantially more valuable than desktop ones at this point, and unlikely to be wasted on me.
- emursebrian 2y agoBrowser based apps are better than ever. As a developer who has delivered applications on CD-ROM and downloadable installers, I do not have a strong desire to return to these times. Browser-based word-processing and spreadsheets pretty great. I love VS Code. The multimedia capabilities of browsers are pretty good and up to the tasks I need them for.
- pdimitar 2y agoOK, I still want instant switch between separate chats in Slack though, not this 1970s-like 1.5s laggy slow transition on a machine that can scan ~300K files in the same 1.5 seconds.
- sorenjan 2y agoTelegrams desktop client[0] is native (C++ with Qt) and it's a joy to use. I don't want an Electron chat app. [0] https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop
- lgl 2y agoI, a php/js web developer, have over the past few years launched and maintained a C# .NET app and can testify that the experience has been overall pretty positive as somebody that had never even launched visual studio before except for playing around unity and doing some tutorials. And I say this even after the adventure of trying to decipher whatever Microsoft is doing/going with their 4 or 5 competing frameworks and SDKs. But I still find huge value and love a good web app whenever what you need doesn't really need to be native which was not my case. There will still be uses for native apps for a long time IMHO.
- subzero06 2y agoIssue with desktop app is doing updates, pushing updates/hotfixes to all of them and then works for some and not for others, instead of webapps you only update the host and test on different browsers. thats all.
- pdimitar 2y agoIf you say so. Telegram for example updates in half a second on my Windows gaming machine, and having a daily update script on my Mac and Linux machines is easy as hell. Sure many people don't update like ever, but Apple's and Microsoft's app stores do updates without asking people anyway (they learned, finally). Not such a big problem as you make it out to be IMO, even for very casual non-technical users.
- robenkleene 2y agoIt's fascinating to see so many folks out there supporting web apps, because I personally don't like using them. They're fine for tasks I don't care about being pleasant, like, say, quickly buying something online. But for anything I consider work, that takes toil, like writing, editing media, or programming. I'll avoid using web apps, these tasks are hard enough on their own, I don't want to make them harder by using software that, to me, lacks joy (due to it not hitting my bottom line in performance, reliability, or even beauty). I just hope enough folks out there continue to appreciate native apps, because I think my continued joy at being in tech depends on it.
- mikedelfino 2y agoDoes Visual Studio Code qualify as a desktop app?
- robenkleene 2y agoVisual Studio Code is an interesting case study. I don't know how I'd categorize it. In the past I've noted how absolutely glacial it is with some tasks, and it's baffling to me how this stuff doesn't drive folks insane (much like the enjoyment of web apps is baffling to me), I guess people just care about different things: 1. It takes nine times as long as Vim to open a minified JavaScript file, and then format it with Prettier: https://twitter.com/robenkleene/status/1285631026648276993 https://twitter.com/robenkleene/status/1285631026648276993 2. It takes 14 times as long to open an empty text file than BBEdit: https://twitter.com/robenkleene/status/1257724392458661889 https://twitter.com/robenkleene/status/1257724392458661889 (Note those time trials are years old, this may be different now.) But even though VS Code is objectively slow for some tasks, I would still categorize it as extremely high-quality software. So at the end of the day, I don't know. VS Code isn't for me, but I'm not confounded by it having fans the same way I'm confounded by web apps in general having fans.
- prmph 2y agoNative apps don't offer deep liking and bookmarking. You can't easily open multiple instances of the app in multiple tabs. Your data is usually tied to the specific devices you are using. Unless carefully designed, desktop apps might not be responsive or adaptive to various viewport sizes. I know native apps are likely faster and use the full capabilities of he device, but the advantages of web apps are too many. Also, web app failing to inspire joy is a indictment of developers who don't care, not of the medium itself.
- anon2549 2y agoMe too. Web-based applications are a compromise that I dislike a lot.
- bongodongobob 2y agoFor a user, I get it. As someone who manages 1000 users... web apps are amazing.
- arccy 2y agothe lack of proper tabs / multi instance support for many desktop apps makes me hate them. the possible quality range of a desktop app is much bigger than that of a web app, and given normal distribution of developer skill levels, i'd take a web app over a native app.