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Will we always labor under this "it must be a web app" burden? I've written "GUI" software in css/html/javascript, Jetpack Compose, UIKit, Smalltalk, XWindows,

Will we always labor under this "it must be a web app" burden? I've written "GUI" software in css/html/javascript, Jetpack Compose, UIKit, Smalltalk, XWindows, WPF, MFC. The web has got to be the worst of all of them when it comes to building UIs that aren't full of weird edge cases and jankiness. It's a frankenstein of committee momentum. You can do some fun/cool things with it, but it's just oh so I know that may be an unpopular position (a younger developer recently told me so), because LOTS of people have invested heavily in skills to try and make this work, but I just don't see it. The single appeal a web app has its potential for cross platform deployment. It has not been my experience that having to write apps in 3 different computer language styles spread across at least two maybe connected CPUs will end up a better overall end user experience than a purpose built single platform executable that leverages the user's host operating system. YMMV

Aurornis 1y ago
> Will we always labor under this "it must be a web app" burden? Figma (the base app) actually works great and has for many years. It does not have these problems. Figma Slides is a new feature they’re pushing. It has these issues because it appears to be unfinished and not well tested. Everyone reaching to blame cross-platform or web technologies is missing the point. Figma can and does ship great apps within this framework. There’s something strange going on within Figma where the slides product is being neglected.
- travisgriggs 1y ago
  Interesting. I'm in a current development arc that includes some designers that LOVE Figma. They want me to love Figma. It's not bad, I don't hate it. But I don't love it. Oh... and I use the desktop app version. Because it works better.
anon7000 1y ago
We’ll labor under web until users are so unhappy with it that the business financial benefit of “write once, run everywhere with a team of less specialized, cheaper engineers” is negated by users leaving the platform. But since users broadly don’t care, and it’s a lot cheaper & faster, we’ll keep using web. So it’s just so accessible, that more people will try to use your project in the web as opposed to an app. End user experience is not what drives technical decisions in tech; money does. Anyways, it’s not like apps are dead simple to get right either. It’s still very easy for a team to write a shitty native app. And if you’re writing N apps for N operating systems, without N teams of experienced developers, odds are at least one of those apps will suck. Similarly, a team of experts on the web, given the time & incentive to care about performance, can make incredibly performant web apps. (Not caring about performance and optimizing the experience is a problem with what companies prioritize financially, not with what developers care about.)
zdragnar 1y ago
> It has not been my experience that having to write apps in 3 different computer language styles spread across at least two maybe connected CPUs will end up a better overall end user experience Invert this for developers, and now you know why people do it. There simply are very few better cross-platform UI tools and compliers. If you want the same fidelity everywhere, you pretty much have to rewrite it everywhere.
mardifoufs 1y ago
Mhmm not sure I'd agree that webapps have more edge cases than say, Jetpack compose (especially the PC version), or QML. Plus a huge advantage of web based stuff is that the edge cases are usually a lot more documented. I say this as someone who has mostly used Qt+QML for some newer projects and came to regret it, in huge part due to a big lack of components, libraries etc. And very little documentation, or examples, outside of the official documentation. Also, at my day job, they used to make all of their UI using Windows GUI frameworks (we sell very expensive testing devices mostly for industrial customers). It led to a big problem down the line, since we were stuck with using Windows, meaning that when we started shipping even smaller devices, it became a huge mess. In fact most of the devs are very glad that we moved to web based UIs since we don't have to rewrite everything for every single platform. I know, it's a tired point that everyone repeats but it is very very helpful especially for smaller dev teams. And even for our bigger teams, it made it easier to get a consistent and tested front end. Sure, you can be multiplatform without using web, but you still end up with tons of edge cases and you still have to write a web version if you want your app to be accessible on the web too. Figma wouldn't have been successful if it wasn't so easily accessible-through the web.

Aurornis 1y ago

> Will we always labor under this "it must be a web app" burden? Figma (the base app) actually works great and has for many years. It does not have these problems. Figma Slides is a new feature they’re pushing. It has these issues because it appears to be unfinished and not well tested. Everyone reaching to blame cross-platform or web technologies is missing the point. Figma can and does ship great apps within this framework. There’s something strange going on within Figma where the slides product is being neglected.

travisgriggs 1y ago
Interesting. I'm in a current development arc that includes some designers that LOVE Figma. They want me to love Figma. It's not bad, I don't hate it. But I don't love it. Oh... and I use the desktop app version. Because it works better.

anon7000 1y ago

We’ll labor under web until users are so unhappy with it that the business financial benefit of “write once, run everywhere with a team of less specialized, cheaper engineers” is negated by users leaving the platform. But since users broadly don’t care, and it’s a lot cheaper & faster, we’ll keep using web. So it’s just so accessible, that more people will try to use your project in the web as opposed to an app. End user experience is not what drives technical decisions in tech; money does. Anyways, it’s not like apps are dead simple to get right either. It’s still very easy for a team to write a shitty native app. And if you’re writing N apps for N operating systems, without N teams of experienced developers, odds are at least one of those apps will suck. Similarly, a team of experts on the web, given the time & incentive to care about performance, can make incredibly performant web apps. (Not caring about performance and optimizing the experience is a problem with what companies prioritize financially, not with what developers care about.)

zdragnar 1y ago

> It has not been my experience that having to write apps in 3 different computer language styles spread across at least two maybe connected CPUs will end up a better overall end user experience Invert this for developers, and now you know why people do it. There simply are very few better cross-platform UI tools and compliers. If you want the same fidelity everywhere, you pretty much have to rewrite it everywhere.

mardifoufs 1y ago

Mhmm not sure I'd agree that webapps have more edge cases than say, Jetpack compose (especially the PC version), or QML. Plus a huge advantage of web based stuff is that the edge cases are usually a lot more documented. I say this as someone who has mostly used Qt+QML for some newer projects and came to regret it, in huge part due to a big lack of components, libraries etc. And very little documentation, or examples, outside of the official documentation. Also, at my day job, they used to make all of their UI using Windows GUI frameworks (we sell very expensive testing devices mostly for industrial customers). It led to a big problem down the line, since we were stuck with using Windows, meaning that when we started shipping even smaller devices, it became a huge mess. In fact most of the devs are very glad that we moved to web based UIs since we don't have to rewrite everything for every single platform. I know, it's a tired point that everyone repeats but it is very very helpful especially for smaller dev teams. And even for our bigger teams, it made it easier to get a consistent and tested front end. Sure, you can be multiplatform without using web, but you still end up with tons of edge cases and you still have to write a web version if you want your app to be accessible on the web too. Figma wouldn't have been successful if it wasn't so easily accessible-through the web.