3 ms·

You're absolutely right that the issue is the coordination cost. It's not about the number of resources but just the fact that you need those resources to coord

You're absolutely right that the issue is the coordination cost. It's not about the number of resources but just the fact that you need those resources to coordinate, slowing everything down. Not a problem in waterfall, since you can set the targets beforehand and just have the teams work in parallel. In an "Agile" setting though (not the manifesto version, the current practice version)? It's a huge mess. So then the question becomes, is this coordination cost worth it and how much are we willing to "spend". It seems the cost is worth it for Android and iOS since the native app experience on those platforms is so much better. The macOS app is just a tweaked iOS app so it's also easy to justify. But what about Windows? The Microsoft provided APIs are a disaster that keeps getting rewritten every half decade, and even Microsoft barely uses them. Windows users don't have a "feel" for a native app the way macOS and mobile users do, since there hasn't been a "native app experience" on Windows for a very long time. Just look at the 2 context menus on Windows Explorer, they can't even get the sizes and colors between them right. Meta would have been better off doing like Telegram and just using Qt.

thw_9a83c 11mo ago
> Meta would have been better off doing like Telegram and just using Qt. Qt would certainly be the better choice. However, since Meta already has a web version of the WhatsApp client, the WebView2 path was an easy and inexpensive option. After all, MS itself paved the way with Teams, Visual Studio Code, and Outlook.
- TiredOfLife 11mo ago
  VS Code is Electron not WebView2
  - wkat4242 11mo ago
    Same thing though. Electron is chrome. Webview2 is edge which is really just chrome with a bit of UI sauce over it.
    - Rapzid 11mo ago
      That's not the same thing though.
RossBencina 11mo ago
> The Microsoft provided APIs are a disaster that keeps getting rewritten every half decade, and even Microsoft barely uses them. What are you talking about? The Windows APIs have been stable for at least 20 years.
- TiredOfLife 11mo ago
  They are talking about UI. Winforms (abandoned), WPF (abandoned), UWP (abandoned), MAUI. Windows itself was always using their own custom stuff and not any of those. The closest thing to an established framework in Windows is react native that is sprinkled here and there. And QT that OneDrive uses
  - tcfhgj 11mo ago
    you can still use all of them to write windows apps, even though they might not receive the latest & greatest shiny features
- mdasen 11mo ago
  I think few people are using the Win32 APIs directly and Microsoft has been shifting their stuff a bunch. WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation ) had been the recommendation a while back, but then Microsoft started pushing UWP (Universal Windows Platform). Both of those have been succeeded by WinUI 3. UWP has been deprecated. WPF is alive, but more in a maintenance mode while WinUI 3 takes over the future. Oh, and WinForms were popular, but now not. There's definitely been a lot of shifting and I think that's caused a lot of annoyance in the developer community - especially as Microsoft ships JS/WebView2 based apps instead of dogfooding their own stuff. If you hang out in the dotnet subreddit enough, you'll definitely see Windows devs annoyed at Microsoft's mercurial attitude toward their desktop frameworks and seeming lack of direction/interest - as their big new things are JS/WebView2.
  - tcfhgj 11mo ago
    afaik UWP still works though, and switching to WinUI3 is mostly just updating the namespace of your windows components
jack_tripper 11mo ago
> Microsoft provided APIs are a disaster that keeps getting rewritten every half decade What a wrong and misleading statement. Not they aren't. Otherwise Winamp 2.95 from 2003 wouldn't flawlessly work on my Windows 11 install 23 years later. Same with my Unreal Tournament 99 installation that I just copied over via a CD left from my Windows 98 PC. As long as you haven't used any undocumented APIs or made your app hack its way into the OS via hooks like some games did back then for performance optimizations or some anti-piracy SW did, then most Windows apps from over 20+ years ago will still work today and it's also why WINE works so well to get Windows app working on Linux, is precisely because Microsoft HASN'T changed the APIs.
- pjc50 11mo ago
  They're half-right. Microsoft do keep supporting the OS APIs, but it's the UI frameworks that get half-assed and abandoned. Which is why so many people recommend Avalonia these days. Microsoft don't even reliably use their own frameworks - go through Win11 and see how many Windows Forms dialogs are still present in things like settings and Explorer. (WinUI is also a hybrid: since it uses the DirectX APIs rather than the old GDI model, most of it is in a userspace package that's delivered as an .appx)
- sirwhinesalot 11mo ago
  It's not wrong nor misleading at all. Win32 doesn't even support dark mode properly because it's effectively "deprecated" like all the others in the graveyard. Who cares if they keep working if the only way to get dark mode is to custom render the whole UI yourself? Might as well do something non-native at that point. Microsoft does not provide a serious UI library for applications to use. It provides 10 half broken and deprecated ones.
  - jack_tripper 11mo ago
    >It's not wrong nor misleading at all. Yeah it totally is and I explained why. >Who cares if they keep working A lot of people. >if the only way to get dark mode is to custom render the whole UI yourself Most the apps I use support dark mode: Chrome, FF, Notepad++, Jellyfin, Qbittorrent, SumatraPDF, Signal, Wiztree, WinSCP, and others I'm forgetting. Seems like it's not an impossible task for the developers. And on Github you can find FOSS apps[1] that have implemented light/dark mode switching for their UI, so you can just copy what they're doing if you don't know where to start. [1] https://github.com/AutoDarkMode/Windows-Auto-Night-Mode https://github.com/AutoDarkMode/Windows-Auto-Night-Mode

thw_9a83c 11mo ago

> Meta would have been better off doing like Telegram and just using Qt. Qt would certainly be the better choice. However, since Meta already has a web version of the WhatsApp client, the WebView2 path was an easy and inexpensive option. After all, MS itself paved the way with Teams, Visual Studio Code, and Outlook.

TiredOfLife 11mo ago
VS Code is Electron not WebView2
- wkat4242 11mo ago
  Same thing though. Electron is chrome. Webview2 is edge which is really just chrome with a bit of UI sauce over it.
  - Rapzid 11mo ago
    That's not the same thing though.

RossBencina 11mo ago

> The Microsoft provided APIs are a disaster that keeps getting rewritten every half decade, and even Microsoft barely uses them. What are you talking about? The Windows APIs have been stable for at least 20 years.

TiredOfLife 11mo ago
They are talking about UI. Winforms (abandoned), WPF (abandoned), UWP (abandoned), MAUI. Windows itself was always using their own custom stuff and not any of those. The closest thing to an established framework in Windows is react native that is sprinkled here and there. And QT that OneDrive uses
- tcfhgj 11mo ago
  you can still use all of them to write windows apps, even though they might not receive the latest & greatest shiny features
mdasen 11mo ago
I think few people are using the Win32 APIs directly and Microsoft has been shifting their stuff a bunch. WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation ) had been the recommendation a while back, but then Microsoft started pushing UWP (Universal Windows Platform). Both of those have been succeeded by WinUI 3. UWP has been deprecated. WPF is alive, but more in a maintenance mode while WinUI 3 takes over the future. Oh, and WinForms were popular, but now not. There's definitely been a lot of shifting and I think that's caused a lot of annoyance in the developer community - especially as Microsoft ships JS/WebView2 based apps instead of dogfooding their own stuff. If you hang out in the dotnet subreddit enough, you'll definitely see Windows devs annoyed at Microsoft's mercurial attitude toward their desktop frameworks and seeming lack of direction/interest - as their big new things are JS/WebView2.
- tcfhgj 11mo ago
  afaik UWP still works though, and switching to WinUI3 is mostly just updating the namespace of your windows components

jack_tripper 11mo ago

> Microsoft provided APIs are a disaster that keeps getting rewritten every half decade What a wrong and misleading statement. Not they aren't. Otherwise Winamp 2.95 from 2003 wouldn't flawlessly work on my Windows 11 install 23 years later. Same with my Unreal Tournament 99 installation that I just copied over via a CD left from my Windows 98 PC. As long as you haven't used any undocumented APIs or made your app hack its way into the OS via hooks like some games did back then for performance optimizations or some anti-piracy SW did, then most Windows apps from over 20+ years ago will still work today and it's also why WINE works so well to get Windows app working on Linux, is precisely because Microsoft HASN'T changed the APIs.

pjc50 11mo ago
They're half-right. Microsoft do keep supporting the OS APIs, but it's the UI frameworks that get half-assed and abandoned. Which is why so many people recommend Avalonia these days. Microsoft don't even reliably use their own frameworks - go through Win11 and see how many Windows Forms dialogs are still present in things like settings and Explorer. (WinUI is also a hybrid: since it uses the DirectX APIs rather than the old GDI model, most of it is in a userspace package that's delivered as an .appx)
sirwhinesalot 11mo ago
It's not wrong nor misleading at all. Win32 doesn't even support dark mode properly because it's effectively "deprecated" like all the others in the graveyard. Who cares if they keep working if the only way to get dark mode is to custom render the whole UI yourself? Might as well do something non-native at that point. Microsoft does not provide a serious UI library for applications to use. It provides 10 half broken and deprecated ones.
- jack_tripper 11mo ago
  >It's not wrong nor misleading at all. Yeah it totally is and I explained why. >Who cares if they keep working A lot of people. >if the only way to get dark mode is to custom render the whole UI yourself Most the apps I use support dark mode: Chrome, FF, Notepad++, Jellyfin, Qbittorrent, SumatraPDF, Signal, Wiztree, WinSCP, and others I'm forgetting. Seems like it's not an impossible task for the developers. And on Github you can find FOSS apps[1] that have implemented light/dark mode switching for their UI, so you can just copy what they're doing if you don't know where to start. [1] https://github.com/AutoDarkMode/Windows-Auto-Night-Mode https://github.com/AutoDarkMode/Windows-Auto-Night-Mode