7 ms·

Why a veteran web developer finally turned to OS-native apps

76 points by jonny_eh 13y ago

rayhano 13y ago
However the web is a great way to start/test user response to a product. For start-ups with minimal resources and wanting to build the way they know how (using web technologies), there are now great integrations with 'native' mobile features, like the camera and music controls. For a great example, check out the web version of the article's featured app http://player.FM http://player.FM
- mmahemoff 13y ago
  Yes, absolutely. The article's main purpose is to make the native argument, but there are still many benefits of the web approach, and fast iteration is one of them. And not just because of the store submission process (which only takes a few hours in Android's case anyway). HTML5 has such a rich set of resources, as well as great desktop browser environments, that it can be a super-fast way to get projects going. Thanks to Backbone, Angular, etc, and in the future Web Components, it's easier to scale the architecture too. Notice all of these benefits are centered around developer experience. User experience is the biggest gap right now.
  - hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
    > Notice all of these benefits are centered around developer experience. User experience is the biggest gap right now. From all the benefits of web technologies, "developer experience" is the worst one. Developing (good) UIs using web technologies is an exercise in masochism. It's forever piling hacks and finding new frameworks to bend a browser to do what you need (a broken model). Then, worry about cross-compatibility. Someone proficient in XCode is likely ten times more efficient and produces a more polished result with much less pain.
    - rimantas 13y ago
      Exactly. Most likely those pushing for "web tech everywhere" did not bother to check out that native platforms offer. On the other hand those doing native apps what do little more than display html in embedded webviews are not helping either.
    - pjmlp 13y ago
      I have been doing mostly web during the early dot com days (1999-2001), returning to it around 2008. With every project the conviction that the web cannot move away from the wild west development style grows on me.
  - rimantas 13y ago
    You know, I am also a "web developer turned into native" and what you say is very very strange. By using native components provided by SDK you can run circles around any webtech based approach. Yes deployment can be significantly delayed in some cases, but for prototyping id does not matter. Alas, "if the only tool you have is a hammer" folks keep searching for the reasons why web tech is better for apps. Sorry guys, it is not. It was created for the different purpose, how hard is that to get? Yes you can make a point if cross platform is concerned, but in reality doing cross platform is neither simple nor easy. And if you think that HTML5 has a rich set of resources, check out that SDK offer.
    - tsotha 13y ago
      >You know, I am also a "web developer turned into native" and what you say is very very strange. By using native components provided by SDK you can run circles around any webtech based approach. That's my experience too. Things are faster to prototype in a web application only if the UI isn't very rich.
peterhunt 13y ago
Discoverability and system integration are huge problems, sure, but Cordova mostly addresses these concerns. The reason everyone always cites for going native is "performance", but, tbh, it seems like most web projects don't pay attention to the same level of detail as native apps because the web is so much faster to prototype. I bet if devs spent the same amount of time working on perf and loading states on the web as they did on native, the performance argument would have much less impact.
- randomdata 13y ago
  > the web is so much faster to prototype. We tried testing that theory, having one team prototype the same app using web technologies and the other prototyping it using iOS native technologies. iOS appeared to be the faster of the two. The vast majority of the work was prototypeable in Storyboards directly, and only required, if I recall correctly, around 20 lines of code for supporting requirements to build out the prototype. I haven't found many tools for the web that can compete with that. Of course it depends on what you are trying to develop. If your application is document-centric, then it will be difficult to beat HTML. That is, after all, what it is designed for. But for an application-centric design, I'm not sure it is really all that fast as a prototyping platform – unless, I suppose, that is all you know. It does take time to ramp up familiarity with new platforms.
  - bennyg 13y ago
    Objective-C is so beautiful in those regards. So many things are abstracted and optimized for you already, especially compared to Android and their libraries. Rapid prototyping is insanely fast if you can handle yourself in Xcode and around Obj-C.
    - enraged_camel 13y ago
      Yep. And people still wonder why most developers prefer developing for iOS first...
    - jkn 13y ago
      You make me curious. Could you provide some examples of the benefits of Objective-C in this context? (and how it compares to Android and its libraries).
dirkdk 13y ago
One should be able to compile a web app into a downloadable package, with capabilities to run the app completely offline. Until that web will always be second best to fully native. Performance is getting close enough though.
- gizmo686 13y ago
  "wget -rkp" works quite well for this. It would be even easier if you are the developer and have proper access to the site's resources.
- ilaksh 13y ago
  Thats called HTML5 Cache Manifest. The issue is that HTML5 apps don't install and run the same way (not as convenient).
- lukifer 13y ago
  Cordova works excellently for adding offline use to web apps, until the day that such features are successfully baked into web standards and operating systems. "The ultimate purpose of PhoneGap is to cease to exist." http://phonegap.com/2012/05/09/phonegap-beliefs-goals-and-philosophy/ http://phonegap.com/2012/05/09/phonegap-beliefs-goals-and-ph...
joshbetz 13y ago
The idea that you have to be a "native person" or a "web person" is ridiculous. Let's just use the tools that make the most sense for the project at hand.
- mmahemoff 13y ago
  The idea that you have to be a "law person" or a "medicine person" is ridiculous. Let's just use the tools that make the most sense for the project at hand.
  - rimantas 13y ago
    Uhm what? If you are law person you deal with law, if you are medicine person you deal with diseases. How does this apply to the situation where you deal with apps, only done using different tools?
    - mmahemoff 13y ago
      It's all specialisation and one human mind can only do so many things. The web side alone is vast now. It's a common conversation in the web community about how a new developer is supposed to pick everything up. I agree if you're a company, you can't afford to turn your nose at one or the other. But there's few unicorns who can build excellent apps in all of web, Android, and iOS. And despite a lot of software mythology, I don't believe most programmers can just learn a platform in a few days, not to be seriously capable at it.
      - randomdata 13y ago
        I actually thought you were being serious in your previous post. Humans cannot specialize in everything, but we can do a lot more than just one thing.
        wallflower 13y ago
        In my experience, people who claim to do both iOS and Android development well vastly overestimate their abilities. At the highest levels, writing an iOS or Android app is like being a game developer and pushing the platform to its limits (in a non-hacky way). To attack the problem of smooth scrolling, ~60fps on a list (especially one doing async fetches and/or database and/or complex cell layouts) requires different experience and knowledge on each platform. To build a beautiful app (not an average app) on either platform, requires almost a craftsman-level touch and level of care. To attack the problem of data synchronization... don't go there (just use Parse)
RRRA 13y ago
So embrace and extends tactics of closed platforms attracts people not willing to wait for the standard process to work its way to the same results, slowing it down in the process and jeopardizing the future of the open web?
- protomyth 13y ago
  The web has been around for over two decades. In less than two decades since the Altair 8800, we were programming on NeXTSTEP / OpenStep, Mac OS, and Window 95. There is no current IDE for the web or web standard that can do what we did in 1995 much less 2013. That's why developers are using iOS / Android native apps. Open doesn't matter if I cannot ship what I want and get the user experience I want. It is actually easier to hit all the mobile platforms than do a web app of equivalent functionality. Add to that all the capabilities native apps have over web apps (hey look, sensors) and you get the desire. This doesn't even count the assurances graphic designers have going native. Perhaps, it really is time to look at something past the web for app development and let the [edit] web [edit] go back to displaying documents.
_k 13y ago
It all depends on what kind of app you're building. Lots of people are telling me most apps are crap and they say they use no more than 5 - 10 apps : Mail, Maps, Messages, Camera, Twitter, Music and the browser. If you're building a podcast app, then you should absolutely build a native app.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
paul9290 13y ago
We're currently making a HTML5 web app that works in Chrome and iOS Safari. It's an audio app (SpeakerBlast) where you sync the same audio across devices; used to amplify audio amongst friends or throughout your IP devices for gatherings, flash mobs & playing audio throughout your home! We feel it's easier for to tell your friends to go to this link to join in then, "Hey download this app so we can all play audio in sync." No doubt that the current market says native apps, but this will change within two to three years. Web technologies are catching up in regards to what can be achieved via Android (specifically Chrome) and Apple mobile web browsers.
- peterhunt 13y ago
  Absolutely. URLs are the #1 feature of the web that native apps are lacking. The second being metadata and search engine indexability of the content.
  - mmahemoff 13y ago
    It's not entirely true that native apps can't deal with URLs. On Android, they can handle them well with intents and on iOS, they can at least open URLs of a certain protocol. The main issue is that the receiving user probably doesn't have the actually app. That's the benefit of web presence from a sharing/virality perspective.
- mmahemoff 13y ago
  Yes, you can do some pretty cool cross-browser stuff even today. "Web technologies are catching up in regards to what can be achieved via Android (specifically Chrome) and Apple mobile web browsers." This is assuming native platforms stand still, and they aren't; the web's caught in their cross-fire. Whenever you think something is "done", it's rarely the case. (I know you didn't say that, but it's a related argument people sometimes use in favour of the web.) iOS and Android in a few years could be dealing with home automation, cars, wearables, etc., and while some developers today might say "oh but we just do mobile", in the future that might be like saying "oh we just do 7" tablets". The "catching up argument also assumes web standards are converging, and in the past two years, the increased pace of innovation has made some web technologies diverge. Such as the offline technologies I mentioned in the linked article.
ninetenel 13y ago
I'm a fan of the statement made at the end of this article .. which to me boils down to that A mobile web presence is very important and shouldn't be ignored but if you're going to distribute something as a native app it's silly to build it entirely in a WebView also it's wise to never forget that technology changes so fast neither of these current platforms will be the same in 2-3 years .. so really just pick something and go
ilaksh 13y ago
The primary advantage of a web platform for webby, desktop and mobile applications is to be able to write one set of code that works on all devices. It seems strange to me that so many young developers don't seem to comprehend why that is a big advantage. I want to code in CoffeeScript and use nice simple APIs. I'm sorry but Objective-C is outdated and overly complex. The only reason people accept and even learn to love it is because if you are an Apple person you have to. You have no choice in the matter. Its like people in North Korea have to love their Dear Father Leader or something. I'm sure the Android Java libraries are much better than before, but they are still based on what I consider to be a dated type of development. The framework APIs are inferior and constantly specifying types is unnecessary. To me CoffeeScript with Node.js modules are the state of the art in terms of language design, dependency management, and API design.
- chime 13y ago
  I've been programming for 20+ years and have coded in nearly everything from ASM, old school PASCAL, and FoxPro to Java, Lisp, VHDL, Erlang, OCaml. I can say without a doubt that coding in CS (with LESS, Bootstrap, Backbone/Underscore) is one of the best experiences I've had. While there are still numerous things to complain about in this environment, the best thing is that it makes me extremely productive in designing UI-driven apps. Currently I'm working on a project that is extremely heavy on the client-side and despite being the solo front-end coder, the four back-end folks can't keep up with my (RESET API) demands. Not that I am some rockstar 10x programmer - it's just that the current environment makes me the most productive I can be. With a few scripts and editor shortcuts, my workflow from code change to browser-refresh is near instantaneous.
- mmahemoff 13y ago
  Actually, I think the case for web gets even more compelling with Meteor, where you can really share components across both sides of the wire. As I alluded to at the end, the web case makes a lot of sense for companies with unique services who want to roll out across platforms. e.g. If you're a corporate insurance broker, you have a few hundred users who just want some conveniences from native apps, that's a good case for HTML5. Another example I saw recently is an agency making "viral" apps. Just one-time apps for short contests and so on, and they can do a great job with HTML5. Deep-level integration though needs native, whether you like Obj-C or not.
zenbowman 13y ago
The web is very good for some things - its primary role is that of a giant online encyplopedia that is constantly updated and transformed. It enables digital collaboration. This is in fact very close to Vannevar Bush's idea of the memex. But we are trying too hard to make it good at something that we already have a good solution for. People forget how much software runs natively, from medical devices, to airplane and missile control, to celestial navigation and radio astronomy. Theres no good reason to webify many of these areas. Ultimately its not the web vs native. The web is a way for me to write better native software, through the practice of digital collaboration. It makes possible a new way of thinking.
mwcampbell 13y ago
I understand that attempting to write once, run everywhere doesn't make for a good user experience. For the best experience, it will probably always be necessary to develop a different front-end for each platform. However, what does one do for logic that belongs on the user's 'device (i.e. client-side) and will be the same on all platforms? Especially considering that one of the targeted platforms may well be the Web. One solution is to use the Xamarin suite for native targets, and something like Script# or JSIL for the Web. Of course, Script# and JSIL can only support a subset of .NET functionality, e.g. no shared-memory threads and therefore no blocking APIs (unless one of these compilers can transform code into continuation-passing style). Another possible solution is Haxe, which can compile to JS, Java, and C++ among others. The trouble with both of these solution is that when working on the Web version of the app, one has to know both the Web stack and the other language. It seems to me that the best solution is to write all platform-independent client code in JavaScript, minimizing the use of browser APIs for that code (e.g. only XHR and setTimeout). Then, for the native mobile versions of the app, integrate a JS engine (note: not a web view), find or write stand-alone implementations of XHR and whatever other APIs one needs, then write the front-end in the native language for that platform. Any thoughts on this? For native mobile apps, are we stuck rewriting everything in ObjC and Java, and maybe also writing a JS version for the web?
- wrl 13y ago
  I'm of the mind that platform-independent code should be written in either C++ or C, then compiled into the platform application as a static library. This is how it's often done with desktop applications.
- chrisdevereux 13y ago
  In case you missed it, this made it onto the front page a while ago: http://www.steamclock.com/blog/2013/05/apple-objective-c-javascript-bridge/ http://www.steamclock.com/blog/2013/05/apple-objective-c-jav... So there are some signs that you might (eventually) get what you want. It will be interesting to see if anything related gets announced next week at WWDC.
aphelion 13y ago
For me, the big gap between native and web is in UI. Performance is a solvable issue with either Javascript-native bridges or just devices getting faster. Even ignoring the Android/iOS "look", I've yet to come across an HTML5-based framework that can be used to build a complicated user interface with the same usability as native development. Cordova's great for what it is, but it's still a tool designed to wrap web app in a thin native shell, not a framework designed from the ground up to create a strong mobile UI/UX
- gridmaths 13y ago
  You can build any UI with SVG [ so your app = svg + javascript ]
thekingshorses 13y ago
I wrote this HN mobile client in less than 3 weekends. it works on Android, iOS and wp8. Also works on all desktop browsers. It took less than 2 weekends, but new chrome on android is a big pain in the ass. Had to rewrite part of it to make it work on latest android chrome. http://hn.premii.com http://hn.premii.com Also, available on android app store. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.premii.hn https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.premii.hn It's not easy, but I think you can write very good mobile web app using HTML5 that works on all major platforms. Just don't use any frameworks/libraries. They are quite slow on mobile devices.
- AdamTReineke 13y ago
  I'm on Windows Phone 8 and that is beautiful, thank you! Very nice work. How are you getting the articles in your UI? Also, is there no meta tag to designate a WP8 tile image when pinned to the start screen?
  - thekingshorses 13y ago
    I have favicon, and tile for windows 8 and neither works for wp8. I googled it but couldn't find anything regarding wp8 website tile.
- _lex 13y ago
  I used it in my desktop (mac chrome) browser, and it's a better UI than the HN website itself - much less pain from context switching. The biggest issue for me is that it's really hard to read text - mainly because there's too much on the page, and the formatting makes it all unremarkable. Even the comment indentation is unremarkable, and easy to miss. Improve readability and make comments easier to access (perhaps inline them after the article text), and you've created something amazing.

76 points by jonny_eh 13y ago

However the web is a great way to start/test user response to a product. For start-ups with minimal resources and wanting to build the way they know how (using web technologies), there are now great integrations with 'native' mobile features, like the camera and music controls. For a great example, check out the web version of the article's featured app http://player.FM http://player.FM

mmahemoff 13y ago
Yes, absolutely. The article's main purpose is to make the native argument, but there are still many benefits of the web approach, and fast iteration is one of them. And not just because of the store submission process (which only takes a few hours in Android's case anyway). HTML5 has such a rich set of resources, as well as great desktop browser environments, that it can be a super-fast way to get projects going. Thanks to Backbone, Angular, etc, and in the future Web Components, it's easier to scale the architecture too. Notice all of these benefits are centered around developer experience. User experience is the biggest gap right now.
- hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
  > Notice all of these benefits are centered around developer experience. User experience is the biggest gap right now. From all the benefits of web technologies, "developer experience" is the worst one. Developing (good) UIs using web technologies is an exercise in masochism. It's forever piling hacks and finding new frameworks to bend a browser to do what you need (a broken model). Then, worry about cross-compatibility. Someone proficient in XCode is likely ten times more efficient and produces a more polished result with much less pain.
  - rimantas 13y ago
    Exactly. Most likely those pushing for "web tech everywhere" did not bother to check out that native platforms offer. On the other hand those doing native apps what do little more than display html in embedded webviews are not helping either.
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    I have been doing mostly web during the early dot com days (1999-2001), returning to it around 2008. With every project the conviction that the web cannot move away from the wild west development style grows on me.
- rimantas 13y ago
  You know, I am also a "web developer turned into native" and what you say is very very strange. By using native components provided by SDK you can run circles around any webtech based approach. Yes deployment can be significantly delayed in some cases, but for prototyping id does not matter. Alas, "if the only tool you have is a hammer" folks keep searching for the reasons why web tech is better for apps. Sorry guys, it is not. It was created for the different purpose, how hard is that to get? Yes you can make a point if cross platform is concerned, but in reality doing cross platform is neither simple nor easy. And if you think that HTML5 has a rich set of resources, check out that SDK offer.
  - tsotha 13y ago
    >You know, I am also a "web developer turned into native" and what you say is very very strange. By using native components provided by SDK you can run circles around any webtech based approach. That's my experience too. Things are faster to prototype in a web application only if the UI isn't very rich.

peterhunt 13y ago

Discoverability and system integration are huge problems, sure, but Cordova mostly addresses these concerns. The reason everyone always cites for going native is "performance", but, tbh, it seems like most web projects don't pay attention to the same level of detail as native apps because the web is so much faster to prototype. I bet if devs spent the same amount of time working on perf and loading states on the web as they did on native, the performance argument would have much less impact.

randomdata 13y ago
> the web is so much faster to prototype. We tried testing that theory, having one team prototype the same app using web technologies and the other prototyping it using iOS native technologies. iOS appeared to be the faster of the two. The vast majority of the work was prototypeable in Storyboards directly, and only required, if I recall correctly, around 20 lines of code for supporting requirements to build out the prototype. I haven't found many tools for the web that can compete with that. Of course it depends on what you are trying to develop. If your application is document-centric, then it will be difficult to beat HTML. That is, after all, what it is designed for. But for an application-centric design, I'm not sure it is really all that fast as a prototyping platform – unless, I suppose, that is all you know. It does take time to ramp up familiarity with new platforms.
- bennyg 13y ago
  Objective-C is so beautiful in those regards. So many things are abstracted and optimized for you already, especially compared to Android and their libraries. Rapid prototyping is insanely fast if you can handle yourself in Xcode and around Obj-C.
  - enraged_camel 13y ago
    Yep. And people still wonder why most developers prefer developing for iOS first...
  - jkn 13y ago
    You make me curious. Could you provide some examples of the benefits of Objective-C in this context? (and how it compares to Android and its libraries).

dirkdk 13y ago

One should be able to compile a web app into a downloadable package, with capabilities to run the app completely offline. Until that web will always be second best to fully native. Performance is getting close enough though.

gizmo686 13y ago
"wget -rkp" works quite well for this. It would be even easier if you are the developer and have proper access to the site's resources.
ilaksh 13y ago
Thats called HTML5 Cache Manifest. The issue is that HTML5 apps don't install and run the same way (not as convenient).
lukifer 13y ago
Cordova works excellently for adding offline use to web apps, until the day that such features are successfully baked into web standards and operating systems. "The ultimate purpose of PhoneGap is to cease to exist." http://phonegap.com/2012/05/09/phonegap-beliefs-goals-and-philosophy/ http://phonegap.com/2012/05/09/phonegap-beliefs-goals-and-ph...

joshbetz 13y ago

The idea that you have to be a "native person" or a "web person" is ridiculous. Let's just use the tools that make the most sense for the project at hand.

mmahemoff 13y ago
The idea that you have to be a "law person" or a "medicine person" is ridiculous. Let's just use the tools that make the most sense for the project at hand.
- rimantas 13y ago
  Uhm what? If you are law person you deal with law, if you are medicine person you deal with diseases. How does this apply to the situation where you deal with apps, only done using different tools?
  - mmahemoff 13y ago
    It's all specialisation and one human mind can only do so many things. The web side alone is vast now. It's a common conversation in the web community about how a new developer is supposed to pick everything up. I agree if you're a company, you can't afford to turn your nose at one or the other. But there's few unicorns who can build excellent apps in all of web, Android, and iOS. And despite a lot of software mythology, I don't believe most programmers can just learn a platform in a few days, not to be seriously capable at it.
    - randomdata 13y ago
      I actually thought you were being serious in your previous post. Humans cannot specialize in everything, but we can do a lot more than just one thing.
      - wallflower 13y ago
        In my experience, people who claim to do both iOS and Android development well vastly overestimate their abilities. At the highest levels, writing an iOS or Android app is like being a game developer and pushing the platform to its limits (in a non-hacky way). To attack the problem of smooth scrolling, ~60fps on a list (especially one doing async fetches and/or database and/or complex cell layouts) requires different experience and knowledge on each platform. To build a beautiful app (not an average app) on either platform, requires almost a craftsman-level touch and level of care. To attack the problem of data synchronization... don't go there (just use Parse)

RRRA 13y ago

So embrace and extends tactics of closed platforms attracts people not willing to wait for the standard process to work its way to the same results, slowing it down in the process and jeopardizing the future of the open web?

protomyth 13y ago
The web has been around for over two decades. In less than two decades since the Altair 8800, we were programming on NeXTSTEP / OpenStep, Mac OS, and Window 95. There is no current IDE for the web or web standard that can do what we did in 1995 much less 2013. That's why developers are using iOS / Android native apps. Open doesn't matter if I cannot ship what I want and get the user experience I want. It is actually easier to hit all the mobile platforms than do a web app of equivalent functionality. Add to that all the capabilities native apps have over web apps (hey look, sensors) and you get the desire. This doesn't even count the assurances graphic designers have going native. Perhaps, it really is time to look at something past the web for app development and let the [edit] web [edit] go back to displaying documents.

_k 13y ago

It all depends on what kind of app you're building. Lots of people are telling me most apps are crap and they say they use no more than 5 - 10 apps : Mail, Maps, Messages, Camera, Twitter, Music and the browser. If you're building a podcast app, then you should absolutely build a native app.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

paul9290 13y ago

We're currently making a HTML5 web app that works in Chrome and iOS Safari. It's an audio app (SpeakerBlast) where you sync the same audio across devices; used to amplify audio amongst friends or throughout your IP devices for gatherings, flash mobs & playing audio throughout your home! We feel it's easier for to tell your friends to go to this link to join in then, "Hey download this app so we can all play audio in sync." No doubt that the current market says native apps, but this will change within two to three years. Web technologies are catching up in regards to what can be achieved via Android (specifically Chrome) and Apple mobile web browsers.

peterhunt 13y ago
Absolutely. URLs are the #1 feature of the web that native apps are lacking. The second being metadata and search engine indexability of the content.
- mmahemoff 13y ago
  It's not entirely true that native apps can't deal with URLs. On Android, they can handle them well with intents and on iOS, they can at least open URLs of a certain protocol. The main issue is that the receiving user probably doesn't have the actually app. That's the benefit of web presence from a sharing/virality perspective.
mmahemoff 13y ago
Yes, you can do some pretty cool cross-browser stuff even today. "Web technologies are catching up in regards to what can be achieved via Android (specifically Chrome) and Apple mobile web browsers." This is assuming native platforms stand still, and they aren't; the web's caught in their cross-fire. Whenever you think something is "done", it's rarely the case. (I know you didn't say that, but it's a related argument people sometimes use in favour of the web.) iOS and Android in a few years could be dealing with home automation, cars, wearables, etc., and while some developers today might say "oh but we just do mobile", in the future that might be like saying "oh we just do 7" tablets". The "catching up argument also assumes web standards are converging, and in the past two years, the increased pace of innovation has made some web technologies diverge. Such as the offline technologies I mentioned in the linked article.

ninetenel 13y ago

I'm a fan of the statement made at the end of this article .. which to me boils down to that A mobile web presence is very important and shouldn't be ignored but if you're going to distribute something as a native app it's silly to build it entirely in a WebView also it's wise to never forget that technology changes so fast neither of these current platforms will be the same in 2-3 years .. so really just pick something and go

ilaksh 13y ago

The primary advantage of a web platform for webby, desktop and mobile applications is to be able to write one set of code that works on all devices. It seems strange to me that so many young developers don't seem to comprehend why that is a big advantage. I want to code in CoffeeScript and use nice simple APIs. I'm sorry but Objective-C is outdated and overly complex. The only reason people accept and even learn to love it is because if you are an Apple person you have to. You have no choice in the matter. Its like people in North Korea have to love their Dear Father Leader or something. I'm sure the Android Java libraries are much better than before, but they are still based on what I consider to be a dated type of development. The framework APIs are inferior and constantly specifying types is unnecessary. To me CoffeeScript with Node.js modules are the state of the art in terms of language design, dependency management, and API design.

chime 13y ago
I've been programming for 20+ years and have coded in nearly everything from ASM, old school PASCAL, and FoxPro to Java, Lisp, VHDL, Erlang, OCaml. I can say without a doubt that coding in CS (with LESS, Bootstrap, Backbone/Underscore) is one of the best experiences I've had. While there are still numerous things to complain about in this environment, the best thing is that it makes me extremely productive in designing UI-driven apps. Currently I'm working on a project that is extremely heavy on the client-side and despite being the solo front-end coder, the four back-end folks can't keep up with my (RESET API) demands. Not that I am some rockstar 10x programmer - it's just that the current environment makes me the most productive I can be. With a few scripts and editor shortcuts, my workflow from code change to browser-refresh is near instantaneous.
mmahemoff 13y ago
Actually, I think the case for web gets even more compelling with Meteor, where you can really share components across both sides of the wire. As I alluded to at the end, the web case makes a lot of sense for companies with unique services who want to roll out across platforms. e.g. If you're a corporate insurance broker, you have a few hundred users who just want some conveniences from native apps, that's a good case for HTML5. Another example I saw recently is an agency making "viral" apps. Just one-time apps for short contests and so on, and they can do a great job with HTML5. Deep-level integration though needs native, whether you like Obj-C or not.

zenbowman 13y ago

The web is very good for some things - its primary role is that of a giant online encyplopedia that is constantly updated and transformed. It enables digital collaboration. This is in fact very close to Vannevar Bush's idea of the memex. But we are trying too hard to make it good at something that we already have a good solution for. People forget how much software runs natively, from medical devices, to airplane and missile control, to celestial navigation and radio astronomy. Theres no good reason to webify many of these areas. Ultimately its not the web vs native. The web is a way for me to write better native software, through the practice of digital collaboration. It makes possible a new way of thinking.

mwcampbell 13y ago

I understand that attempting to write once, run everywhere doesn't make for a good user experience. For the best experience, it will probably always be necessary to develop a different front-end for each platform. However, what does one do for logic that belongs on the user's 'device (i.e. client-side) and will be the same on all platforms? Especially considering that one of the targeted platforms may well be the Web. One solution is to use the Xamarin suite for native targets, and something like Script# or JSIL for the Web. Of course, Script# and JSIL can only support a subset of .NET functionality, e.g. no shared-memory threads and therefore no blocking APIs (unless one of these compilers can transform code into continuation-passing style). Another possible solution is Haxe, which can compile to JS, Java, and C++ among others. The trouble with both of these solution is that when working on the Web version of the app, one has to know both the Web stack and the other language. It seems to me that the best solution is to write all platform-independent client code in JavaScript, minimizing the use of browser APIs for that code (e.g. only XHR and setTimeout). Then, for the native mobile versions of the app, integrate a JS engine (note: not a web view), find or write stand-alone implementations of XHR and whatever other APIs one needs, then write the front-end in the native language for that platform. Any thoughts on this? For native mobile apps, are we stuck rewriting everything in ObjC and Java, and maybe also writing a JS version for the web?

wrl 13y ago
I'm of the mind that platform-independent code should be written in either C++ or C, then compiled into the platform application as a static library. This is how it's often done with desktop applications.
chrisdevereux 13y ago
In case you missed it, this made it onto the front page a while ago: http://www.steamclock.com/blog/2013/05/apple-objective-c-javascript-bridge/ http://www.steamclock.com/blog/2013/05/apple-objective-c-jav... So there are some signs that you might (eventually) get what you want. It will be interesting to see if anything related gets announced next week at WWDC.

aphelion 13y ago

For me, the big gap between native and web is in UI. Performance is a solvable issue with either Javascript-native bridges or just devices getting faster. Even ignoring the Android/iOS "look", I've yet to come across an HTML5-based framework that can be used to build a complicated user interface with the same usability as native development. Cordova's great for what it is, but it's still a tool designed to wrap web app in a thin native shell, not a framework designed from the ground up to create a strong mobile UI/UX

gridmaths 13y ago
You can build any UI with SVG [ so your app = svg + javascript ]

thekingshorses 13y ago

I wrote this HN mobile client in less than 3 weekends. it works on Android, iOS and wp8. Also works on all desktop browsers. It took less than 2 weekends, but new chrome on android is a big pain in the ass. Had to rewrite part of it to make it work on latest android chrome. http://hn.premii.com http://hn.premii.com Also, available on android app store. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.premii.hn https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.premii.hn It's not easy, but I think you can write very good mobile web app using HTML5 that works on all major platforms. Just don't use any frameworks/libraries. They are quite slow on mobile devices.

AdamTReineke 13y ago
I'm on Windows Phone 8 and that is beautiful, thank you! Very nice work. How are you getting the articles in your UI? Also, is there no meta tag to designate a WP8 tile image when pinned to the start screen?
- thekingshorses 13y ago
  I have favicon, and tile for windows 8 and neither works for wp8. I googled it but couldn't find anything regarding wp8 website tile.
_lex 13y ago
I used it in my desktop (mac chrome) browser, and it's a better UI than the HN website itself - much less pain from context switching. The biggest issue for me is that it's really hard to read text - mainly because there's too much on the page, and the formatting makes it all unremarkable. Even the comment indentation is unremarkable, and easy to miss. Improve readability and make comments easier to access (perhaps inline them after the article text), and you've created something amazing.