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What frustrates me about these kind of articles is that they ignore things other than technical perfection. Yes, the web platform isn't the ideal work environme

What frustrates me about these kind of articles is that they ignore things other than technical perfection. Yes, the web platform isn't the ideal work environment, but at least its got mass adoption and has some kind of standard. Its much easier to program a web front end than it is to program and distribute a gui application using qt. Yes, the web development area needs improvement. JS, CSS, etc. aren't perfect, but improvements are being made, the technology is being pushed forward with every new version number.

harigov 11y ago
I disagree when you say that its easier to program web front-end than Qt/GUI application. Although improvements are being made, they are mostly patches rather than rethinking the design given the current usage. I do agree with the author in that there are many broken tools and languages.
- protomyth 11y ago
  I look at web development tools this way, It is still easier to write an application on NeXTSTEP (edit: machine web was developed on) with its tools than a modern web application. HTML is ok for documents, but I hoping something better comes along in the next 10 or so years.
- bryanlarsen 11y ago
  It may be easier to program a Qt application, but it's not easier to program and distribute a Qt application.
  - meddlepal 11y ago
    Distribution seems like an easy problem to solve... App stores or software repositories. Am I missing something here? In 2015 all the major platforms have or the other other.
    - coldtea 11y ago
      Exactly. For every web startup or established player, there's an equivalent native app running on a mobile phone, or also on the Desktop (from Facebook, and Twitter to Skype etc).
      - copperx 11y ago
        What is the native equivalent to Facebook?
        coldtea 11y ago
        The Facebook mobile app. (Famously it was original done as a web-widget and Zuckenburg admitted this was a mistake and turned it to fully native UI).
        bryanlarsen 11y ago
        "fully native" just means that it has multiple web views rather than one.
    - geofft 11y ago
      Turnaround for updates to a website is seconds, at most. Turnaround for updates to an third-party repository can be anywhere from weeks (Apple App Store) to years (Debian, RHEL, Ubuntu LTS, etc.). If you care about those platforms and you care about iterative deployment, web apps are so much better in that regard than native apps. Of course, there are use cases where you don't care about those platforms or you don't care about iterative deployment. For, say, PuTTY, which releases roughly once every two years and primarily targets a single platform, these concerns don't apply and PuTTY in fact is a native app. But that's far from all use cases.
deleted 11y ago
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gbersac 11y ago
I found developping gui with qt far easier than with html/css. It took me few hours to understand layout concept of qt. I am not offently doing css/html, but after few years I still don't understand css layout. Things as trivial as centering a div is a nightmare. In qt it is easy. qt >>> html/css But javascript made event handling easier in web than in qt (which event handling is a little bit tricky).

harigov 11y ago

I disagree when you say that its easier to program web front-end than Qt/GUI application. Although improvements are being made, they are mostly patches rather than rethinking the design given the current usage. I do agree with the author in that there are many broken tools and languages.

protomyth 11y ago
I look at web development tools this way, It is still easier to write an application on NeXTSTEP (edit: machine web was developed on) with its tools than a modern web application. HTML is ok for documents, but I hoping something better comes along in the next 10 or so years.
bryanlarsen 11y ago
It may be easier to program a Qt application, but it's not easier to program and distribute a Qt application.
- meddlepal 11y ago
  Distribution seems like an easy problem to solve... App stores or software repositories. Am I missing something here? In 2015 all the major platforms have or the other other.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    Exactly. For every web startup or established player, there's an equivalent native app running on a mobile phone, or also on the Desktop (from Facebook, and Twitter to Skype etc).
    - copperx 11y ago
      What is the native equivalent to Facebook?
      - coldtea 11y ago
        The Facebook mobile app. (Famously it was original done as a web-widget and Zuckenburg admitted this was a mistake and turned it to fully native UI).
        bryanlarsen 11y ago
        "fully native" just means that it has multiple web views rather than one.
  - geofft 11y ago
    Turnaround for updates to a website is seconds, at most. Turnaround for updates to an third-party repository can be anywhere from weeks (Apple App Store) to years (Debian, RHEL, Ubuntu LTS, etc.). If you care about those platforms and you care about iterative deployment, web apps are so much better in that regard than native apps. Of course, there are use cases where you don't care about those platforms or you don't care about iterative deployment. For, say, PuTTY, which releases roughly once every two years and primarily targets a single platform, these concerns don't apply and PuTTY in fact is a native app. But that's far from all use cases.

deleted 11y ago

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gbersac 11y ago

I found developping gui with qt far easier than with html/css. It took me few hours to understand layout concept of qt. I am not offently doing css/html, but after few years I still don't understand css layout. Things as trivial as centering a div is a nightmare. In qt it is easy. qt >>> html/css But javascript made event handling easier in web than in qt (which event handling is a little bit tricky).