5 ms·

I get where your coming from, and agree with a lot of what you say. BUT, Fundamentally... >The web as an application delivery medium is a failed experiment, p

by apalmer 11y ago

I get where your coming from, and agree with a lot of what you say. BUT, Fundamentally... >The web as an application delivery medium is a failed experiment, patched up on all sides and held together with 40MB of polyfills on every page. Is just not a true statement. Or rather, the web sucks, but it is the only cross platform UI experiment that has 'worked' on any significant level.

ForHackernews 11y ago
> the only cross platform UI experiment that has 'worked' on any significant level. Users do not care about cross-platform compatibility, at all. They only care that it works on their platform. As developers, we should be cheering for a diversity of widely-popular, mutually-incompatible platforms because there will be more work for developers to port the iOS version to Android to Windows, etc. The only people who should be upset about cross-platform compatibility issues are budget-conscious managers and unfortunate OSS devs.
- ectoplasm 11y ago
  > Users do not care about cross-platform compatibility, at all. I've heard that some users have both a phone and a laptop.
  - pyre 11y ago
    No one has a laptop anymore. We're in the "post PC" era, haven't you heard?
- MacsHeadroom 11y ago
  >As developers, we should be cheering for a diversity of widely-popular, mutually-incompatible platforms because there will be more work for developers to port the iOS version to Android to Windows, etc. This is like saying "As construction workers we should be cheering for natural disasters, because there will be more work for construction workers to rebuild destroyed cities." Job security is great- but at what cost? I'd rather see developers making completely new things than wasting time porting from one native platform to another.
  - yellowapple 11y ago
    And honestly, whether as a construction worker or a programmer, I, too, would rather be building new things than rebuilding the same goddamn thing over and over again.
  - ForHackernews 11y ago
    What a hyperbolic analogy. No, porting to new platforms is not like recovering from a natural disaster, and rooting for competing platforms is not like cheering for the misery of a disaster. And for the record, doing a port well (as opposed to a hacky, broken one) frequently requires lots of creativity and technical ingenuity.
kuschku 11y ago
Well, Java has succeeded, too. Look at Minecraft.
- wvenable 11y ago
  Minecraft has no meaningful UI; the entire window is just an OpenGL canvas.
  - pikzen 11y ago
    The web has no meaningful UI. The entire window is just styled elements. UI is not always about respecting the OS's guidelines/theme. Firefox, for example pretty much ignores everything since their Australis UI update and it is fine.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    Look at Google Chrome. You can’t even use any <button> or <input> that looks natively in Chrome – it’s just as native as the old Swing styles.
    - tracker1 11y ago
      Given that every other version of applications/oses changes the definition of what "native" looks like... I don't know that it's a huge problem... Beyond that is the fact that Swing was fugly everywhere, and bootstrap looks decent everywhere.
      - kuschku 11y ago
        Well, JavaFX’ styles look beautiful everywhere, too. (And it even uses decent XML and JS for styling and interaction). I just argued against the parent poster, who said Java was different than browsers, because you could not make native UI. Which you actually can very easily.
- immibis 11y ago
  That was a fluke, and even Notch knows it.

by apalmer 11y ago

ForHackernews 11y ago

> the only cross platform UI experiment that has 'worked' on any significant level. Users do not care about cross-platform compatibility, at all. They only care that it works on their platform. As developers, we should be cheering for a diversity of widely-popular, mutually-incompatible platforms because there will be more work for developers to port the iOS version to Android to Windows, etc. The only people who should be upset about cross-platform compatibility issues are budget-conscious managers and unfortunate OSS devs.

ectoplasm 11y ago
> Users do not care about cross-platform compatibility, at all. I've heard that some users have both a phone and a laptop.
- pyre 11y ago
  No one has a laptop anymore. We're in the "post PC" era, haven't you heard?
MacsHeadroom 11y ago
>As developers, we should be cheering for a diversity of widely-popular, mutually-incompatible platforms because there will be more work for developers to port the iOS version to Android to Windows, etc. This is like saying "As construction workers we should be cheering for natural disasters, because there will be more work for construction workers to rebuild destroyed cities." Job security is great- but at what cost? I'd rather see developers making completely new things than wasting time porting from one native platform to another.
- yellowapple 11y ago
  And honestly, whether as a construction worker or a programmer, I, too, would rather be building new things than rebuilding the same goddamn thing over and over again.
- ForHackernews 11y ago
  What a hyperbolic analogy. No, porting to new platforms is not like recovering from a natural disaster, and rooting for competing platforms is not like cheering for the misery of a disaster. And for the record, doing a port well (as opposed to a hacky, broken one) frequently requires lots of creativity and technical ingenuity.

kuschku 11y ago

Well, Java has succeeded, too. Look at Minecraft.

wvenable 11y ago
Minecraft has no meaningful UI; the entire window is just an OpenGL canvas.
- pikzen 11y ago
  The web has no meaningful UI. The entire window is just styled elements. UI is not always about respecting the OS's guidelines/theme. Firefox, for example pretty much ignores everything since their Australis UI update and it is fine.
- kuschku 11y ago
  Look at Google Chrome. You can’t even use any <button> or <input> that looks natively in Chrome – it’s just as native as the old Swing styles.
  - tracker1 11y ago
    Given that every other version of applications/oses changes the definition of what "native" looks like... I don't know that it's a huge problem... Beyond that is the fact that Swing was fugly everywhere, and bootstrap looks decent everywhere.
    - kuschku 11y ago
      Well, JavaFX’ styles look beautiful everywhere, too. (And it even uses decent XML and JS for styling and interaction). I just argued against the parent poster, who said Java was different than browsers, because you could not make native UI. Which you actually can very easily.
immibis 11y ago
That was a fluke, and even Notch knows it.