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Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

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Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#311

Post by ninjakeyboard »

jcelerier wrote: post #281
jrockway wrote: post #221

Native desktop apps are great. The reason that people don't write them is because users aren't on "the desktop". "The desktop" is split between OS X and Windows, and your Windows-app-compiled-for-Mac is going to annoy Mac users and your Mac-app-compiled-for-Windows is going to annoy Windows users. Then you realize that most users of computing devices actually just use their phone for everything, and your desktop app…

> Meanwhile, your web app may not be as good as native apps, but at least you don't have to write it 6 times. I must be living in a parallel world because I use a ton of desktop apps that aren't "written 6 times" - and write a few, including a music & other things sequencer ( https://ossia.io ). Just amongst the ones running on my desktop right now, Strawberry (Qt), Firefox (their own toolkit), QtCreator (Qt), Telegr…

I still can't believe bitwig is java. I'm a bitwig user. It even runs on linux.

Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#312

Post by p_l »

CharlesW wrote: post #249
brachi wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find it that crazy, if properly compiled with web assembly. The thing is that Blender's UI is all synchronous python, so, yeah, that and the addons system would be to need rewritten. Python in the browser is a no-go performance-wise, of course.

> Python in the browser is a no-go performance-wise, of course. "Running the Python interpreter inside a JavaScript virtual machine adds a performance penalty, but that penalty turns out to be surprisingly small — in our benchmarks, around 1x-12x slower than native on Firefox and 1x-16x slower on Chrome. Experience shows that this is very usable for interactive exploration."[1][2] [1] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/0…

So, an already slow language made slower?

No thanks.

Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#313

Post by AsyncAwait »

avmich wrote: post #310
jcelerier wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile, your web app may not be as good as native apps, but at least you don't have to write it 6 times. I must be living in a parallel world because I use a ton of desktop apps that aren't "written 6 times" - and write a few, including a music & other things sequencer ( https://ossia.io ). Just amongst the ones running on my desktop right now, Strawberry (Qt), Firefox (their own toolkit), QtCreator (Qt), Telegr…

Do you count Qt apps as native, but not count web apps as native? Why?

Qt may not 'look' native, but it has native performance, whereas Electron really doesn't.

Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#314

Post by ninjakeyboard »

Groxx wrote: post #309
api wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't suck, but try Jetbrains IDEs. C++ and other "not JS" language support is vastly superior including refactoring that actually works.

I keep periodically re-trying VSCode, but holy cow. It's a massive step down from a Jetbrains IDE, in every single language I've dev'd in. Jetbrains stuff works , VSCode mostly handles the basics if it's possible to configure it correctly . Which is quite the achievement, and it's a very reasonable option and far better than much that came before it. But it's not where I want to spend my time if I can avoid it.

You're working with statically typed compiled languages tho. Once you try using a dynamic language you realize another editor is enough IMO. I use emacs for anything dynamically typed (including compiled languages like elixir) and intellij for scala/java.

Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#316

Post by peteforde »

umvi wrote: post #220
dmitrybrant wrote: post #217

I specialize in data recovery / digital forensics tools, which require very low-level disk access to be able to read physical media at the block level. I doubt there will ever be an HTML5 standard for low-level disk access. But aside from my particular specialty, I also prefer any other software I use to be fully native. I'm surprised that's such a controversial thing to ask for these days. All I ask is so precious l…

I remember hanging out in /r/Unity3d and some newbie posted a download for their completed game. It was super basic - just a game where you move a cube around a grid, but the size of the game was insane, like half a gig. The dev who posted it seemed perplexed when people told him the game was 100x bigger than it should be.

I hope that you did the kind thing and showed them how to adjust what gets compiled into their package, depending on whether they are targeting a development or production build.

Nothing worse than people who mock beginners showing their first work. We were all there, once.

Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#317

Post by p_l »

pkalinowski wrote: post #206
dialamac wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a fair society it should be taxed as an externality. There is a real environmental cost associated with software bloat.

People pay with electricity, uncomfortable temperature and fan noise, wasting time working on slow apps. Apparently, they trade off still worth it, as many electron apps are popular despite these issues. Many times there is electron app or nothing.

Your last sentence hits the nail - many users don't have a choice in selecting the application, and due to industry fads can't expect to have a better option.

I can make a great chat system that uses fast native client, but it won't change the fact that Corporation A paid for a slack license and won't switch to mine.

Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#318

Post by Groxx »

karatestomp wrote: post #210
dx87 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, the new Steam library being a bloated web app is what forced me to install more RAM. I normally don't close out of applications when I'm not using them, so I was always hovering around ~6-7 of my 8 gigs of RAM in use. Then they update the library to the new bloated version, and my computer starts freezing because the library memory footprint is so much larger that my computer was having to use over a gig of swap…

I have a rig powerful enough to run a lot of last-gen games at 4K with high quality settings, and a lot of current-gen ones at mid to high settings and 1080p. The fucking redesigned Steam library lags, none of the animations (why does it need animations?!) are even close to smooth, and there's massive delay on every input. I've never once encountered a move toward webtech, or toward heavier and "appier" JS use in som…

And somehow it's still dramatically better than the Epic Games launcher.

I don't know what these companies are doing. Clearly they're not paying attention though. This is not merely low-hanging fruit that's going ignored, it's watermelons.

Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#319

Post by thrower123 »

jrockway wrote: post #221

Native desktop apps are great. The reason that people don't write them is because users aren't on "the desktop". "The desktop" is split between OS X and Windows, and your Windows-app-compiled-for-Mac is going to annoy Mac users and your Mac-app-compiled-for-Windows is going to annoy Windows users. Then you realize that most users of computing devices actually just use their phone for everything, and your desktop app…

Targeting Windows alone gets you 90% of the desktop market. 95% if you make it run reasonably in Wine. This argument is often used, but it's an excuse.

Anything that you need to run on a desktop can't be used effectively on a touch screen anyway, so phones and tablets don't really count for serious software. (Writing this comment is stretching the bounds of what I can reasonably do on an IPhone).

Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#320

Post by Groxx »

ninjakeyboard wrote: post #314
Groxx wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep periodically re-trying VSCode, but holy cow. It's a massive step down from a Jetbrains IDE, in every single language I've dev'd in. Jetbrains stuff works , VSCode mostly handles the basics if it's possible to configure it correctly . Which is quite the achievement, and it's a very reasonable option and far better than much that came before it. But it's not where I want to spend my time if I can avoid it.

You're working with statically typed compiled languages tho. Once you try using a dynamic language you realize another editor is enough IMO. I use emacs for anything dynamically typed (including compiled languages like elixir) and intellij for scala/java.

It's miles better on Python and most javascript that I've touched (VSCode's ecosystem does tend to have more breadth, and if you're working on something that VSCode has plugins for but Intellij does not, yea - VSCode can be noticeably better for most purposes). Most commonly around stuff that requires better understanding of the structure of the language / project, like refactoring and accurately finding usages.

But yes, for many dynamic languages a fat IDE is less beneficial, especially for small-ish projects (anything where you can really "know" the whole system).

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