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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?

#401

Post by wolco »

madeofpalk wrote: post #376
AsyncAwait wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I would argue that the web platform is one of the most optimised and performant platforms for apps.

When you say web platform do you mean a browser? Using a browser is the mosted optimised and performant over installing an application on your desktop?

Curious what desktop do you run your browser under?

I would give you an example of a simple video split application. A web platform requires uploading, downloading and slow processing. A local app would be hours quicker as the data is local.

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

#402

Post by nimchimpsky »

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?

web apps are run using interpreted javascript in a vm. qt is compiled c++ machine code, that literally runs natively on the operating system.

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

#403

Post by biggestdecision »

dx87 wrote: post #93
SllX wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. If you have a CPU from 2012 onwards, 16GB of RAM and an SSD, that’s a respectable hardware setup. It might not be the fastest piece of kit on the planet, but I don’t see any reason why it couldn’t last another 3 to 5 years without feeling slow. Electron apps invariably make such kit feel slower than it actually is. You can get good performance out of even older hardware if you treat it well and load it with g…

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 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.

That sounds like your problem. And I refuse to believe that the new steam UI uses 2gb of memory.

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

#404

Post by userbinator »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #313
avmich wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The difference between "Qt native" and "native native" (e.g. Win32 or Cocoa) is still noticeable if you pay attention, although it's not quite as obvious as between Electron and the former.

(Likewise, applications using the JVM may also look very convincingly like native ones, but you will feel it as soon as you start interacting with them.)

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

#405

Post by gsich »

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.

VSCode is more editor then IDE.

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

#406

Post by wruza »

cosmotic wrote: post #371
theshetty wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many desktop apps these days seems to be built on Electron, a JS framework for building desktop-class apps. https://www.electronjs.org/

What is a desktop-class app?

One that can read and write files and directories among other things. (Not an electron fan, but web pages are still pages, not real apps.)

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

#407

Post by Avi-D-coder »

I wish I was not writing this, but no.

Outside of niche use cases you get two much with electron. Computers are so dam fast most users just don't care and those of us that do care use Linux anyway. If your app also runs nearly identically in a browser not just electron, on boring users is so much easier. I won't install an app just to try it, but I will use a website and reluctantly upgrade to electron.

A sand-boxed stripped down electron replacement as a system library, ala Deno for UI will replace electron in the next few years. Web-Native frameworks targeting WASM, WebGPU for responsive components and Dom for everything else will replace JavaScript, but the web will win.

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

#408

Post by brachi »

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…

The main point though, is that running Python in the browser it's an unnecessary abstraction because you get a crappier version of something that runs pretty well natively. If you're starting from scratch, I think that the browser might be close to native performance in some tasks. Porting existing applications is a pain when you start looking into the details.

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

#409

Post by voltagex_ »

outside1234 wrote: post #369
AsyncAwait wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

VSCode is indistinguishable from native, so not sure its Electron that's at fault here.

Start Notepad++ or https://github.com/rxi/lite and then compare the startup speed with VSCode.

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

#410

Post by drngdds »

outside1234 wrote: post #369
AsyncAwait wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

VSCode is indistinguishable from native, so not sure its Electron that's at fault here.

I use VS Code daily (because it seems to be the only full-featured editor that Just Works(TM) with WSL), but it can get pretty sluggish, especially with the Vim plugin.
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