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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?

#501

Post by orange8 »

madhadron wrote: post #156
ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #144

I'm going to be slammed for using these two words, but for any real work you need to have as few layers of indirection between the user and the machine as possible, and this includes the UX, in the sense that it is tailored to the fastest and most comfortable data entry and process monitoring. I don't see any `web first` or Electron solution replacing Reaper or Blender in a foreseeable future. One exception I'm intri…

VSCode uses a C++ backend to get that performance.

A C++ backend, aka Electron.

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

#502

Post by andai »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #400
userbinator wrote: post #396

As a long-time Win32 developer, my only answer to that question is "of course there is!" The efficiency difference between native and "modern" web stuff is easily several orders of magnitude; you can write very useful applications that are only a few KB in size, a single binary, and that same binary will work across 25 years of OS versions. Yes, computers have gotten faster and memory and disks much larger. That does…

Yeah, software seems to frequently follow Parkinson's Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. [1] Corollary: software expands to fill the available resources. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law

See also: Wirth's Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law

from A Plea for Lean Software (1995) https://cr.yp.to/bib/1995/wirth.pdf

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

#503

Post by meritt »

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.

Try opening a moderately large (even 2MB) .json file in VSCode, and then do the same in sublime.

VSCode very quickly freezes because it cannot handle a file that size. Sublime not only opens it but syntax highlights immediately.

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

#504

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

andai wrote: post #502
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, software seems to frequently follow Parkinson's Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. [1] Corollary: software expands to fill the available resources. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law

See also: Wirth's Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law from A Plea for Lean Software (1995) https://cr.yp.to/bib/1995/wirth.pdf

Neat. I wasn't aware of that one.

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

#505

Post by _bxg1 »

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 doubt there will ever be an HTML5 standard for low-level disk access.

It's clear you've never worked with Electron; nothing about its system-level access has anything to do with HTML5 or related standards.

All of that lives in NodeJS, which offers reasonably low-level APIs for accessing system resources. For cases where that's not enough Node can easily call out to logic written in other languages, either directly through FFI (foreign function interfaces) or by spinning up an independent binary via the shell.

This is the problem with this discourse: the vast majority of the Electron haters are people who have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to the actual thing they're criticizing. It's particularly hypocritical when they go so far as to frame "JavaScript hipsters" as some combination of ignorant, inexperienced, and/or lazy.

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

#507

Post by TheColorYellow »

xwdv wrote: post #256
whowhatwhy wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i just use less for big files, convenience is a matter of taste

I don’t open big files at all. There’s no point. Files exist as data made to be transformed from one form to another. It is only worth looking at a file in its final form unless you are making some kind of edit. And even then, I make edits on large files through a series of commands, never opening the file. By thinking of files in this way, it becomes easy to create programmable tool chains for manipulation.

What's your typical strategy for parsing something like a large text file for some relevant data?

Suppose you could cat and grep, but what if you don't know what you're looking for?

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

#508

Post by [deleted] »

badsectoracula wrote: post #439
Decade wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are looking back at the past with rosy goggles. What I remember from the time was how you couldn’t run that many things simultaneously. Back when the Pentium II was first released, I even had to close applications, not because the computer ran out of RAM, but because the TCP/IP stack that came with Windows 95 didn’t allow very many simultaneous connections. My web browser and my chat were causing each other to er…

FWIW i do not remember having issues like that, i had mIRC practically always open, a web browser, email application, etc and i do not remember ever having networking issues. Internet was slow but that was largely because for the most part of the 90s i was stuck with a very slow 2400 baud modem - i got to appreciate the option that browsers had to not download images by default :-P. But in general i do not remember b…

[deleted]

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

#509

Post by suyash »

hawaiianbrah wrote: post #343
ninjakeyboard wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Wasn’t that Java’s original selling point, it runs anywhere (there’s a JVM)?

Yes, today you can use JavaFx to build cross platform desktop apps.
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