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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?

#651

Post by theandrewbailey »

thdrdt wrote: post #577
Insanity wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't mind me asking, how much RAM did you have before, and what did you upgrade to? I recently got a new PC myself and decided to go for 16GB, my previous one (about a decade old) had 8GB and I didn't feel I really hit the limit, but wanted to be future proof. Because as you said, a lot of 'modern' applications are taking up a lot of memory.

I upgraded from 8 to 16GB. But I'm in the process of ordering a new desktop that will have 32GB. Spotify and Slack are not problematic as individual programs but since I have a lot of other programs open they are the ones that take up more memory than they should. I mean: Spotify is just a music player. Why does it need 250MB RAM?

64GB RAM is borderline reasonable today. Why not jump to that?

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

#652

Post by PopeDotNinja »

0xkd wrote: post #646
PopeDotNinja wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal evolution has gone from Sublime Text 3 to Atom to VS Code to Sublime Text 3. I've never been a heavy plugin user, mainly sticking to code highlighting. The thing I really like is speed. Sublime Text rarely chokes on me. I love being able to type `cat some_one_gigabyte_file | subl` and getting it to open up with little difficulty. VS Code chokes on files of non-trivial size, and that was the thing I liked…

> Complete list of AWS pricing for every product in every region stored as JSON Is this a hypothetical file that you mention or something you actually have? Asking since I have a use-case for this data and am interested in knowing how to get it. I have read AWS has APIs for pricing info - is that where you got the data from?

It's a thing.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/awsaccountbilling/latest/aboutv2...

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

#654

Post by ljm »

thdrdt wrote: post #542
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…

I recently had to upgrade my RAM because I have Spotify and Slack open all the time. Today RAM is cheap but it is crazy those programs take up so much resources. Another program I use a lot is Blender (3D software). Compared to Spotify and Slack it is a crazy complicated program with loads of complicated functionalities. But it starts in a blink and only uses resources when it needs to (calculations and your 3D model…

It really surprised me when I downloaded Godot only to get a 32MB binary. Snappy as hell.

Web apps masquerading as desktop apps are terribly slow and it's a surprise we've got so used to it. My slack client takes a few seconds to launch, then it has a loading screen, and quite often it will refresh itself (blanking out the screen and doing a full-blown re-render) without warning. This is before it starts spinning the fans when trying to scroll up a thread, and all of the other awkward and inconsistent pieces of UI thrown in there. Never mind having to download a 500MB package just to use a glorified IRC client.

I'm really enjoying writing code outside of the browser realm where I can care a lot more about resource usage, using languages and tools that help achieve that.

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

#655

Post by TeMPOraL »

ljm wrote: post #654
thdrdt wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently had to upgrade my RAM because I have Spotify and Slack open all the time. Today RAM is cheap but it is crazy those programs take up so much resources. Another program I use a lot is Blender (3D software). Compared to Spotify and Slack it is a crazy complicated program with loads of complicated functionalities. But it starts in a blink and only uses resources when it needs to (calculations and your 3D model…

It really surprised me when I downloaded Godot only to get a 32MB binary. Snappy as hell. Web apps masquerading as desktop apps are terribly slow and it's a surprise we've got so used to it. My slack client takes a few seconds to launch, then it has a loading screen, and quite often it will refresh itself (blanking out the screen and doing a full-blown re-render) without warning. This is before it starts spinning the…

It's interesting to compare Ripcord[0] to Slack. Ripcord is a third-party desktop client for Slack and Discord. It has something like 80% of features of the official Slack client and a simpler UI (arguably better, more information-dense), but it's also a good two orders of magnitude lighter and snappier. And it also handles Discord at the same time.

--

[0] - https://cancel.fm/ripcord/

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

#656

Post by aalbacetef »

alexchamberlain wrote: post #557
thdrdt wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently had to upgrade my RAM because I have Spotify and Slack open all the time. Today RAM is cheap but it is crazy those programs take up so much resources. Another program I use a lot is Blender (3D software). Compared to Spotify and Slack it is a crazy complicated program with loads of complicated functionalities. But it starts in a blink and only uses resources when it needs to (calculations and your 3D model…

I guess the question becomes: what is the native ecosystem missing that means devs are choosing to deliver memory/CPU hungry apps, rather than small efficient ones?

as someone who has done both desktop apps and electron apps, it is much faster to write some html/css and wrap it in electron than to do the same in qt/gtk/etc...

Not to mention, the HTML/CSS combo is possibly the best we've come up with for designing user interfaces.

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

#657

Post by TeMPOraL »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #638
thdrdt wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently had to upgrade my RAM because I have Spotify and Slack open all the time. Today RAM is cheap but it is crazy those programs take up so much resources. Another program I use a lot is Blender (3D software). Compared to Spotify and Slack it is a crazy complicated program with loads of complicated functionalities. But it starts in a blink and only uses resources when it needs to (calculations and your 3D model…

> I also think it has to do with the fact that older programmers now more about the cost of resources than younger programmers do. I'm not convinced it's the programmers driving these decisions. Assuming that it takes less developer effort - even just a little - to implement an inefficient desktop application, it comes down to a business decision (assuming these are programs created by businesses, which Spotify and S…

> In other words, so long as consumers prioritise functionality over the efficiency of the program, it makes good business sense for you to prioritise that too.

And the kicker is, consumers don't have a say in this process anyway. I don't know of anyone who chose Slack. It's universally handed down onto you from somewhere above you in the corporate, and you're forced to use it. Sure, a factor in this is that it works on multiple platforms (including mobile) and you don't have to worry about setting it up for yourself, but that has nothing to do with the in-app features and overall UX. Or Spotify, whose biggest value is that it's a cheap and legal alternative to pirating music. And that value has, again, nothing to do with softare, and everything to do with the deals they've managed to secure with artists and labels.

I exercise my preferences wrt. Slack by using Ripcord instead of the official client. Most people I know exercise their preferences wrt. Spotify by using YouTube instead (which is arguably lighter resource-wise). And speaking of alternative clients, maybe that could be the way to go - focus on monetizing the service, but embrace different ways of accessing it. Alas, time and again, companies show they prefer total control over the ecosystem surrounding their service.

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

#658

Post by TeMPOraL »

ClikeX wrote: post #628
thdrdt wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently had to upgrade my RAM because I have Spotify and Slack open all the time. Today RAM is cheap but it is crazy those programs take up so much resources. Another program I use a lot is Blender (3D software). Compared to Spotify and Slack it is a crazy complicated program with loads of complicated functionalities. But it starts in a blink and only uses resources when it needs to (calculations and your 3D model…

As a younger developer I'd say I agree. But it's not just developers being used to resources being plentiful. I do webdev mostly and there it's also a matter of management. I want to optimize applications to be less hungry, those are interesting challenges to me. But I've been told by management to just upgrade the server. Either I'd spend a day optimizing, and maybe fixing the issue. Or we just spend 50 euros a mont…

> Either I'd spend a day optimizing, and maybe fixing the issue. Or we just spend 50 euros a month more on a server.

So, discounting additional effects like more satisfied userbase, the optimization would pay for itself in a year. And optimizations stack.

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

#659

Post by TeMPOraL »

cambalache wrote: post #454
badsectoracula wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Me neither, I'm not going to lie and say that I had 40 applications opened, but I DID have 5-10 apps using the web with 0 issues (A browser+IRC App + Email Client+MICQ+MSN Messenger+Kazaam/Napster+Winamp in stream mode). Very very few of the web and desktop applications of today are as snappy and user-friendly as classic Winamp.

Same here. About the only time when by browser + mIRC + WinAMP + IM + Visual C++ 6.0 combo slowed down was when the VC++ was compiling the game I was working on. I would then close the IM, because doing so would speed up the compile times by 1.5x.

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

#660

Post by gindely »

thdrdt wrote: post #542
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…

I recently had to upgrade my RAM because I have Spotify and Slack open all the time. Today RAM is cheap but it is crazy those programs take up so much resources. Another program I use a lot is Blender (3D software). Compared to Spotify and Slack it is a crazy complicated program with loads of complicated functionalities. But it starts in a blink and only uses resources when it needs to (calculations and your 3D model…

> But now I had to upgrade my RAM.

But I can't. My ram is soldered on. How many tons of carbon dioxide should I emit so that you can use React? There are ways to do declarative ui/state management without dom...

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