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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?

#681

Post by SomeoneFromCA »

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?

It probably uses it for buffering.

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

#682

Post by api »

thrower123 wrote: post #323
ninjakeyboard wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Webstorm or PyCharm isn't as good as IntelliJ or ReSharper, but holy hell is it better than just a text editor, even emacs. I really don't understand why so many programmers proudly proclaim that they do things the hard way and wear that as a badge of honor.

That's an old, old trope. "Real men" do it the way that takes 3X as long and yields code with more bugs.

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

#683

Post by mathw »

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…

Just remember that it's entirely possible to do awkward and inconsistent UI in native apps, and there's a very long tradition of it.

But at least it's generally faster when you do it!

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

#684

Post by pcmaffey »

swalsh wrote: post #668
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…

Something I noticed over my career. Programmers tend to get super beefy machines. My machine has 64GB of memory, and 12 cores. But the typical users who use our software don't have anywhere near those same specs.. but programmers often just say "it worked on my machine" without thought about the specs.

Same problem exists with designers and monitors.

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

#685

Post by geekraver »

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…

256MB RAM? How extravagant! My first computer had 3kB.

This is just the nature of “induced demand”. We might expand the power of our computers by several orders of magnitude, but our imaginations don’t keep up, so we find other ways of using all that capacity.

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

#686

Post by SomeoneFromCA »

sergiotapia wrote: post #438
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…

This sentiment is why I've moved to write Elixir code professionally three years ago, and why I write Nim for all my personal projects now. I want to minimize bloat and squeeze out performance from these amazing machines we are spoiled with these days. A few years ago I read about a developer that worked on a piece-o-shit 11 year old laptop, he made his software run fast there. By doing that, his software was screami…

My normal work computer is a Sandy Bridge Celeron laptop. I might need to upgrade it soon, but I'd still prefer something underpowered for exactly same reason; perhaps I'll purchase an Athlon 3000 desktop.

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

#687

Post by MaxBarraclough »

gindely wrote: post #678
quantummkv wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HTML, CSS and Javascript. Most of these electron apps are basically wrappers around actual websites to give a place in the dock and show notifications and access the filesystem.

But that isn't what's missing. It's a restatement of the problem. DOM based apps are much more resource intensive than native. What is missing from native that makes business choose DOM? If there was some modern tool like WxWidgets that supported modern apis like DOM, Android and UWP, would we see more use of native? Electron would therefore become pointless.

Qt Quick takes plenty of ideas from the web playbook.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QML

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

#688

Post by JKThanassi »

Look at the difference between things and todoist on macos. Things is much snappier and better looking while simultaneously using fewer resources. Todoist is an electron app whereas things is native. It really does make a difference and I wish there were more truly native apps out there.

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

#689

Post by api »

shp0ngle wrote: post #475
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.

jetbrains stuff is written in java btw, for all languages. (when we talk about “native”/“not native”)

I don't care what it's written in.

Native UIs seem to matter more for small to medium size apps. Huge all-encompassing things like Blender, IDEs, etc. seem benefit from a unified, attractive, easy to use UI but it doesn't seem to matter quite as much that it's native. These things are intrinsically huge too so bloat matters less.

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

#690

Post by tenebrisalietum »

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 don't know ...

https://tsone.kapsi.fi/em-fceux/ - This is an NES emulator. The Memory tap in Developer tools says this takes up 2.8MB. Runs in 60fps on my modern laptop.

It seems possible to build really efficient applications in JS/WebASM.

Multiple layers of Javascript frameworks is the cause of the bloat, and is the real problem I think.

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