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

Dealing with "state" is much better/easier/clear in desktop than in web.

An app on desktop, if well made, will be insanely more responsive than a web app. That's one thing - the other thing is there are cases where speed/resources will dictate that the app should be desktop. A simple example is a video editor (such as, the one I'm developing, but that's besides the point). Sure, you can have a video editor as a JS app, but that will be incredibly trivial compared to a desktop app.

I'm not saying that you can't match any desktop feature on to web. I'm saying that some will take 10x+ time and resources (and thus, an insanely higher complexity) than desktop. And some features, they are simply not feasible to do on the web. Let me give you an example: time-remapping for a video editor (one thing that I'm gonna implement soon). This is such a complex issue, requiring advanced caching + lots of RAM + fast rendering, that implementing it in a browser is simply unfeasible TODAY.

As things become feasible on the web, lots of them begin by being 10x+ more complex than desktop (this gets lower in complexity in time), for one thing. And for another thing, that basically means more things that were unfeasible for desktop will now become feasible there (but still not feasible on web). And this cycle continues.

In conclusion - there will always be a place for native desktop apps IMHO.

Windows NT required a multiple more RAM to run than the consumer versions of Windows (oh no, bloat!), and was much more picky about what hardware it ran on. Starting with XP, the professional and consumer versions of Windows have merged. We are so lucky.

It's so embarrassing saying Hey Google all the time, and for me, it just feels like I'm a corporate bitch, tbh. It's true, which just makes me feel worse :D

That explains your inaccurate perspective.

> Windows NT required a multiple more RAM to run than the consumer versions of Windows (oh no, bloat!), and was much more picky about what hardware it ran on.

Allow me to claim that that is also not true, in the form you state it. Again, I've lived through all this, and I can tell you what that was about. The "pickiness" of NT was even at these times not about the motherboards and the chipsets. It was about the hardware consumer devices. Many things that probably don't even exist as the products today, like a black-and-white hand-scanner that scanned as you moved your hand over the paper and had only Windows 3.x drivers on the floppy with it. There was never a problem of having a developer machine running NT in any reasonable price range, with a reasonable graphic card, monitor, keyboard and mouse. And, at the start, a phone line modem transmitting some kilobytes per second!

The RAM needs did exist, but again not such as they are made to be believed by later distortions. If I remember correctly (it changed relatively fast), at the time NT was published, Microsoft had to deliver it claiming that it will run on 4 MB, the OS and the programs and the graphics, all had to fit. Let me repeat, 4 MB. It run, but not comfortably for bigger programs. But the point is -- as soon as you at that time had 8 MB you haven't had a problem. A little later, for comfortable work, 16 MB were more than a good choice. It was a hundred, two or three of $ more than the cheapest possible offer (yes, that were the prices then), but that was it. RAM was the only thing you had to care about to have NT running.

The point is, at that time there were enough those who didn't want to use Windows NT at all, clutching to 3.x and then 95 and these are those who promoted the horror stories about OS problems. But it was just their ignorance. 95 was also reasonably stable, unless you used, like many, some "utility" programs that were more malware than of real use (the "cleaning", "protection" or even "ram expander" snake oils were used by some even then -- no to mention that a lot of people believed they had to try any program that happens to access them).

The good development tools were good and stable, especially command line (in GUI areas, there were some snake oils among them too). But Word did crash even under NT, and even during the first half of 2000-s decade, and that's completely different story, that was intentional at that time for these products.