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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?

#751

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

pjmlp wrote: post #743
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's as hard as you make it out to be. Notably, Zig does not have a default allocator and its standard library is written accordingly, making it trivial to ensure the use of the appropriate allocation strategy for any given task, including using a debug allocator that tracks double-free and memory leaks.

Has Zig already sorted out the use-after-free story?

No, and as far as I am aware it makes no attempt to do so other than some allocators overwriting freed memory with a known signature in debug modes so the problem is more obvious.

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

#752

Post by hoseja »

RMPR wrote: post #745
hoseja wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wish it weren't stuck, anisotropically, ~10 years in the past. Maybe Qt6 will be better, but more likely it will be more and more QML.

Since QML uses Javascript it may be their best bet to attract new developers.

Yes, well, QML also uses JavaScript.

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

#753

Post by acqq »

Decade wrote: post #749
acqq wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most Pentium II systems were not running Windows NT. They were running Windows 95 or 98 Once again: only somebody using a computer not selected for serious development used Windows 95 and 98. No developer who knew what he was doing was using Windows 95 and 98 as his primary development machine. So if you complain about that, you used the wrong tool for your work. Like I've said, it was easy to install Windows NT, a…

I think we’re losing the plot. The ggp post was about doing all sorts of Internet programs at the same time on Pentium II era computers, and now you’re talking about developer tools on a Pentium 4. Maybe it’s simultaneously true, that you could run many developer tools at the same time on Windows NT with hundreds of dollars of RAM, and attempting to run a bunch of consumer network programs at the same time (especiall…

> on Pentium II

> and now you’re talking about developer tools on a Pentium 4.

It's to illustrate that arguments are wrong: it's Decade who uses "256 MB" as an argument which is not "small memory" for Pentium II, and I illustrate that it was common in 2002 for notebooks, the time when Pentium IV was common for developer machines.

> The ggp post was about doing all sorts of Internet programs at the same time on Pentium II era computers

Let me check again:

"For example, IM, video/audio calls, and working with email shouldn't take hundreds of MB of RAM, a GHz-level many-core processor, and GBs of disk space. All of that was comfortably possible --- simultaneously --- with 256MB of RAM and a single-core 400MHz Pentium II."

OK. That is also obviously a bit off. 256 MB with Pentium II is quite a lot, as I showed 256 MB was normal even in 2002 for notebooks, as Pentium III was already common on notebooks and IV on desktops. Working with email -- at that time e-mail clients, if they used html at all, were limited to html formats of that time so "using email" completely worked, no crashes of system on NT (Outlook did have a limit of single PST having to be less than N GB, I remember that). IM too just worked, and also without crashes on NT.

That leaves "video/audio calls". Video calls were surely not common at that time, and I personally also haven't used audio calls.

But the "stability" problems you claim to have been common definitely didn't exist the way you claimed, as soon as one used NT, that is, since around 1994, or later on Windows 2000 or even later on XP or Server 2003, all NT-based. And as I've said, it was not that "too much" RAM was needed, as I've run NT on 8 MB with no problem.

So I still don't understand why you continue to stick to the narration that was simply not true. No, it was not that bad like you claim. Computers were quite stable even then for those who knew what they were doing. On NT, almost nothing crashed the system, except for failed hardware. Like I've said, it was that some apps were indeed less stable, like Word crashing or saving the invalid DOC file. But Excel, for example, while being in the same "suite" I don't remember to have ever crashed. I also don't remember browsers actually crashing, just the pages downloading very, very slowly.

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

#754

Post by squiggleblaz »

petilon wrote: post #423
zadjii wrote: post #51

I mean, we built the Windows Terminal as a native application because we didn't want users to have to be saddled with 40MB of a webview/Electron just to boot up a terminal. It might take us longer to make the terminal as feature rich than it would have with JS, but no amount of engineering resources could have optimized out that web footprint. When we think about what the terminal looks like in 5 years, that's what w…

I am sorry but Windows Terminal is the suckiest Windows app ever and gives me a headache on a daily basis. Try opening multiple instances of this app in overlapping windows, like most developers do. Then fill them with text. Now see if you can tell where one window ends and the next window starts. Because of nearly invisible borders all the windows sort of blend into each other. Worst usability issue ever. This termi…

I don't like the new Windows Terminal and I still use conhost.exe since it actually doesn't crash, but I don't think that's a fair criticism. The borderless design is part of Windows' theme. The terminal merely renders into the box its given. I think Microsoft (and Gnome) have made a mistake in this borderless fetish, but you can't blame the app for the designers fault.

And the fact that it crashes each time I resume my system seems like a much bigger issue than a person who refuses to keep a few pixels separation manually, or to color the windows differently.

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

#755

Post by squiggleblaz »

freeone3000 wrote: post #345
madhadron wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Native implies that you are building for each OS and their native toolkit. On macOS, you write Cocoa. On Linux you write GNOME or KDE or CDE. On Windows you write...I dunno. Win32 probably.

Current tech is C++/WinRT, for this year, but last year it was WPF and five years ago it was XAML, then previously it was MFC/ATL, and original Win32 somewhere back in the old days. And Linux isn't better. I think OSX is the only desktop OS that has an idea of what an app should look like.

MacOS used to have a choice between Carbon and Cocoa, didn't it? Maybe still does.

C++/WinRT uses XAML. But XAML isn't a control library/toolkit. You can tell because it isn't called the Extensible Application Control Library. I'd say it shouldn't be included in your list, but MFC/ATL is just a way of accessing Win32 via C++ -- it makes the same function calls -- so it's not clear that your purpose was to make a fair statement about native development, but perhaps to complain about Windows turnover of apis.

On Linux, it's quite simple to live entirely in Gtk-compatible land. I think Firefox and JetBrains are the only foreigners I use on my box, but I'd be using them on any opertaing system so it's not exactly a fair cop.

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

#756

Post by Decade »

acqq wrote: post #753
Decade wrote: post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we’re losing the plot. The ggp post was about doing all sorts of Internet programs at the same time on Pentium II era computers, and now you’re talking about developer tools on a Pentium 4. Maybe it’s simultaneously true, that you could run many developer tools at the same time on Windows NT with hundreds of dollars of RAM, and attempting to run a bunch of consumer network programs at the same time (especiall…

> on Pentium II > and now you’re talking about developer tools on a Pentium 4. It's to illustrate that arguments are wrong: it's Decade who uses "256 MB" as an argument which is not "small memory" for Pentium II, and I illustrate that it was common in 2002 for notebooks, the time when Pentium IV was common for developer machines. > The ggp post was about doing all sorts of Internet programs at the same time on Pentiu…

The 256 MB number came from the ggp post. At the beginning of the Pentium II era, that was very expensive, but it was not the only issue with running multiple programs at the same time.

But clearly you want to have the last word, so I guess I should let you have it.

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

#757

Post by NeutronStar »

nullandvoid wrote: post #704
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…

Pair that with some discord, vs code and chrome and all of a sudden my 16gb is getting maxed semi regularly Just had to upgrade to 32 myself

I just got to that point of needing more than 16GB and needing to upgrade also.

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

#758

Post by smileysteve »

ksk wrote: post #718
smileysteve wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

95% of a market that has shrunk nearly 50% over the last decade. In many ways, the consumer and non specialty business are post desktop. Turns out documents, email, and other communication apps cover 90% of use cases. Anything that requires major performance gets rendered in a cloud and delivered by these other apps.

What do you consider as a specialty business? There are hundreds of millions of professionals - scientists, engineers, accountants, animators, content creators, visual artists, chip design folks, folks writing drivers for equipment, photographers, musicians, manufacturing folks, etc who simply cannot earn a living without native apps. Sure, maybe when those people go home, they don't always need native apps, but IMHO…

You name several that are speciality businesses and are part of that 10%.

But there are definitely examples within Accountants, Animators, and Musicians where Phones, Tablets, and Chromebooks (not specialty desktop apps) have taken over the essential day to days.

For animators; the Ipad VS. Surface face off is a great example -- also where they offload concepts to "the cloud" to render instead of a Mac Pro.

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

#759

Post by madhadron »

squiggleblaz wrote: post #755
freeone3000 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current tech is C++/WinRT, for this year, but last year it was WPF and five years ago it was XAML, then previously it was MFC/ATL, and original Win32 somewhere back in the old days. And Linux isn't better. I think OSX is the only desktop OS that has an idea of what an app should look like.

MacOS used to have a choice between Carbon and Cocoa, didn't it? Maybe still does. C++/WinRT uses XAML. But XAML isn't a control library/toolkit. You can tell because it isn't called the Extensible Application Control Library. I'd say it shouldn't be included in your list, but MFC/ATL is just a way of accessing Win32 via C++ -- it makes the same function calls -- so it's not clear that your purpose was to make a fair…

> MacOS used to have a choice between Carbon and Cocoa, didn't it? Maybe still does.

It did. Carbon was the pre-NeXT widget set and compatibility to run pre-OS X apps. It is very dead. There is only Cocoa.

> MFC/ATL is just a way of accessing Win32 via C++

Okay, so we can still regard MFC/Win32 as the standard API?

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

#760

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

saagarjha wrote: post #619
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not really accurate. Qt relies on a lower level windowing system (X Window, Wayland, Cocoa, win32 etc. etc.). Also worth noting that many creation-centric applications for the desktop (graphics, audio, video etc. etc.) don't look "native" even when they actually are. In one case (Logic Pro, from Apple), the "platform leading app from the platform creator" doesn't even look native!

On macOS Qt doesn’t really use Cocoa, it use Quartz/CoreGraphics (the drawing rather than the application layer). Note that Apple’s pro apps are native controls with a UI theme: they usually behave like their unthemed counterparts.

I had meant to write Quartz, not Cocoa.

I know how Qt works at that level. I did a bunch of work in the mid-naughts on the equivalent stuff in GTK.

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