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Going native

blog.getpostman.com

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Re: Going native

#231

Post by Mithaldu »

a85 wrote: post #227
Mithaldu wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure you can do anything there, unless you intend to change the chromium source. The problems here are on the hardware level, which you're, owing to sitting on top of chromium, far removed from. That said, i don't use Postman, heard of it the first time today. But you might be able to reproduce some of the issues by loading a very animation-heavy imgur page like https://imgur.com/a/0L8Bu , scrolling to the gifs,…

We don't need to change the chromium source. Everything is not sitting on top of Chromium. I haven't tried this just yet but node-pre-gyp allows packaging C++ too. https://github.com/mapbox/node-pre-gyp

Well hey, if that allows you to cut down on a lot of whatever chrome's doing, yay. :)

Re: Going native

#232

Post by a85 »

debaserab2 wrote: post #223
Ajedi32 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Performance is a property of an application as a whole, not just the framework it's built on. While you can certainly argue that apps which use webviews are slower on average than their native counterparts; Electron-based apps aren't necessarily always going to be slow; and native apps aren't necessarily always going to be fast. Therefore, since a user cannot conclude that an app is "not native" merely by observing i…

People conclude things based on their experience using them. There are a lot of bloated feeling electron apps out there that are popular right now, which leads to people concluding (not incorrectly) that electron apps tend to be slower than native ones based on their experience.

Agreed. However, perceptions change as technology improves and overall the arc of software tools has been towards higher level abstractions unless absolutely required to go deeper.

Re: Going native

#233

Post by ashark »

kuschku wrote: post #217
ashark wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java was and is wasteful. Some of us remember something very similar to this Electron mess happening in the Distant Past when Java fans tried to convince everyone that UI slowness and general system-wide performance issues when Java programs were running were just in our heads, and to just get over it because Java was the Way of the Future™. Of course now computers are so fast that no-one much minds Java anymore. So…

I’m just wondering why the fuck we don’t simply just use Java, and get exactly the same advantages as electron provides, while still getting better performance. An argument can be made that devs might want to not care about memory allocation or anything, but Java does that just as well as JS, with a better build system, better community tools, better speeds, easier UI tools, and better dependency management.

I think the main driver is that a lot of developers are really not comfortable manually juggling types. Seriously.

Re: Going native

#234

Post by notsrg »

Been happily using postman for a couple years now and happily don't care that you called an electron app a native app. Sorry HN is so aggressively pedantic!

Re: Going native

#235

Post by kuschku »

ashark wrote: post #233
kuschku wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m just wondering why the fuck we don’t simply just use Java, and get exactly the same advantages as electron provides, while still getting better performance. An argument can be made that devs might want to not care about memory allocation or anything, but Java does that just as well as JS, with a better build system, better community tools, better speeds, easier UI tools, and better dependency management.

I think the main driver is that a lot of developers are really not comfortable manually juggling types. Seriously.

That’s...

You’re serious?

I’m not quite sure what to answer.

On the one hand, that’s embarrassing (and tells tales of the quality of compsci education), on the other hand, there’s Groovy, I guess?

Re: Going native

#236

Post by nuggien »

visarga wrote: post #156
nuggien wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not the target market if you couldn't figure out what they are. I've never heard of it but one look at the screenshot told me exactly what it is.

That's not a reason to have a poorly explained product or service, it's only a justification for not caring enough about clarity. But for developers, who see hundreds of libraries and services being posted every day, it matters if there is a clear explanation at the top or not.

The target market are developers who are in need of a very specific solution that postman provides. How do you think most postman users end up at the site? They probably search for some very specific keywords on google, asked some very specific question on stackoverflow, or got referred to it by reading some very specific article on reddit/hn/etc. They aren't people with 2 second attention spans who can't be bothered to read beyond the tag line.

smlacy's response felt pretty much like trolling to me.

Re: Going native

#237

Post by vorg »

kuschku wrote: post #235
ashark wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the main driver is that a lot of developers are really not comfortable manually juggling types. Seriously.

That’s... You’re serious? I’m not quite sure what to answer. On the one hand, that’s embarrassing (and tells tales of the quality of compsci education), on the other hand, there’s Groovy, I guess?

Bad example. Apache Groovy has the downsides of both Java (e.g. requiring the memory hogging JVM) and JS (e.g. errors arising from dynamic typing, like one-char strings auto-converted to chars).

Re: Going native

#238

Post by [deleted] »

vorg wrote: post #237
kuschku wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s... You’re serious? I’m not quite sure what to answer. On the one hand, that’s embarrassing (and tells tales of the quality of compsci education), on the other hand, there’s Groovy, I guess?

Bad example. Apache Groovy has the downsides of both Java (e.g. requiring the memory hogging JVM) and JS (e.g. errors arising from dynamic typing, like one-char strings auto-converted to chars).

[deleted]

Re: Going native

#239

Post by a85 »

dkersten wrote: post #220
a85 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So native would not cover mobile apps?

It depends on the host platform. On desktop, all native apps are desktop apps but not all desktop apps are native. On mobile, all native apps are mobile apps but not all mobile apps are native.

This is where I believe we'd differ. Postman already had a "desktop" app in the sense that Chrome apps also existed as desktop apps and when we ask users to switch, they wouldn't.

For most users, desktop apps = things that run on the desktop.

https://dcrazed.com/google-chrome-desktop-apps/

Re: Going native

#240

Post by alok-g »

psyklic wrote: post #95
a85 wrote: post #88

Postman founder here HN folks. Great to see the post get featured on the homepage! Lots of discussion about what is exactly native. I have posted some replies but some other points about the choice of words: 1. Postman has 3 million users and about 1.5 million MAUs. When we tell people we have a native app, they get it. People go to our apps page, download the installer and see everything exactly as they expect thing…

>> When we tell people we have a native app, they get it. People go to our apps page, download the installer and see everything exactly as they expect things to be. The term "native" is used to describe apps developed for a specific operating system. By this definition, clearly Electron apps (and hence Postman) are not native apps. Having to download an installer doesn't make it native. On smartphones, all apps are i…

>> The term "native" is used to describe apps developed for a specific operating system.

I would have said that "native" means compiled for a specific operating system or a processor. If someone develops an app using Qt which then works on multiple operating systems, it would still be considered native.

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