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Proton Native – React Native for the desktop

proton-native.js.org

131–140 of 295 posts

Re: Proton Native – React Native for the desktop

#131

>You can create a GUI using something like Qt, but the code to make it is messy and unorganized. It doesn't serve the author well to make this comparison. Saying it's less messy to manage Proton/React source code files and the associated Node/JS/etc infrastructure is an extremely dubious claim. One of the things I like best about Qt is how non-messy Qt development is. Most everything (source files, resources, etc.) l…

I've used Qt developing various data-heavy apps for financial research at work and agree that making this comparison is rather inappropriate. For people who are not familiar with JSX this is not any better than the Qt syntax. This would be an alternative to Qt, but before I see a full-fledging app developed with great performance/memory metrics using this, I am not convinced enough to put it in my framework stack.

I used Qt in the early days, and always found the signal/slot model to handle events quite cumbersome. Handling events through closures (like typically done in JavaScript) is, imho, much nicer.

Re: Proton Native – React Native for the desktop

#133

Using Electron, you are rendering each window in Chrome, with some added OS hooks. With Proton, you are using JavaScriptCore with hooks to the native MacOS UIs and APIs. Seems to me that this should use far fewer resources (especially memory) and make it easier to make an App look more 'MacOS'y. Very eager to give it a go!

How do you use JavaScriptCore with proton? It runs on node which uses v8.

Resource measurements: The sample "Notepad" app (just a text box in a window, no copy/paste, etc.) uses 79 MB. For comparison the same app built using Xcode uses 27 MB, and TextEdit uses 40 MB.

Re: Proton Native – React Native for the desktop

#134

It's pretty fascinating how tech tends to spread and influence. We spent years trying to make the web more like traditional UI dev, and now we're making traditional UI dev like web. I would never have believed this if you'd told me about it in 2010.

> and now we're making traditional UI dev like web It's been like that on Windows since 2006 with XAML. In fact, if you squint at typical JSX, it looks like XAML. Disclosure: I work at Microsoft.

If you squint at JSX it also looks like JSP…

Re: Proton Native – React Native for the desktop

#135
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing React makes me feel more like building for web using native paradigms.

And yet there's not much that's like native GUI paradigms in React. At least when concerning all major GUI libs. It's more like a markup driving an immediate-mode graphics API.

Components make me think in term of OOP.

Re: Proton Native – React Native for the desktop

#136
post #37
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one highschooler with not enough time. Ideally this would come from someone who can maintain this full-time like a corporation, but so far no one has done it.

Wow that's awesome; you really are still in highschool.. When I read your gitHub profile where it said "A sophmore at High Technology High School" I thought you were being sarcastic!

Impressive indeed :D

Re: Proton Native – React Native for the desktop

#138

It's pretty fascinating how tech tends to spread and influence. We spent years trying to make the web more like traditional UI dev, and now we're making traditional UI dev like web. I would never have believed this if you'd told me about it in 2010.

> and now we're making traditional UI dev like web It's been like that on Windows since 2006 with XAML. In fact, if you squint at typical JSX, it looks like XAML. Disclosure: I work at Microsoft.

I've been using XAML at work recently (.Net 4.6) and I've got to say Microsoft did an excellent job.

The databinding approach is both elegant and familiar.

It certainly does look a lot like Vue Single File Components if you squint.

Re: Proton Native – React Native for the desktop

#139
post #116

The advantage of this over Qt is the licensing. React is an advantage if you are familiar with it over QML. One thing to note, the naming convention of props differs from React Native which is a bummer. https://github.com/kusti8/proton-native/issues/9 IIRC the project is a light mapping from libui-node project to React.

The issue you linked to seems to indicate that they are going to transition to React-idiomatic naming.

Re: Proton Native – React Native for the desktop

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those are apps I particularly enjoy using or would want to use.

Facebook? Instagram? Airbnb? We're talking about some of the most popular apps in the world. What exactly is your problem with them?

Facebook app also has huge chunks of platform-native code, it's why they also have things like Litho: https://fblitho.com/

And according to their announcement post Litho is what they are using for their News Feed: https://code.facebook.com/posts/1187475984695956/open-sourci...

So the most critical part of the Facebook app isn't in React Native. How much of those other apps are actually using React Native?

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