Building a new Windows 3.1 app in 2019: A Slack Client

Post by noonespecial » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 1:33 PM UTC

benibela wrote: post #107

rvanmil wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More seriously, this is an excellent proof-of-concept that a Slack client does not need to use hundreds of MB of RAM and consume most of a modern CPU core to provide its basic functionality. If you’re so sure that this is possible, then where is the Electron competitor which allows us to build cross platform applications like this, with the same levels of productivity and a consistent and decent user interface? No…

There is Delphi and Lazarus as open-source clone of it Lazarus can use the Windows API on Windows, gtk/qt on Linux, and carbon/cocoa on Mac. There is also a custom drawn mode that draws the GUI directly rather than using platform apis. That also runs on Android, but it not maintained anymore, so only up to Android 5 or something Delphi is supposed to run on Android and iOS. And Delphi 1 ran on Windows 3.1, so you cou…

Post by bluedino » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 1:35 PM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #48

kstenerud wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been programming since 1983. The internet opened up publishing to the masses, which means that non-professional people could also publish, resulting in much more documentation than ever before. But now the amateur documentation writers are competing with the professional ones; the quality of the professional documentation is still as high as ever, but it can be drowned out by the amateur quality documentation. A…

The quality of Microsoft's own documentation has also fallen considerably; the latest nail in the coffin is that docs.microsoft.com thing that started to replace MSDN several years ago, that created tons of ridiculous fuckups in the "migration process". While doing that they also "open sourced" their documentation on GitHub, which to me sounds more like they're just trying to rely on free labour from the "community"…

Post by shaan7 » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 1:39 PM UTC

rvanmil wrote: post #127

itronitron wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your criteria for something being an Electron competitor?

It was more or less a rethorical question (I guess that’s why I’m being downvoted), because there is no competitor. If there was, then Electron wouldn’t be so extremely popular in the first place, and we’d see a lot more popular apps made with all the tools mentioned in the other replies to my post.

Post by rvanmil » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 1:43 PM UTC

shaan7 wrote: post #145

rvanmil wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was more or less a rethorical question (I guess that’s why I’m being downvoted), because there is no competitor. If there was, then Electron wouldn’t be so extremely popular in the first place, and we’d see a lot more popular apps made with all the tools mentioned in the other replies to my post.

You do realize that one thing can be more popular but still have competition, right?

Post by harshitaneja » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 1:47 PM UTC

shaan7 wrote: post #140

bluedino wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of silly compare a bare bones get/post to an entire app. This reminds me of my attempts to write an IRC client in an evening. Creating a native Windows app to mimic the Electron Slack client would not be a trivial task.

His point is that this bare bones get/post app in Electron will be much, much "larger".