Live data from Hacker News

Goodbye, Native Apps

medium.com

21–30 of 231 posts

Re: Goodbye, Native Apps

#21
post #12
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope is a very quite good example, because one can compare it to Emacs, vim, Sublime Text loaded with a similar set of plugins. And it isn't an IDE, rather a programmer's text editor.

For decades people complained that Emacs was huge, bloated, etc. Now there are bigger web pages

“Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping” must be an alien sentiment to so many younger techies.

Re: Goodbye, Native Apps

#22

Or native apps will go through a revival due to new languages, compiler optimizations and access to intrinsics and C libraries.

As an avowed skeptic of all things deep learning, I do wonder if there is a role for AI generated native code from some form of psuedocode.

I know that a lot of old school code used very little memory due to everything sharing one set of libraries. I wonder if in the future, “installing an application” could be flipping a bit in a registry and your device being delivered a highly optimized monolithic system image.

Re: Goodbye, Native Apps

#23
post #8

I have Lazarus up and running... it's currently taking 32 Megabytes of RAM. It compiles in the blink of an eye, has one of the best possible 2 way GUI builders in the open source world, and I can reach back 30 years into the libraries I wrote in the days of Turbo Pascal 7/MS-DOS and pretty much use them intact. It amazes me how many people went with the .NET bloatware and all that follows it. Of course, 95% of progra…

You have to thank Borland's management for that. Delphi and C++ Builder are still around, but now only some lucky enterprise employees get to play with them. .NET Native and C++/CX were finally shaping up to be Microsoft's proper version of what .NET and Visual C++ should have been all along. However they are the most recent victims of the whole Reunion reboot, .NET Native now has uncertain future, while C++/CX got r…

Borland dragging their feet on 64 bit support helped me win quite a few customers from one of my competitors.

Re: Goodbye, Native Apps

#24

Or native apps will go through a revival due to new languages, compiler optimizations and access to intrinsics and C libraries.

As an avowed skeptic of all things deep learning, I do wonder if there is a role for AI generated native code from some form of psuedocode. I know that a lot of old school code used very little memory due to everything sharing one set of libraries. I wonder if in the future, “installing an application” could be flipping a bit in a registry and your device being delivered a highly optimized monolithic system image.

> I do wonder if there is a role for AI generated native code from some form of psuedocode.

I think that's pretty much what a good compiler is meant to do?

smaller binary images would be amazing though, especially when OS dependencies are required

Re: Goodbye, Native Apps

#25
The cheapest laptop I could find on walmart.com right now has 4GB of RAM. "Low-end" isn't what it used to be! Only techies care about things like how much RAM a program is using. End users, from my experience at least, don't really care - as long as it works.

Re: Goodbye, Native Apps

#26

Or native apps will go through a revival due to new languages, compiler optimizations and access to intrinsics and C libraries.

Technology still matters. It's not native vs not-native, there are many points along this scale. An app written in Swift on an iPhone should run faster than a similar app in Java on Android. If they run about the same, remember that the iPhone can do it with less memory and battery consumption. The Java Android app is more native than a React-Native app executing js.

yep, so the goal should be to compile everything down to light binary images the first time, and not require mobile devices work it all out at runtime.

Re: Goodbye, Native Apps

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technology still matters. It's not native vs not-native, there are many points along this scale. An app written in Swift on an iPhone should run faster than a similar app in Java on Android. If they run about the same, remember that the iPhone can do it with less memory and battery consumption. The Java Android app is more native than a React-Native app executing js.

yep, so the goal should be to compile everything down to light binary images the first time, and not require mobile devices work it all out at runtime.

Modern Android versions have multiple tiers.

Interpreter written in Assembly for fast startup, if the application was never executed.

Followed by JIT compilation to native code and when the device is idle, the PGO data collected by the JIT is used to produce a binary for direct native execution.

As of Android 10 those PGO files are uploaded to the stores and then if a similar device installs the application, they will get the PGO data as well and thus achieve a relatively fast result for their initial compilation.

Re: Goodbye, Native Apps

#28
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to thank Borland's management for that. Delphi and C++ Builder are still around, but now only some lucky enterprise employees get to play with them. .NET Native and C++/CX were finally shaping up to be Microsoft's proper version of what .NET and Visual C++ should have been all along. However they are the most recent victims of the whole Reunion reboot, .NET Native now has uncertain future, while C++/CX got r…

At least there is a free Community Edition now. It is one release behind (so doesn't have the latest goodness, eg the LSP server for code completion), but it does let you build apps for non-commercial use or pre-income startups for free, using Delphi/C++, the VCL, etc. Ie, if you want to encourage people to use tools like Delphi, it is much more open to indie devs than it used to be. Link: https://www.embarcadero.com…

Having had to use Embarcaderos Delphi, does anyone actually like that? It may be resource friendly as if it's still 2000, but the rest of the experience the same. Pascal is ageing and it shows, Embarcaderos IDE is the worst I've ever had to deal with and click and drag GUI, is it really so pleasant to work with? I find it easier to layout a Qt app. Visually or in code.

Re: Goodbye, Native Apps

#29
To be fair, writing apps that tries to throttle the use of memory is harder as you might have to let go of unused data onto disk instead of read and forget or process data little by little instead of all at once.

So, as soon as devs realize their apps fit in 1GB or something these days where even mid range phones have 4GB of RAM, they see no reason to optimize further.

Re: Goodbye, Native Apps

#30
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to thank Borland's management for that. Delphi and C++ Builder are still around, but now only some lucky enterprise employees get to play with them. .NET Native and C++/CX were finally shaping up to be Microsoft's proper version of what .NET and Visual C++ should have been all along. However they are the most recent victims of the whole Reunion reboot, .NET Native now has uncertain future, while C++/CX got r…

At least there is a free Community Edition now. It is one release behind (so doesn't have the latest goodness, eg the LSP server for code completion), but it does let you build apps for non-commercial use or pre-income startups for free, using Delphi/C++, the VCL, etc. Ie, if you want to encourage people to use tools like Delphi, it is much more open to indie devs than it used to be. Link: https://www.embarcadero.com…

They are making it easy to get started with when there is a whole bunch of information I have to give them in order to download even a trial/community edition. Contrast that to most other programming languages / development environments, where you usually can just download and run it.

  Field required:  First Name 
  Field required:  Last Name 
  Field required:  Email 
  Field required:  Password 
  Field required:  Verify Password 
  Field required:  Company 
  Field required:  Phone 
  Field required:  I have read the Community Edition End User License Agreement and confirm that my usage of the Community Edition version complies with its terms and conditions.
  Field required:  I have read, understand and agree to Embarcadero's Terms and Conditions & Privacy Statement
  Field required:  Yes, I would like to receive marketing communications regarding Embarcadero products, services, and events. I can unsubscribe at any time.
Post reply on HN