Not only the desktop. React Native web should enable a singular code base for mobile and desktop.
Shared maybe, but the view layer is quite different between react native and regular react on the Web.
The Web Is Eating the Desktop (2017)
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Re: The Web Is Eating the Desktop (2017)
#12I've been using a Chrome OS laptop to run a business, including developing software. No issues.
This intrigues me, mostly because my mom works for Google and that's all she has for work and it looks painful to me. Granted, I've not used a Chrome OS laptop, but I greatly prefer a desktop app to a web app. And I don't think I could get by having to use Google Docs instead of Microsoft Office. I've tried to do that on my computer and really disliked the experience.
Also, what does R, J, and M mean in your library spreadsheet?
Re: The Web Is Eating the Desktop (2017)
#13The web is not eating the desktop.
Instead, cross platform development is "eating" the desktop.
Re: The Web Is Eating the Desktop (2017)
#14Should have a [2017] appended to the title. When I first saw the title I thought "You're a bit late", but when I clicked on the article and saw it was from Dec. 2017 I thought this is just around the time I felt like that tipping point was reached.
Re: The Web Is Eating the Desktop (2017)
#15very likely, if you take a sort of long historical view then it's I think intuitive to predict that the ark of computing bends towards greater and greater connectivity, and the web is the basic infrastructure for that. Hardware and operating systems just become details and everyone hooks into the matrix pretty much.
The piece is from 2017 but it's pretty prescient when it recommends web based interfaces as a way for linux to leapfrog into that world. Reminds me of Flutter being adopted by Ubuntu recently which does very well as a web/desktop/mobile platform.
Re: The Web Is Eating the Desktop (2017)
#16The usual retort is "people use Electron because they only know web technologies".
No, it's not only that.
I've been programming GUI apps for 30 years, going through TurboVision, Delphi, MFC, WinForms, wxWidgets, Qt, WPF, native Android/iPhone, and probably 2 more I forgot about.
They all suck terribly when compared to React/Vue/HTML/CSS.
Creating a GUI app with web tech it's just so much more productive. It's like comparing the productivity of Python to C++. Sure, you can't write an audio editor in Python/Electron, but for 90% of GUI apps it makes no sense to use native frameworks. They are as productive and expressive as writing in assembly.
Re: The Web Is Eating the Desktop (2017)
#17Since the gui-fication of everything, nothing has made making a gui easier than web apps. The reason I like it is because of the cross platform capabilities. I don't have to worry about compiling for different platforms. I don't need to worry about platform specific issues. It's the ultimate form of portable code honestly nowadays.
Re: The Web Is Eating the Desktop (2017)
#18Electron apps are simply awful. They ignore all platform conventions.
Re: The Web Is Eating the Desktop (2017)
#19Since the gui-fication of everything, nothing has made making a gui easier than web apps. The reason I like it is because of the cross platform capabilities. I don't have to worry about compiling for different platforms. I don't need to worry about platform specific issues. It's the ultimate form of portable code honestly nowadays.
Right. Web for UI is fine for a lot of things. The bigger concern to me is losing offline support and control of the data as it all moves into the cloud.
Re: The Web Is Eating the Desktop (2017)
#20I think this is probably true, but I kind of hate it. It's such a staggering waste of computing resources. I don't know, maybe we can get to the point where these apps that include an entire browser are highly optimized but it's still kinda nuts.
Recognize this is a stepping stone toward a better experience.
Electron apps are slow, but eventually MS or Apple will decide to launch some sort of "integrated web desktop API" that plays well with Electron (and eventually eats its lunch). Seeing the speed boost, the other desktop OSes will do the same and suddenly we are all coding for the web for everything while the guts are rearranged dramatically beneath us.
This happens over and over in tech - like setting up a soundcard in 1995. First we had to futz with config files and IRQ conflicts and then things were Made Nice with "Plug and Play" - this is the step we are at now: Electron makes stuff work without all the futzing. It doesn't matter if it is slower or worse, it is winning and things will move underneath to make it make sense.
The step that next is the not caring: now sound cards just come baked in to the motherboard, hardware conflicts can be managed in software, dynamically resolved or who knows - I don't have to think about it any more. Soon you won't have to worry about performance on desktops because it will be an OS problem to make arbitrary web code run faster on desktops, not developers.