The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

Post by dannyw » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 6:45 AM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #28

d3nj4l wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: cosmopolitan libc: As cool as it is, I don't think the barrier to widespread adoption of C as a greenfield language for application development was ever that things didn't run cross-platform, it was, you know, the footguns and complexity of building anything significant in C.

I don't know how old you are, but at 57 and having been "computing" for 35 years, I'd say that this is wrong, on two levels. 1. C has been the green field language for application for decades. 2. The major obstacle is precisely cross-platform development; without a fairly thick layer to abstract away the OS API/platform, it's very difficult. In addition to those two, there's the detail that lots of development projec…

Post by dannyw » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 6:49 AM UTC

wastholm wrote: post #45

speedgoose wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have a lot web apps on mobile because the mobile web browsers provide a worse experience compared to native applications, unlike Electron or Chrome on Desktop that provides a much better experience in general (unless you have a 10 years old hardware with very little ram or are into old school GUI I know). The companies making web browsers and mobile operating systems are the same companies making native app…

> mobile web browsers provide a worse experience compared to native applications, unlike Electron or Chrome on Desktop that provides a much better experience in general Electron apps are perhaps faster and cheaper to make than native desktop GUI apps for most organizations because they already have Web developers, but I've never heard anyone claim they're "better" than native, if that's what you're saying. Do you mea…

Post by HWR_14 » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 6:51 AM UTC

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #68

It is exactly the failure of Microsoft and Apple to propose any meaningful cross-platform API. Both are fighting to increase vendor lock-in - it is in their best interests that apps written on Windows don't work on macOS/iOS and the other way round. Linux/OS folks themselves are unable to solve this problem on their own and it becomes a mouse-and-cat game. The popularity of web apps helped to reduce the problem, but…

Post by Semaphor » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 6:53 AM UTC

mohanmcgeek wrote: post #2

Electron apps are still desktop apps. The web however did eat the desktop: everything other the browser and the text editor is now a web app. I have literally 4 apps that I use on my machine: terminal and postman in addition to the above. I am wondering why mobile apps too haven't entirely been replaced by Web apps

Post by hdjjhhvvhga » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 7:10 AM UTC

HWR_14 wrote: post #85

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #68

It is exactly the failure of Microsoft and Apple to propose any meaningful cross-platform API. Both are fighting to increase vendor lock-in - it is in their best interests that apps written on Windows don't work on macOS/iOS and the other way round. Linux/OS folks themselves are unable to solve this problem on their own and it becomes a mouse-and-cat game. The popularity of web apps helped to reduce the problem, but…

I don't know what you are talking about. Microsoft built a Linux compatible subsystem for Windows and also built (well, acquired) .NET VMs for OSX/Linux. It's trying hard to keep people on the desktop - any desktop.