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Is the madness ever going to end?

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Re: Is the madness ever going to end?

#201

Post by clusterfish »

bmeski wrote: post #169
clusterfish wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not (just) about money or profits. As a solo web dev, building for desktop with electron is faster. It saves me time, the most valuable resource. How I choose to spend that extra time - on more features or on vacation - is up to me. I don't want to spend it on learning yet another way (or several) to build UIs and apps, when I already know enough to make a good enough product for my goals. It would be great if E…

Quoted post unavailable.

I learn plenty of technologies - those that I want or need. I neither want nor need to learn any desktop GUI frameworks for my purposes, so I don't. Certainly not going to do anything just because some troll told me to.

Re: Is the madness ever going to end?

#203

Post by [deleted] »

bmeski wrote: post #186
phailhaus wrote: post #85

I feel comfortable with asserting that the author has never worked on a complex web application. This web-dev hate borders on pathological: this is a guy that seems to specialize in Unix/Linux tooling, doesn't have a single tutorial on web app development [1], and yet has an intense hatred towards a space that he barely understands. These types of arguments are incredibly embarrassing to read, not only because they b…

I work on a massive CMS and he’s correct. There is an insane groupthink going on in webdev. Another team in my org has spent a year reinventing our client side js so that our templates are now mixed with the svelte runtime. All to render/update cards on the page that can update when an api pings the page. So 6 months later they’re still building the svelte integration and have only shipped 2 pages to users. This is a…

[deleted]

Re: Is the madness ever going to end?

#204

Post by systemvoltage »

Jensson wrote: post #121
petepete wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a huge pity that we're so reliant on platforms instead of protocols - there would be native Slack clients for every platform. Few companies even allow proper API access. Spotify buck the trend, Spot is a fantastic app https://github.com/xou816/spot

Small companies loves protocols, but as they become big and dominant they start pivoting to platforms to exert control and extract more profits from the ecosystem. We need regulations around platforms, protocols are inherently more powerful and from the perspective of humanity almost always preferable over platforms, so the incentives of companies should reflect that, but it isn't right now. Stuff like email, http et…

The last thing I want is gov regulations by even more out-of-touch regulators than the people they’re regulating.

Standards are good. IETF is the reason for some sanity in IT.

Re: Is the madness ever going to end?

#205

Post by mjevans »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #197
petepete wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a huge pity that we're so reliant on platforms instead of protocols - there would be native Slack clients for every platform. Few companies even allow proper API access. Spotify buck the trend, Spot is a fantastic app https://github.com/xou816/spot

Crazy idea that I'm sure isn't an original thought: instead of adapting the languages to deal with abstracting the idiosyncrasies of each OS, change the OSes to expose a universal API to make everything else lighter. I guess that's also kinda Docker or QEMU or V8, but also https://github.com/solo-io/unik if you think about it differently. In other words: hey, Lisp Machines were an excellent idea back then, but they s…

Cross platform 'windowing toolkit' APIs are what's missing. At this point I'd be happy even if Microsoft, Apple, and UNIX likes (who would probably just implement any free open standard anyway) could agree on even ONE such interface.

Postscript as a UI language? Fine as long as they all do it.

HTML5+ as a UI language? (E.G. like the failed HP Fire or Firefox) Fine as long as they all do it.

Some new thing that isn't a complete dumpster-fire but is included everywhere and a free for anyone to implement interface? Fine as long as they all do it.

We have NO shortage of programming languages that can be cross compiled to different operating systems. Filesystem differences can be annoying but you can work around those. Entirely different user interaction paths? That's the sticking point.

Re: Is the madness ever going to end?

#206

Post by xwdv »

I don’t care about the memory my programs gobble up because we’re not in the fucking 80s where we have to fight for every kilobyte.

I don’t care about building abstractions on top of abstractions because we’re not building code to last centuries, we’re just trying to last for about a year or two before we do a completely different solution.

You might as well ask why modern architects build thin crappy glass buildings instead of solid stone structures that last for a millennia. Simple: we have better engineering knowledge of materials and techniques so that we can build things to last just long enough for when we want to replace them, and with the least amount of effort and material required while still being within safety tolerances. We do not need to overbuild. You overbuild only when you need something to last a very long undefined amount of time or you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing so you play it safe.

Re: Is the madness ever going to end?

#207

Post by solraph »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #61

I think this rant is going against the irrational outcomes of a few things 1. People tend to put excessive hope in silver bullets, quick fixes, and the easy path. "Discipline" is generally shied away from. 2. It's an attempt to save the more expensive thing (engineer time) for the cheaper thing (RAM) especially in the face of rapidly improving hardware (which may no longer be true). 3. As engineers become expensive,…

My observation is that 1. & 3. in your list are very closely related.

> 3. As engineers become expensive, people who have little interest in the subject become sufficiently motivated to hit the minimum bar, bringing down the average talent/quality of the pool

Which is how you get 1.

> 1. "Discipline" is generally shied away from.

Re: Is the madness ever going to end?

#208

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

codefined wrote: post #141
ozfive wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack in browser tab user here. Got sick of the app and how slow it was pretty fast. It's just not worth it.

Not a Slack user here. Is the app version _slower_ than the website? I assumed that since Electron is only a little bit more than a Chromium wrapper that they would have identical performance.

One Chromium runtime managing five tabs is more efficient than five Chromium runtimes running one site each (because those instances aren't able to share anything with one another).

Re: Is the madness ever going to end?

#209

Post by martinald »

Waterluvian wrote: post #55
root_axis wrote: post #23

The author is fighting a strawman. Rather than engage with the specific problems these solutions were built to solve they dismissively regard them as just flavor of the week trends purely for the sake of chasing newness. This is true of the entire post, but I'll tackle just one since it's emblematic of my issues with all the rest: The argument for Electron and React Native isn't "it's modern", it's "it's much cheaper…

I’m very critical when a company like Slack cannot find the time and resources to make native clients. I’m so #%^*ing tired of it taking three Mississippis to show a channel I click on. But on the whole, I don’t think the armchair critics truly appreciate how Electron reduces the cost by at least an order of magnitude. It’s a brilliant tool for shipping early and fast. My only criticism with these start-up use cases…

I'm actually surprised either Microsoft, Slack or a new startup in the space haven't made a native app yet. Wouldn't even need to be all of them; Teams could be a native Windows app and keep the electron one for mac/linux/mobile. Or Slack could make a native Mac one first.

Seems quite mad considering the use/value of the tools and the absolutely enormous user base they have.

Re: Is the madness ever going to end?

#210

Post by marcosdumay »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #96
root_axis wrote: post #23

The author is fighting a strawman. Rather than engage with the specific problems these solutions were built to solve they dismissively regard them as just flavor of the week trends purely for the sake of chasing newness. This is true of the entire post, but I'll tackle just one since it's emblematic of my issues with all the rest: The argument for Electron and React Native isn't "it's modern", it's "it's much cheaper…

> shittier performance Depends what you're writing. People aren't going to write performance-sensitive apps in Electron, like FPS games where customers demand 4K 120 FPS with full graphics enabled. But for Image burners (balena), Drone software (Betaflight), and Sophisticated code editors (VSCode), it's hardly a concern.

Hum... We are down in a thread where people are complaining it takes several seconds to see a set of text messages.
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