Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

baldurbjarnason.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 245 posts

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#131

Post by dom_inic »

This article could be about 20% as long if you cut out the rambling. You say modern SPAs are terrible but don't provide any examples of what you mean by that. You go on a completely irrelevant rant about Icelandic culture in the middle. But it's a post complaining about how modern web dev sucks, so HN will upvote it anyway!

We don't need more talking about what apps are good and what are bad. We need more doing and building (coincidentally what the people actually working in these ecosystems and trying to improve them are engaged in)

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#132

Post by biztos »

Gareth321 wrote: post #129

I hate web apps with a passion. Has anyone ever used the iOS YouTube app? This thing is hailed as a marvelous examples of web apps working "like native." Bollocks. It's an absolute mess. If one of the wealthiest companies in the world can't build a decent web app, there is no hope for anyone else. Web apps get the user 80% of what they want with 50% of the cost, so the business case is clear. That's why these apps ar…

The trillion-dollar company is often less able to produce quality products than a small shop, because of bureaucracy and hubris and dead weight.

So while I agree that the business case for web apps incentivizes mediocrity, there is still plenty of hope for everyone else. If your startup has a really great web app with awesome UX, you will have a pretty big advantage.

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#133

Post by exodust »

rootusrootus wrote: post #44

Why are tech choices having such an impact on the experience to begin with? Aside from small apps, the web developer is just the guy making the magic happen, there should be an actual product owner somewhere who is making decisions on experience. It's up to the devs to make the experience happen, but poor design is a different problem than what framework you wrote the code in.

> who is making decisions on experience

Product Owner: "Let's remove the Save button and instead simply save every time the user changes the value".

Developer: "No".

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#134

Post by julianbuse »

Gareth321 wrote: post #129

I hate web apps with a passion. Has anyone ever used the iOS YouTube app? This thing is hailed as a marvelous examples of web apps working "like native." Bollocks. It's an absolute mess. If one of the wealthiest companies in the world can't build a decent web app, there is no hope for anyone else. Web apps get the user 80% of what they want with 50% of the cost, so the business case is clear. That's why these apps ar…

By web app, I believe the author meant apps served in a browser, not a mobile app made from html/css/js with a cordova/capacitorjs wrapper. Also, google has problems delivering functionality in general. Have you tried using google home? It never works properly for me, and for some reason I can't log in to my family's home with my google workspaces account. Most things except for search are a mess there, and search is getting worse as well.

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#135

Post by BlargMcLarg »

dusted wrote: post #124
croes wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Web devs aren't discussing characters and plots but instead argue which typewriter to use. Better tools don't make better apps just like word processors don't make better books. The best web dev tools are worthless if the UX is bad.

You're making another important point.. Native have had fairly good tools for making GUIs, since like.. what.. 1991 ? Simple nice tools where you define your windows and drag the widgets onto them where you want them to be.. then hook up code to it... Web.. it's still stuck in the 80's in all the worst ways.. using a f*cking typewriter to define your UI.

Wouldn't be as bad if making a GUI in a webapp was more intuitive to begin with. But CSS and HTML have a decent number of unintuitive quirks you need to experience and mess around with before it 'makes sense'.

Then the best most can do is two views (mobile and desktop) which adapt to some various widths in an obvious way, using loads of whitespace as a solution.

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#136

Post by christkv »

onion2k wrote: post #116
adrianN wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe most apps never see the problem of hitting the row limit because the devs spend time beforehand thinking about which limitations they're likely to hit.

It's definitely possible, but the limit is 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 rows, or 281 terabytes, whichever the database hits first, so you probably could put the discussion off until year 2 or 3 if you really had to. Kind of like maybe the 'Send your friends money, divide the restaurant bill easily!' app founders first think will change the world could get really popular if it gets on the frontpage of HN..

I have a feeling you will long before experience other problems that makes likely you have to migrate to a different storage system before you hit that limit.

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#138

Post by zhte415 »

onion2k wrote: post #93
omarhaneef wrote: post #28

The author complains that developers argue about their tools and methods, insist on their favorite techniques, but produce (more) worse apps. Particularly for the amount of time and effort expended on developing the apps. The thing is: the debates aren’t naive. They’re exactly trying to workout the details. When someone says, hey forget postgresql and just use SQLite, and someone else says good luck if you hit n rows…

When someone says, hey forget postgresql and just use SQLite, and someone else says good luck if you hit n rows, and someone says it can easily handle n+m rows with x memory … This is a good example of how devs get things wrong. The argument between which database to use because you might hit the row limit has zero benefit to the user. It's devs wanting to avoid future work to migrate from one database to another; a…

Choosing to do nothing is still choosing to do something. In choosing to do something, one makes an informed choice. How informed that is is up to you. Row limit may be one, or performance or feature set may be another - say, choosing Postgres for some data types and easier indexing.

Making informed choices are of benefit to the user. How much benefit depends on one's opportunity cost doing X instead of Y. Choosing not to do X is still a choice, an informed one or an uninformed one.

Or to step away from choice of database, take privacy. I see an immeasurable number of things on Show HN that take user data but don't have a privacy policy, if they have one it's often copied and pasted for somewhere to placate Mailchimp or another 3rd party service, and very rarely is it actionable.

Not launching a product is of course problematic for a user. Launching one that doesn't confirm to norms and rights a user expects will also be problematic. Should we not launch? How informed should your choice be? California State law, GDPR? How about Malaysia, or South Korea?

There are rabbit holes one can dive in to. There are reasonable lengths to dive, of which zero should not be a default case. At least have a look inside. Solving a problem isn't rushing something out full of uninformed choices.

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#139

Post by plaff »

Gareth321 wrote: post #129

I hate web apps with a passion. Has anyone ever used the iOS YouTube app? This thing is hailed as a marvelous examples of web apps working "like native." Bollocks. It's an absolute mess. If one of the wealthiest companies in the world can't build a decent web app, there is no hope for anyone else. Web apps get the user 80% of what they want with 50% of the cost, so the business case is clear. That's why these apps ar…

I think it's because most apps are influenced way too much by "standards" that people expect but actually sucks.

I have 2 examples of web apps working really fucking well:

Missive (https://missiveapp.com/) is an email client web app with features that should be standard in every other email client. I run it via Firefox and it's the best damn email client I've ever used. It uses JS extensively but they use it very well.

Migadu (https://migadu.com/) is the absolute golden standard of email inbox services. It's not fancy but oh my days, does it work and it's so damn easy to use. Every time I have to set up emails I get happy because these guys spent exactly 0 seconds on trying to appeal to people who equates parallax-scrolling with competence. Migadu does not use JS as far as I can tell.

As a counterpoint to both, Office 365/Outlook is a gigantic, floppy donkey dick of a web app that makes all sorts of assumptions, has 3 different interfaces and is generally just a pain in the ass to use. Somthing as simple as logging in/out is a muddled, technical mess that makes it a god damned chore to change accounts.

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#140

Post by pzo »

dusted wrote: post #124
croes wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Web devs aren't discussing characters and plots but instead argue which typewriter to use. Better tools don't make better apps just like word processors don't make better books. The best web dev tools are worthless if the UX is bad.

You're making another important point.. Native have had fairly good tools for making GUIs, since like.. what.. 1991 ? Simple nice tools where you define your windows and drag the widgets onto them where you want them to be.. then hook up code to it... Web.. it's still stuck in the 80's in all the worst ways.. using a f*cking typewriter to define your UI.

Life got more complicated since introduction of smartphones and tablets - it's probably order of magnitude harder to do decent mobile app than desktop one:

1) you have smaller screen estate and have to split some forms into multiple page wizards ( on desktop if you lack space you just popup yet another window wherever it popups)

2) you have to support different screen orientations (portrait, landscape)

3) you have to support corners cases like notch or foldable screens

4) you have to support different screen sizes and different screen aspect ratio (on desktop still many apps don't allow resizing and its ok)

5) you don't have precision input such as mouse where you can hover on some small button and see via tooltip what it does.

6) you don't have physical keyboard instead a virtual keyboard that on appear eats almost half of your already screen estate and covers other form controls.

7) mobile OS make limitation what you can do in the background, how much memory you can use

8) mobile OS don't allow just dragging windows and resizing, and switching windows easily using native UI

Post reply on HN