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Stop Building Closed Ecosystems

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Re: Stop Building Closed Ecosystems

#21

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

scarface74 wrote: post #17
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #9

The native side of this has long been addressed by cross-platform toolkits including but not limited to: Qt, GTK, FLTK, WxWidgets (note: all FLOSS, at least optionally). Alas, web development "decided" to completely reinvent the wheel for all this stuff, leading to a new generation of heading-to-native toolkits derived from browser-based technologies, such as Electron, React Native and Flutter. Unless you believe the…

The native side of things has been address very badly by cross platform tools. I don’t want lowest common denominator shitty cross platform apps.

So what do you want?

"Highest common denominator" doesn't make much sense in this context - it's functionally equivalent to lowest common denominator.

You want N different implementations, 1 per platform?

You think the cross-platform toolkits could be better? Do you have an explanation for why they are not?

Re: Stop Building Closed Ecosystems

#22

Post by LinguaBrowse »

znpy wrote: post #12

Qt is fairly open, I don’t get why the author doesn’t point at qt for a valid alternative.

Author here. Very confusing licence, is my main complaint (I speak also as the author of Svelte NodeGUI, which is built on top of Qt). The fact that there are hour-long seminars explaining the licencing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7etOQfrMiM) show that it's a real issue. I recall Qt for mobile has an even muddier story, with a different licencing/pricing model again.

Besides that, I also personally find it horrible to program with, because different elements have differents way of managing their child nodes (unlike HTML Elements, which have one consistent API). And of course I'm a JS dev, though NodeGUI does solve that. But maybe these aren't valid gripes.

Re: Stop Building Closed Ecosystems

#23

Post by satvikpendem »

LinguaBrowse wrote: post #7
photochemsyn wrote: post #5

The long-term solution seems to be to ditch iOS and Android on mobile devices entirely and replace them with fully featured operating systems based on Linux, e.g. https://itsfoss.com/open-source-alternatives-android/

I like the idea of Ubuntu Touch (having worked with Ubuntu a lot), but even more so Firefox OS. As a web developer, the idea that "native" could simply mean "the Web platform" is really attractive.

I don't want to run a browser to run applications, that's almost as bad as running Electron apps on the desktop.

Re: Stop Building Closed Ecosystems

#24

Post by gjsman-1000 »

scarface74 wrote: post #17
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #9

The native side of this has long been addressed by cross-platform toolkits including but not limited to: Qt, GTK, FLTK, WxWidgets (note: all FLOSS, at least optionally). Alas, web development "decided" to completely reinvent the wheel for all this stuff, leading to a new generation of heading-to-native toolkits derived from browser-based technologies, such as Electron, React Native and Flutter. Unless you believe the…

The native side of things has been address very badly by cross platform tools. I don’t want lowest common denominator shitty cross platform apps.

Then, on the other hand, you'll rarely see Linux ports. Lowest Common Denominator apps have been a blessing for Linux users - we would have never had Visual Studio Code, Slack, Postman, and who knows what else otherwise; and you can't tell me any of their developers would've done the work to port everything to GTK or Qt otherwise.

Re: Stop Building Closed Ecosystems

#25

Post by yw3410 »

nicoburns wrote: post #11
LinguaBrowse wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's potential in those ideas, if only they are not to the detriment of the Web (which is already working just fine). As an alternative to iOS and Android development, I welcome ground-up solutions as long as they can get text editing right. However, I bring that up as I can't see anyone ever making a ground-up text view as reliable as a browser or native one (consider CJK, RTL, and vertical text, and IME…

The Rust ecosystem (with cosmic text and parley) is well on the way to achieving this

Rust does well on the text-shaping and glyph rendering, but the rest of the ecosystem is still massively geared towards Windows and game development.

I am rooting for Vello to succeed!

Re: Stop Building Closed Ecosystems

#26

Post by scarface74 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #21
scarface74 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The native side of things has been address very badly by cross platform tools. I don’t want lowest common denominator shitty cross platform apps.

So what do you want? "Highest common denominator" doesn't make much sense in this context - it's functionally equivalent to lowest common denominator. You want N different implementations, 1 per platform? You think the cross-platform toolkits could be better? Do you have an explanation for why they are not?

I want native apps on my platform of choice that leverage the native capabilities of that platform. That’s the entire reason I chose one platform over the other. Mac users complained about Word 6 forever ago when MS tried to use a cross platform toolkit and Apple’s Windows app were just as bad.

Re: Stop Building Closed Ecosystems

#28

Post by asdfman123 »

Developers don’t like closed ecosystems for obvious reasons. But companies like them because they’re very profitable, if they can get enough users trapped in them.

Having an open ecosystem can often mean you have no moat around your business.

Re: Stop Building Closed Ecosystems

#29

Post by ksec »

I guess everyone goes through the stage of life thinking that Open System, or Cross Platform should be the norm. Java write once run everywhere in the 90s or earlier attempt like Smalltalk. But forgetting the lesson of Write Once, Debug Everywhere. Even if you had "open" Ecosystem completely built on top of Linux you will still have completing OS with different parts like UX, UI or windowing systems / rendering engine. So what you want is a single OS for everything and everyone. Then you run into the other sets of argument which I wont name here.

There is probably a reason why many working in Tech or specifically software is heavily leaning into certain political spectrum which relates to the above.

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