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Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance

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11–20 of 230 posts

Re: Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance

#11
post #8

So this is like all those other frameworks that compile to native components, except this one is natively Typescript? I’ll take it

I think? there isn't a typescript runtime? just a build time? I'm not positive how business logic gets executed but:

> it compiles directly to native views

Re: Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance

#12
post #8

So this is like all those other frameworks that compile to native components, except this one is natively Typescript? I’ll take it

I think? there isn't a typescript runtime? just a build time? I'm not positive how business logic gets executed but: > it compiles directly to native views

One of the Valdi's authors here. It's using native views under the hood, like React Native, and there are 3 modes of compilation/execution for the TS source. It can be interpreted from JS (TS compiled to minified JS source), interpreted from JS bytecode (TS compiled to JS source, minified, then compiled to JS bytecode ahead of time), or compiled to native code directly (TS compiled to C ahead of time).

Re: Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance

#13
post #5

I’m not sure I trust snap of all companies to make a good cross platform framework after how terrible their android app has been.

I think it’s been changed since, but wow was it weird finding out that instead of taking photos, the Android app used to essentially take a screenshot of the camera view.

Re: Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance

#14
So now I can finally implement the most god-awful, ugly, cumbersome and unintuitive GUI methodology ever to face a large population of users into my own apps? This abomination that started the whole user-experience decline by making this kind of yuck the gold standard for apps today is finally open source?

Color me yellow.

Re: Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance

#15

So now I can finally implement the most god-awful, ugly, cumbersome and unintuitive GUI methodology ever to face a large population of users into my own apps? This abomination that started the whole user-experience decline by making this kind of yuck the gold standard for apps today is finally open source? Color me yellow.

I hope it has "load spam ads directly into the list the user was about to touch somehow the millisecond before they touch it using magical force field technology so they click the wrong thing every time" functionality. I've been missing that in my apps

Re: Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance

#16
post #15

So now I can finally implement the most god-awful, ugly, cumbersome and unintuitive GUI methodology ever to face a large population of users into my own apps? This abomination that started the whole user-experience decline by making this kind of yuck the gold standard for apps today is finally open source? Color me yellow.

I hope it has "load spam ads directly into the list the user was about to touch somehow the millisecond before they touch it using magical force field technology so they click the wrong thing every time" functionality. I've been missing that in my apps

Now offering 4 swipe directions!

Re: Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance

#17
post #5

I’m not sure I trust snap of all companies to make a good cross platform framework after how terrible their android app has been.

I think it’s been changed since, but wow was it weird finding out that instead of taking photos, the Android app used to essentially take a screenshot of the camera view.

I worked on the camera in Instagram iOS for a while. There at least, there could be a 5,000ms latency delta between the “screen preview” and the actual full quality image asset from the camera DSP in the SOC.

I don’t know a thing about Android camera SDK but I can easily see how this choice was the right balance for performance and quality at the time on old hardware (I’m thinking 2013 or so).

Users didn’t want the full quality at all, they’d never zoom. Zero latency would be far more important for fueling the viral flywheel.

Re: Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance

#18
post #5

I’m not sure I trust snap of all companies to make a good cross platform framework after how terrible their android app has been.

I think it’s been changed since, but wow was it weird finding out that instead of taking photos, the Android app used to essentially take a screenshot of the camera view.

Things have improved since then, but as I understand it, the technical reason behind that is that it used to be that only the camera viewfinder API was universal between devices. Every manufacturer implemented their cameras differently, and so developers had to write per-model camera handling to take high quality photos and video.

Re: Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance

#19

I was at Snap during this project’s early days (Screenshop!) and spent a bit of time debugging some stuff directly with Simon. He’s a wonderful engineer and I’m thrilled to see this project out in the open. Congratulations Snap team! Well deserved.

Definitely one of the cooler projects to watch while I was there. I recall the goal was to open-source it from early on, so I'm glad to see it come to fruition!

Re: Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance

#20
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think? there isn't a typescript runtime? just a build time? I'm not positive how business logic gets executed but: > it compiles directly to native views

One of the Valdi's authors here. It's using native views under the hood, like React Native, and there are 3 modes of compilation/execution for the TS source. It can be interpreted from JS (TS compiled to minified JS source), interpreted from JS bytecode (TS compiled to JS source, minified, then compiled to JS bytecode ahead of time), or compiled to native code directly (TS compiled to C ahead of time).

An AOT TS -> C compiler is fantastic - how much of the language is supported, what are the limitations on TS support? I assume highly dynamic stuff and eval is out-of-scope?
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