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

I'm done making desktop applications (2009)

kalzumeus.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 211 posts

Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)

#121

Post by sevenzero »

ryandrake wrote: post #17

Almost all of Patrick's points are great if your software development goal is to make a buck . They don't seem to matter if you're writing open source, and I'd argue that desktop apps are still relevant and wonderful in the open source world. I just started a new hobby project, and am doing it as a cross-platform, non-Electron, desktop app because that's what I like to develop. The onboarding funnel: Only a concern i…

I quit all social media, cancelled Spotify and whatnot and I am hella thankful for the Strawberry media player as a desktop app as it allows me to play all the music i actually own. I love desktop apps.

Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)

#122

Post by mwkaufma »

traderj0e wrote: post #116
mwkaufma wrote: post #43

Over a decade of circular "web apps are better for the subset of problems webapps are good at" tautologies.

Web apps weren't so easy to make back then, so standalone apps were the norm. Shortly before 2009 a lot of the web apps were Java or Adobe Flash, and 2009 was part of the transition period where platforms were at war with that stuff but open-web alternatives weren't mature yet.

Yeah I know I was there -- also today's wasteful "open-web alternatives" wouldn't fly anyway, because I recall even during the XP era having min-specs of, like, 800mhz/512mb

Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)

#123

Post by em-bee »

binaryturtle wrote: post #49
autonomousErwin wrote: post #14

Grass always looks greener on the other side, mainly because it's been fertilised.

No, "grass always looks greener on the other side" is a perspective thing. If you stand on your own grass then you look down onto it and see the dirt, but if you look over to the other side you see the gras from the side which makes it look more dense and hides the dirt. But it's the same boring grass everywhere. :)

hah, i have been arguing this for years. first time to see someone else making the same argument. nice!

Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)

#124

Post by hn_acc1 »

IshKebab wrote: post #67
data-ottawa wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it’s worth, I tried making a GTK4 app. I got started, created a window, created a header bar, then went to add a url/path entry widget and everything fell apart. Entry suggestions/completions are formally deprecated with no replacement since 2022. When I did get them working on the deprecated API there was an empty completion option that would segfault if clicked. The default behaviour didn’t hide completion…

There are definitely a shortage of good GUI toolkits - making one is a huge undertaking. GTK is mediocre, as you discovered. QtWidgets is extremely good though, even if it is effectively in maintenance mode. Avalonia also seems good too though I haven't used it myself.

I've used Qt off and on, and it's generally worked as advertised. Although when drawing very short lines on a canvas way back when (~2004), it wouldn't do a great job and I had to hack in custom routines that did a much better job.

For prototyping / one-offs, I've always enjoyed working in Tcl/Itcl and Tk/Itk - object oriented Tcl with a decent set of widgets. It's not going to set the world on fire, but it's pretty portable (should mostly work on every platform with minor changes), has a way to package up standalone executables, can ship many-files-as-one with an internal filesystem, etc..

Of course, I spent ~15 years in EDA, so it's much more comfortable than for most people, but it can easily be integrated into C/C++ as well with SWIG, etc.

Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)

#125

Post by rustcleaner »

Never depend on anything you can't later privateer when the publisher decides to retroactively change the deal (or worse: when they become a subscription "service"). Minimize regular payment sinks. Owning your own infrastructure will always be cheaper in the long run; when you rent, you're paying the cost of ownership plus maintenance plus profit. Sure there may be an economy of scale, but what are you trading for that scale (loss of privacy, loss of sovereignty, loss of ownership, loss of control)?

Just. Don't. Subscribe.

Simple!

Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)

#126

Post by satvikpendem »

janalsncm wrote: post #102
satvikpendem wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This presupposes that the OSS creator even wants users in the first place, which might not always be the case as it could be personal software; and that these users actually want these features, as many do not want analytics, ads, and A/B tests in your app.

I guess in the same way that one might presuppose a boat wants water? If a piece of software doesn’t have users and the developers don’t care about the papercuts they are delivering, I would argue what they have created is more of an art project than a utility.

It's more like building your own boat then someone else coming along and saying it'll never compete with a cruise ship because it doesn't have a water slide and endless buffet; sometimes, things in the same category can serve wholly different purposes.

Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)

#127

Post by rustcleaner »

ryandrake wrote: post #17

Almost all of Patrick's points are great if your software development goal is to make a buck . They don't seem to matter if you're writing open source, and I'd argue that desktop apps are still relevant and wonderful in the open source world. I just started a new hobby project, and am doing it as a cross-platform, non-Electron, desktop app because that's what I like to develop. The onboarding funnel: Only a concern i…

I generally despise "web tech" as it is today. Browsers are not application platforms!

Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)

#128

Post by rustcleaner »

leonidasrup wrote: post #112
the__alchemist wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're also ubiquitous for creative works, i.e. the sort of things a small set of people spend much time on, but is not something most people use. Examples: - CAD / ECAD - Artist/photos - Musician software. Composing, DAW etc - Scientific software of all domains, drug design etc

Adobe Photoshop, the most used tool for professional digital art, especially in raster graphics editing, is was first example of a perfectly fine commercial desktop application converted to cloud application with a single purpose - increased profit for Adobe.

Master Collection CS6 still works excellently, and is now (relatively) small enough to live comfortably in virtuo. Newer file formats can be handled with ffmpeg and a bit of terminal-fu.

Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)

#129

Post by hn_acc1 »

ryandrake wrote: post #17

Almost all of Patrick's points are great if your software development goal is to make a buck . They don't seem to matter if you're writing open source, and I'd argue that desktop apps are still relevant and wonderful in the open source world. I just started a new hobby project, and am doing it as a cross-platform, non-Electron, desktop app because that's what I like to develop. The onboarding funnel: Only a concern i…

To me, I prefer desktop apps because I KNOW when I've upgraded - it either said "upgrade now?" and did it, or, in the olden days, I had to track it down, or I installed an updated version of a distro, which included updated apps, so I expected some updates.

There are some things that NATURALLY lend themselves to a website - like doctor's appointments, bank balance, etc - but it's still a pain when, on logging in to "quickly check that one thing" that I finally got the muscle memory down for because I don't do it that often, I get a "take a quick tour of our great new overhauled features" where now that one thing I wanted is buried 7 levels deep or something, or just plain unfindable.

For something like Audacity (the audio program), how the heck does it make sense to put that on a website (I'm just giving a random example, I don't think they've actually done this), where you first have to upload your source file (privacy issues), manipulate it in a graphically/widget-limited browser - do they have a powerful enough machine on the backend for your big project? - then download the result? It's WAY, WAY better to be able to run the code on your own machine, etc. AND to be stable, so that once you start a project, it won't break halfway through because they changed/removed that one feature your relied upon (no, not thinking of AI at all, why do you ask? :-)

Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)

#130

Post by hn_acc1 »

hn_acc1 wrote: post #129
ryandrake wrote: post #17

Almost all of Patrick's points are great if your software development goal is to make a buck . They don't seem to matter if you're writing open source, and I'd argue that desktop apps are still relevant and wonderful in the open source world. I just started a new hobby project, and am doing it as a cross-platform, non-Electron, desktop app because that's what I like to develop. The onboarding funnel: Only a concern i…

To me, I prefer desktop apps because I KNOW when I've upgraded - it either said "upgrade now?" and did it, or, in the olden days, I had to track it down, or I installed an updated version of a distro, which included updated apps, so I expected some updates. There are some things that NATURALLY lend themselves to a website - like doctor's appointments, bank balance, etc - but it's still a pain when, on logging in to "…

Of course, I'm also an old-school hacker (typed my first BASIC program ~45 years ago), so I have a desktop mentality. None of this newfangled 17-pound-portable stuff for me :-) And phones are at best a tertiary computing mechanism: first, desktop, then laptop, then phone. So yes, I'm clearly biased. Not trying to hide that.
Post reply on HN