An unofficial WWDC app for OS X • Hacker News Board

Re: An unofficial WWDC app for OS X

#21

Post by Longhanks » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 9:16 PM UTC

TheOneTrueKyle wrote: post #16

misterrobot wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, it can conveniently turn your run-of-the-mill XSS bug into remote code execution! Welcome to 2016, everybody.

I am a person who always wanted to develop native desktop applications, but ended up developing for the web instead because the barrier to entry is lower. Now I have the opportunity to do what I actually wanted to do.

I think this marks why Hacker News is biased against Electron. I really appreciate your eager to develop desktop applications, but Electron apps are _not_ native. It brings web technologies to the desktop. This is clearly an advantage for web developers, as it, as you just said, lowers the barrier to entry. Custom UIs are in my opinion also much easier to develop using Electron - this is exactly what HTML/CSS/JS were designed for. But these apps don't fit into the operating system. They use few of the available APIs, they are restricted to a common layer of abstraction, which means they can only use features available on Windows/OS X/Linux and none of the platform specific features, they are always "statically linked" (what I mean is every Electron app ships it's own libraries and the whole framework itself), etc.

As you said, Electron clearly has its advantages. But I appreciate the effort when a developer creates an application using the target platform's native language, frameworks and usage patterns (in this case, Swift, AppKit and the Cocoa APIs). The result is, in my opinion, clearly worth the effort and a wonderful piece of software to use.

Re: An unofficial WWDC app for OS X

#22

Post by dceddia » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 9:29 PM UTC

Anyone else notice the string "macOS" in the screenshot? Is Apple moving away from the OS X naming scheme?

Re: An unofficial WWDC app for OS X

#23

Post by jdminhbg » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 9:32 PM UTC

dceddia wrote: post #22

Anyone else notice the string "macOS" in the screenshot? Is Apple moving away from the OS X naming scheme?

> NOTICE: The sessions shown in the screenshot are NOT REAL.

Re: An unofficial WWDC app for OS X

#24

Post by nicky0 » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 9:45 PM UTC

TheOneTrueKyle wrote: post #16

misterrobot wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, it can conveniently turn your run-of-the-mill XSS bug into remote code execution! Welcome to 2016, everybody.

I am a person who always wanted to develop native desktop applications, but ended up developing for the web instead because the barrier to entry is lower. Now I have the opportunity to do what I actually wanted to do.

Get a good book on OS X development in ObjC or Swift and download Xcode. Couple of weeks hacking on a toy project and away you go.

Re: An unofficial WWDC app for OS X

#25

Post by tracker1 » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 10:06 PM UTC

Longhanks wrote: post #14

bluetidepro wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious, what do you have against Electron built apps? I feel like the last few apps I've used that were built on Electron actually worked quite nicely. Wondering what you found bad with them...

Their UI feels alien on every platform. The startup time, memory consumption and general performance is subpar to native applications. Generally, I feel like developers who make software for platforms individually care more for user experience. Like this app, for example, it feels polished, uses the native OS X UI elements and performs super fast (much due to Swift in its nature being faster than JavaScript). I certa…

I think it's a pretty nice option when you don't have the time and resources to develop native applications for a few platforms, or for enterprise apps that are mostly a web front end with a few nice to haves.

Re: An unofficial WWDC app for OS X

#26

Post by chc » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 10:18 PM UTC

nicky0 wrote: post #24

TheOneTrueKyle wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a person who always wanted to develop native desktop applications, but ended up developing for the web instead because the barrier to entry is lower. Now I have the opportunity to do what I actually wanted to do.

Get a good book on OS X development in ObjC or Swift and download Xcode. Couple of weeks hacking on a toy project and away you go.

Now try to share that program with your Windows- or Linux-using friends.

That sort of gets to how I feel about Electron apps. If you don't like Electron apps, then just pretend any app made with it isn't available for your platform, as would likely be the case if they were not using a cross-platform library.

Re: An unofficial WWDC app for OS X

#27

Post by jventura » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 11:08 PM UTC

Longhanks wrote: post #14

bluetidepro wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious, what do you have against Electron built apps? I feel like the last few apps I've used that were built on Electron actually worked quite nicely. Wondering what you found bad with them...

Their UI feels alien on every platform. The startup time, memory consumption and general performance is subpar to native applications. Generally, I feel like developers who make software for platforms individually care more for user experience. Like this app, for example, it feels polished, uses the native OS X UI elements and performs super fast (much due to Swift in its nature being faster than JavaScript). I certa…

I'm developing an Electron application and I have to agree with you. Although I do not care much about memory consumption, the startup time on a Windows laptop I have sucks too much. Also, I've been doing web development for the last 5 years but web frontend tools are such a PITA even comparing to desktop crossplatform tools, let alone platform specific frameworks..

Re: An unofficial WWDC app for OS X

#28

Post by Viper007Bond » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 11:14 PM UTC

jason_slack wrote: post #10

Longhanks wrote: post #6

So refreshing to see a nice desktop app built without Electron. A well defined interface, designed specifically for the platform the author targeted. Major props to the author!

I am not understanding what all the hype is about "Electron". What does it bring to the table that I can't code myself? So many apps are based upon Electron.

The company I work for has an Electron app and the advantage of it is that we can take our existing Node.js-powered online product and package it up for desktop/offline use with just some minimal work. We don't have to maintain two completely separate codebases.

Re: An unofficial WWDC app for OS X

#29

Post by xufi » Wed, Jun 08, 2016, 1:46 AM UTC

Pretty cool. I've been wanting something like this for a bit sine I've been wanting to make an app and this coming up so I can keep in touch with the new technologies being announced . Thanks!

Re: An unofficial WWDC app for OS X

#30

Post by sdegutis » Wed, Jun 08, 2016, 2:48 AM UTC

Longhanks wrote: post #21

TheOneTrueKyle wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a person who always wanted to develop native desktop applications, but ended up developing for the web instead because the barrier to entry is lower. Now I have the opportunity to do what I actually wanted to do.

I think this marks why Hacker News is biased against Electron. I really appreciate your eager to develop desktop applications, but Electron apps are _not_ native. It brings web technologies to the desktop. This is clearly an advantage for web developers, as it, as you just said, lowers the barrier to entry. Custom UIs are in my opinion also much easier to develop using Electron - this is exactly what HTML/CSS/JS were…

Technically speaking, HTML was designed for reading and sharing scientific documents, CSS was meant for styling documents in minor ways, and JS was slapped on to compete with web "web applets" made by Microsoft and Sun.