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Write code for the web

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Re: Write code for the web

#241

Post by behnamoh »

deadbabe wrote: post #204
jwells89 wrote: post #197

The web is great in theory, but the bare-bonesness of the browser environment makes it an exceedingly unappealing platform for apps specifically when you’re used to developing with a throughly batteries-included experience like you get on Apple platforms. Where on macOS a highly capable, polished app can be easily be developed with a list of dependencies and sub-dependencies that can be counted on a single hand (and…

What’s wrong with Javascript

> What’s wrong with Javascript

Javascript.

Re: Write code for the web

#242

Post by jwells89 »

airstrike wrote: post #117
BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #59

Years ago I decided to delve into learning Swift and native iOS development. I simply could not get accustomed to using XCode. The UI/UX of XCode is atrocious in a way that I’m struggling to articulate. I found myself constantly opening and closing panels just to click on icons that weren’t intuitively grouped together. To open one panel would forcefully minimize the other. It’s like a tenth of my time was dedicated…

IMHO XCode is both great and terrible. I miss it when I'm in vscode, but I also hate it when I'm in XCode, if that makes sense? It's like a heavy IDE of yore, which means the more you comply with it, the more you'll enjoy it—but that also leaves a feeling that you're not really in control. It's definitely worse than it could be if Apple cared enough to make it half as snappy as vscode feels. The shitty support for vi…

Storyboards are indeed terrible. XIBs are notably better due to not bogging the editor down with N screens but still not great. Both suck for version control being gigantic blobs of machine generated XML.

This is why I abandoned storyboards and XIBs in iOS development 7-8 years ago. UIKit is actually a pretty decent code-only experience, particularly since the addition of anchor-based autolayout constraint building.

It was actually a major point of frustration that it’s not practical to go code-only with Android Framework on Android and WinUI/Windows App SDK on Windows, both of which are heavily invested in XML layout and resource files. Jetpack Compose thankfully fixes this on Android at least.

Re: Write code for the web

#243

Post by isodev »

hu3 wrote: post #194
isodev wrote: post #155

Writing for the web of today is merely changing one walled garden for another. We don't live in a state of "free and open web" - it's dominated by two ad companies controlling the browser and social aspects of it. Some would argue that we should keep pumping browsers with native-like APIs to escape the "big bad App Store" while in reality this merely increases the foothold of Big G and their cousin Meta. The issue is…

I don't understand this rationale. Web apps can be used by many devices, mobile or desktop, iOS, macOS, iPadOS, Android, Windows, and Linux. If web dominance changes I'm still left with an application that works everywhere. How is that comparable to native applications that only work in the latest versions of a single OS? The only reason web apps didn't dominate yet is because Apple can't force them to pay 30% of the…

> If web dominance changes I'm still left with an application that works everywhere.

That's the faulty assumption in my view. It doesn't work everywhere - even on the web, you're bound to whatever the dominant browser thinks is right for you.

Some random examples from recent months - 3rd party cookies (putting aside the fact that they were enschitified for ads), Google suddenly decides to turn them off and they're gone. Ad blockers don't make it as an extension (so extensions are not, in fact, a solid substitute for apps). See AMP - you don't even get the choice if your website will be transformed into whatever Big G thought was an "optimised experience". What's to stop them from forcing you to enable "privacy-focused topics" or Web Bluetooth to sign into your Gmail account? Let's not even begin to discuss Search - all from your browser company.

You see, browsers have become much more than simply web agents. Your app's documents and hypermedia are technically downloadable "everywhere". However, just like on an App Store device, if and how users can discover your web content and how they experience it is entirely locked inside the walled garden of your Chrome-like browser vendor.

PS: Since before the browser Interop initiatives (now more than 3 years ago), Safari has been leading the race when it comes to accepted standards.

Re: Write code for the web

#244

Post by jwells89 »

deadbabe wrote: post #236
jwells89 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not JS itself that’s the problem, it’s the need to write it to fill gaps in browser facilities. Rather than there be 10k different implementations of a scrolling recycler list of wildly varying quality, there could just be one in each browser engine that web devs can rely on, allowing them to instead focus on writing application code.

Even if those facilities were available wouldn’t the complaints then shift to some other high level facility not being available natively?

It’d be rinse-and-repeat until browsers had a decent toolkit out of the box, yes. That doesn’t strike me as a bad thing.

Re: Write code for the web

#245

Post by Cheer2171 »

mvdtnz wrote: post #174
dtagames wrote: post #79

This author seems confused about something that he, himself explains. The reason that Apple doesn't care about developers is that they have created such a walled garden cult w/ users that developers are forced to produce products for their platform or they lose half their market -- or more. At my day job in mobile game development (for a small studio inside a large company), we have to fight Apple constantly -- not o…

I have been writing software professionally for 15 years and I have never written a single line of code for an Apple device, and I never would. Contributing to the Apple ecosystem is a choice, no one is forced to do it. Any developer who contributes to the Apple ecosystem is taking an active part in the situation.

> Contributing to the Apple ecosystem is a choice, no one is forced to do it.

This is such a disingenuous argument that ignores the huge pile of incentives at play. Here is an equally disingenuous argument: anyone who sells or gives away any software to anyone in the US is taking an active part in the US military industrial complex.

Re: Write code for the web

#246

Post by deergomoo »

gymbeaux wrote: post #226

When I think about it, it astonishes me that there are people in the world who take Apple's developer tools, and make some really beautiful and useful iOS apps. I've tried on and off since high school and have never been able to do it. I started in high school with Xcode and Objective-C, which is a very difficult language to work with (being not that far removed from C/C++). When they moved to Swift I thought "okay f…

I’ve been quite happy with Objective-C and Swift from mostly hobbyist experience, but Xcode truly is baffling.

Any time I’ve ever had to do anything with build configs or something relating to project metadata rather than just writing code, I’ve just been winging it based on some average of StackOverflow advice, weighted towards recency cause it all seems to change every few years.

I have no idea if this stuff is all documented anywhere; if it is I haven’t been able to find it.

Re: Write code for the web

#247

Post by ksec »

>the form factor my mother uses has changed from a laptop to an iPad. But it still satisfies that core value prop.

>Let's consider a different context. Even if there were no apps in my phone, I would still buy an iPhone. For myself likely, but most certainly for her.

I have been thinking about this since COVID. I recently posted [1] on Apps required for setting up a new Mac. Apart from BitTorrent client, VSCode, a Video player and related library, 99% of time I am inside a Browser. i.e We are very very close to a point where a Web Browser is all we need. Especially for consumption devices similar to iPad.

This also means having a platform other than Google, Microsoft or Apple is more feasible than ever. Unfortunately Facebook or Amazon doesn't seems to be interested. I dont see any other companies to have this appetite. Ideally something similar to Mozilla or WikiPedia would be better. But both are too small right now to try something of this size.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39164362

Re: Write code for the web

#248

Post by troupo »

behnamoh wrote: post #239
chilmers wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nice thing about the web is that while it’s no company’s favoured platform, it’s valuable to all of them as a way into each other’s platforms. That’s why whoever is “winning” the platform war a particular point tends to neglect the web. See Microsoft in the 2000s, and Apple now. But all their competitors are incentivised to push the web forward, because it’s a useful fallback as a way to get their apps into the w…

> See Microsoft in the 2000s, and Apple now. This. Apple's Safari (on iOS and macOS) is the Microsoft IE of 2020s. It's unbelievably behind the more sophisticated browsers (Firefox, Chrome) and yet, Apple couldn't care less.

It's not IE by any imaginable standard. And it's only "unbelievably behind" if you count all the non-standard APIs that Chrome ships by default and calls them standard.

As for why Safari isn't the new IE, I recommend Breaking the Web Forward https://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2021/08/breaking_th...

Re: Write code for the web

#249

Post by mgaunard »

ahmedfromtunis wrote: post #15

Early on, I made the choice to not to invest in learning native mobile development. I focused all my limited time on the web, and I think that, for once, I made the right choice. Today, one can build amazing stuff for the browser. And, in my very humble opinion, the vast majority of apps should've been WebApps — except for maybe Uber, Google Drive, and games. I worked in the journalism business, and, in my country, t…

Why invest time fad-of-the-month technology at all?

Invest your time into foundational pieces of the technology stack instead.

Re: Write code for the web

#250

Post by troupo »

echelon wrote: post #73
host0 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PWAs, especially those built with an offline-first approach, are so much closer to the native experience than those from half a decade ago. However what concerns me is Google's and Apple's incentives to help them get better to a point where they can rival native apps which could hit their bottom line.

Google and Apple should be regulated to offer the same functionality and performance to the web. Their grip on the most important technology of the century is astounding and harmful. Honestly first-class web mobile installs without hoops and scare walls would be the thing to strive for.

> Google and Apple should be regulated to offer the same functionality and performance to the web

And who is going to determine which exact functionality they both must implement?

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