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Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

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Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#251

Post by joshbaptiste »

smabie wrote: post #213
bobblywobbles wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I admire your words here. I am on the other side, building electron apps, I appreciate the flexibility and ease because I would rather iterate on ideas then learn three different OS-hooks. I do agree that memory usage is too high on these types of apps and we as developers can be lax about performance.

When why not just use gtk or qt and call it a day? Electron is unnecessary.

Mainly due to them being both more tightly integrated to C++/Python than JS/TS for building desktop apps.

Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#252

Post by pupdogg »

sime2009 wrote: post #180
ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #144

I'm going to be slammed for using these two words, but for any real work you need to have as few layers of indirection between the user and the machine as possible, and this includes the UX, in the sense that it is tailored to the fastest and most comfortable data entry and process monitoring. I don't see any `web first` or Electron solution replacing Reaper or Blender in a foreseeable future. One exception I'm intri…

OnShape ( https://www.onshape.com/ ) offers professional level CAD which runs in a browser. Works great.

I'm in agreement with @namdnay...I don't think it will replace enterprise packages like Siemens NX or CATIA anytime soon. I do all of my CAD design in Solidworks and I do like the out-of-the-box thinking/features of OnShape...but...their pricing model ends up being more expensive in the long run ($2100/year for Pro Version). I paid $4k for Solidworks in 2016 and it's paid itself off more than 10x times since then...all without the need for a forced upgrade! When a newer version substantiates its value for my workflow, I will upgrade. Not to mention, most of my work can easily be done in Solidworks 2008-2010 because that is the innate nature of CAD packages, regardless of the version, they will get the job done.

Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#253

Post by jfkebwjsbx »

zadjii wrote: post #51

I mean, we built the Windows Terminal as a native application because we didn't want users to have to be saddled with 40MB of a webview/Electron just to boot up a terminal. It might take us longer to make the terminal as feature rich than it would have with JS, but no amount of engineering resources could have optimized out that web footprint. When we think about what the terminal looks like in 5 years, that's what w…

I don't use Windows, but thank you for having gone for it.

Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#254

Post by CharlesW »

ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #236
CharlesW wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet it is a hardcore tool, and does gain a lot from being implemented as a web app. Another example might serve your point better.

Ok, I see my point being not so understandable, after all. I didn't mean Figma isn't a hardcore tool, I meant that we exclude it because it specifically concerns with web technology (being a tool for web design) and leverages web to implement collaborative usage. So it's probably logical for it to be a web app.

> So it's probably logical for it to be a web app.

Ah, gotcha. Although I'd have assumed that Figma is used more to design native apps that web apps, this helps me understand where you're coming from.

Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#255

Post by intrepidhero »

The lines between the two have been slowly blurring for some time now. My crystal ball says that will continue as the need for cross platform support, especially desktop versus mobile, gets bigger. I think we'll see more and more emphasis on 3rd party VM type frameworks, like JVM, unity, and electron. However with Moore's law reaching an asymptote I believe that writing for performance will also become more and more important. I think these forces will result in a high demand for the skills needed to improve performance on all types of apps.

What I'm hoping for is a pendulum reaction to the recent trends of UX design, where we see a renaissance in really solid interfaces that focus on discovery and speed. But I'm not seeing signs of that yet.

Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#256

Post by xwdv »

whowhatwhy wrote: post #241
PopeDotNinja wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal evolution has gone from Sublime Text 3 to Atom to VS Code to Sublime Text 3. I've never been a heavy plugin user, mainly sticking to code highlighting. The thing I really like is speed. Sublime Text rarely chokes on me. I love being able to type `cat some_one_gigabyte_file | subl` and getting it to open up with little difficulty. VS Code chokes on files of non-trivial size, and that was the thing I liked…

i just use less for big files, convenience is a matter of taste

I don’t open big files at all. There’s no point. Files exist as data made to be transformed from one form to another. It is only worth looking at a file in its final form unless you are making some kind of edit.

And even then, I make edits on large files through a series of commands, never opening the file.

By thinking of files in this way, it becomes easy to create programmable tool chains for manipulation.

Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#257

Post by macintux »

WilliamEdward wrote: post #216
PNWChris wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe they’re referring to the web as port 80/443 http(s) traffic. It’s the old World Wide Web vs internet distinction, if you will. Email really is just a protocol for message sending, and it lives on it’s own port with its own server. If you have an email client and access to an email server (POP/SMTP/however), you can use email over the internet but without the “web”. Basically, the web email client ought not…

It was the ambiguity of the word 'web' that tripped me up. You still need a network of computers for email to be useful.

I don’t think you’ll find many people here who agree that “web” is ambiguous.

Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#258

Post by prepend »

I run a native desktop app called Moneydance. Syncs files, encrypted, to dropbox, and everything runs locally on whatever machine runs Moneydance.

I use this because I don’t like the idea of financial account info being stored by a third party has has no liability for breach. And also because I have over 10 years of transactions in the ledger and running this remote can take a long time. I’m not even sure if there are any services that store for 10 years and let you do text searches.

Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#259

Post by jfkebwjsbx »

crazygringo wrote: post #127
heyoni wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not though. Not even close. And I know this partially a matter of taste but I have one of the fastest computers you can buy and I can’t even participate in text chats without input lag and delays in interaction. It’s not a good user experience for me at least but that’s ok, we’ll keep stacking more cpu power until it’s all in the cloud anyways.

That just sounds like server latency to me or some kind of bad programming like relying on polling. Obviously if you build a chat client in the browser and communicate between windows then it's instantaneous. Faster than human perception. Certainly doesn't seem to be a CPU issue to me. I mean, we run videochat in the browser which works fine. Obviously text chat can be instant.

You run hardware accelerated video, or in some cases SIMD hand-tuned native codecs.

That is in the opposite side of where the abstraction that the web provides is.

Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#260

Post by pupdogg »

robin_reala wrote: post #183
ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #144

I'm going to be slammed for using these two words, but for any real work you need to have as few layers of indirection between the user and the machine as possible, and this includes the UX, in the sense that it is tailored to the fastest and most comfortable data entry and process monitoring. I don't see any `web first` or Electron solution replacing Reaper or Blender in a foreseeable future. One exception I'm intri…

Figma is pretty much replacing all web design applications precisely because it’s leveraging web tech for collaboration on a single document at the same time.

Figma is a great tool and all but it will still take it years, if not decades, to replace immersive content creation technologies like Ventuz, one of the best in the game! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu2FnEVk9_U
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