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High-Level Is the Goal

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Re: High-Level Is the Goal

#31

Post by cyber_kinetist »

ragall wrote: post #30
cyber_kinetist wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main consensus in the native space is that Qt is still miles ahead of any other cross-platform desktop framework (including WxWidgets). Doesn't mean that Qt is anywhere good - it's just the least worst option out of all. I hoped someday Flutter might be mature enough for desktop development, but so far they've focused most of their efforts on mobile and I don't think this will change in the future.

> The main consensus in the native space is that Qt is still miles ahead of any other cross-platform desktop framework (including WxWidgets). Doesn't mean that Qt is anywhere good - it's just the least worst option out of all. That's not consensus. I very much reject a "desktop framwork". Qt has its own abstractions for everything from sockets to executing processes and loading images, and I don't want that. It force…

> I very much reject a "desktop framwork". Qt has its own abstractions for everything from sockets to executing processes and loading images, and I don't want that.

Yes, that is the consensus of why Qt sucks - it's a massive framework that tries to do everything at the same time with a massive toolset of in-house libraries. This is inherently tied to the revenue model of the Qt Company - sell custom modules that work well with the Qt ecosystem at a high enterprise-level price. I also wish to just use the "good" parts of Qt but I can't, since it already has a massive QtCore as its dependency.

However, there is still no cross-platform framework except for Qt that can actually do the most important things that a desktop framework actually needs: an actual widget editor, styling and theming, internationalization, interop with native graphics APIs (though I have gripes with their RHI system), etc. That's why I'm rooting for PanGUI (https://www.pangui.io/) to succeed - it pretty much completes all the checkboxes you have, but it's still WIP and in closed alpha.

> I hoped someday Flutter might be mature enough for desktop development >> Anything that forces a specific language and/or runtime is dead in the water.

Yeah, but at that time I thought this was at least better than wrangling with Qt / QML. You can write the core application logic ("engine" code) in C++ and bind it with Dart. There are already some companies I've seen gone a similar route with C# / WPF.

Re: High-Level Is the Goal

#32

Post by cyber_kinetist »

rubenvanwyk wrote: post #24

So from what I understand… Someone needs to build Qt’s successor, probably with more beginner-friendly declarative semantics (akin to HCL or Cue) and probably with syntax closest to YAML or Python (based on learning curve, beginner readability etc). The backend will probably have to be something written in Zig (likely) or Nim (capable, less likely) and will probably have to leverage OpenGL/Metal, WebGL and WASM. Obvi…

There is Slint (https://slint.dev/), which was a company founded by ex-Qt devs and seem to be trying to make a better alternative to Qt. The core engine is built wiht Rust, but they also provide C++ and JS bindings and also have a QML-like scripting language you can use to design UI quickly. So far I think they've solidified their revenue model by catering to embedded devices, but I haven't seen a solid usecase for desktop apps (yet...)

Re: High-Level Is the Goal

#33

Post by ragall »

relyks wrote: post #15
cyber_kinetist wrote: post #11

I think the real conclusion is: someone has to make a native cross-platform desktop UI framework that doesn't suck. (Yeah Qt exists, but it really sucks...) Until then, everyone will default to just using the browser for a desktop app, and the beatings will continue. Because of this, I'm really looking forward for PanGUI to step up ( https://www.pangui.io/ ), their UI framework is very promising and I would start usi…

What about Flutter?

Anything that forces a specific language is a no-no.

Re: High-Level Is the Goal

#34

Post by JimDabell »

throwup238 wrote: post #26
twelvedogs wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

jquery was an unoptimised mess? it's like 30k minimised and just bridged a bunch of functionality that browsers lacked as well as providing a generic api that let you (often) ignore per-browser implementation and testing of your code there's no reason to blame it for the types of websites being made either, it doesn't really provide enough functionality to influence the type of site you use it on

Since when did we start using file size as a measure of efficiency or optimization? Off the top of my head: $() CSS parsing and DOM traversal was way slower than querySelector or getElementById, both of which predate jquery by years . Every $('.my-class') created wrapped objects with overhead. Something like $('#myButton').click(fn) involved creating an intermediate object just to attach an event listener you could’v…

> $() CSS parsing and DOM traversal was way slower than querySelector or getElementById, both of which predate jquery by years.

You have that backwards – jQuery predates querySelector by years.

The reason why getElementById is fast is because it’s a simple key lookup.

Re: High-Level Is the Goal

#35

Post by nlawalker »

I really like the sentiment here, and Handmade Network has such a cool vibe, but I can't help but think that he/they would have a bigger impact by focusing more on illustrating to people how this mindset leads to value and less on teaching and learning the skills.

>Building it yourself might sound crazy, but it’s been done successfully many times before—for example, Figma famously built their app from scratch in WASM and WebGL, and it runs shockingly well on very large projects.

Yes, let's hear more about this. "Collapsing Reddit comments could have been like 180ms faster" isn't very convincing to smart, ambitious people deciding what they want to be about. Find more examples like Figma and get people to believe that there's still lots of room for up and comers to make a name for themselves by standing on their performance, and they'll take care of the learning and building themselves.

Re: High-Level Is the Goal

#36

Post by ragall »

cyber_kinetist wrote: post #31
ragall wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The main consensus in the native space is that Qt is still miles ahead of any other cross-platform desktop framework (including WxWidgets). Doesn't mean that Qt is anywhere good - it's just the least worst option out of all. That's not consensus. I very much reject a "desktop framwork". Qt has its own abstractions for everything from sockets to executing processes and loading images, and I don't want that. It force…

> I very much reject a "desktop framwork". Qt has its own abstractions for everything from sockets to executing processes and loading images, and I don't want that. Yes, that is the consensus of why Qt sucks - it's a massive framework that tries to do everything at the same time with a massive toolset of in-house libraries. This is inherently tied to the revenue model of the Qt Company - sell custom modules that work…

As far as I can tell, PanGUI is a drawing library not a graphical toolkit. Its primitives are geometrical, not widgets. Its showcase is an audio app, which is as far away as possible from a boring productivity application that I'd like to do.

In my university days I was very much into GUIs, and I've written apps with wxWidgets, plain Gtk 1 and 2, GNOME 2, Qt, Tk, GNUstep and even some fairly obscure ones like E17 and FTLK. For my tastes, the nicest ones were probably GNOME2, Elementary and wxWidgets. Especially GNOME2, which had a simple builder that let me create the basic shell of an app, with some horizontal and vertical layout boxes that I could later "hydrate" with the application logic.

Re: High-Level Is the Goal

#37

Post by wtetzner »

throwup238 wrote: post #26
twelvedogs wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

jquery was an unoptimised mess? it's like 30k minimised and just bridged a bunch of functionality that browsers lacked as well as providing a generic api that let you (often) ignore per-browser implementation and testing of your code there's no reason to blame it for the types of websites being made either, it doesn't really provide enough functionality to influence the type of site you use it on

Since when did we start using file size as a measure of efficiency or optimization? Off the top of my head: $() CSS parsing and DOM traversal was way slower than querySelector or getElementById, both of which predate jquery by years . Every $('.my-class') created wrapped objects with overhead. Something like $('#myButton').click(fn) involved creating an intermediate object just to attach an event listener you could’v…

Both querySelector and querySelectorAll came well after jquery. I remember it being a big deal when browsers added support for them.

Re: High-Level Is the Goal

#39

Post by Sevii »

He makes an interesting point that we are coding programs that run more slowly now than they did 10 years ago. Javascript has only gotten faster over the last decade, computer have faster CPUs and more RAM. The problem is the frameworks and the programs have gotten slower.

What did we gain exactly? Reddit is better at displaying videos and images now. But it's slower despite faster hardware.

Re: High-Level Is the Goal

#40

Post by ulbu »

cellis wrote: post #7

While directionally correct, the article spends a lot of time glorifying jquery and not enough on what a horrible, no good, unoptimized mess of a framework jquery was, and by extension what kinds of websites were built back then. I remember those times well. The reason to use React isn't because it was new, far from it . It was because it won vs. Ember, Angular, et. al. in 2014-2015? as the best abstraction because i…

3 counts of “jquery” in the text. once again, which one of them glorifies it?
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