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Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

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Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

#301

Post by wredue »

jgord wrote: post #280
s1k3s wrote: post #6

I want to make native apps but Apple and Microsoft seem to be trying really hard to stop me. I have to buy developer accounts, buy certificates for signing binaries, share 30% of my revenue with them for barely any reason and so on. Not to mention the mess they've introduced in their APIs - especially Microsoft. So of course we choose the much simpler, much cheaper way of the web.

One of the reasons I moved to Javascript web development after many years as C/C++ dev, and after the hell of making iphone apps for Apples appstore - you dont have to get a licence, get approval or make an installer, if you ship a web 'app'.

You don’t have to do any of that for native apps either.

What on earth is happening in this comment section?

Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

#302

Post by sumnole »

jgord wrote: post #280
s1k3s wrote: post #6

I want to make native apps but Apple and Microsoft seem to be trying really hard to stop me. I have to buy developer accounts, buy certificates for signing binaries, share 30% of my revenue with them for barely any reason and so on. Not to mention the mess they've introduced in their APIs - especially Microsoft. So of course we choose the much simpler, much cheaper way of the web.

One of the reasons I moved to Javascript web development after many years as C/C++ dev, and after the hell of making iphone apps for Apples appstore - you dont have to get a licence, get approval or make an installer, if you ship a web 'app'.

With the added bonus of being available to users across platforms.

Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

#303

Post by wredue »

fragmede wrote: post #235
Aaron2222 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have to buy developer accounts The Apple Developer Program is only needed for macOS if you want to do sign your binaries or distribute through the Mac App Store. And you only have to pay Microsoft if you want to publish to the Microsoft Store (or use Visual Studio if you're a company that has more than 5 Visual Studio users, more than 250 computers, or more than $1 Million USD in annual revenue). > buy certificat…

If you don't sign your binaries on macOS, the friction for the user to run your app is prohibitive, outside of developer-focused communities.

I’m not sure what is “prohibitive” about pressing literally one button.

Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

#304

Post by fragmede »

wredue wrote: post #303
fragmede wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't sign your binaries on macOS, the friction for the user to run your app is prohibitive, outside of developer-focused communities.

I’m not sure what is “prohibitive” about pressing literally one button.

There are a bunch of words around the button. If you read them, they make you not want to press the button.

Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

#305

Post by readyman »

Maxatar wrote: post #205
pjmlp wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine that, having to pay for the tools one has to use for their work, what an abuse.

Having to pay a monthly fee in perpetuity in order to distribute an application is absolutely egregious.

The fee is for selling someone else's software. I personally despise capitalism, but your complaint about it is among the least convincing ones I have ever heard.

Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

#306

Post by [deleted] »

s1k3s wrote: post #6

I want to make native apps but Apple and Microsoft seem to be trying really hard to stop me. I have to buy developer accounts, buy certificates for signing binaries, share 30% of my revenue with them for barely any reason and so on. Not to mention the mess they've introduced in their APIs - especially Microsoft. So of course we choose the much simpler, much cheaper way of the web.

[deleted]

Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

#307

Post by jimmaswell »

alerighi wrote: post #64
stephc_int13 wrote: post #20

My opinion about this is that yes, we lost our way, and the reason is very simple, it is because we could. It was the path of least resistance, so we took it. Software has been freeriding on hardware improvements for a few decades, especially on web and desktop apps. Moore's law has been a blessing and a curse. The software you use today was written by people who learned their craft while this free-ride was still ful…

The thing that makes me crazy is that the thing that we do on computers are basically the same each year, yet software are more and more heavy. For example just in 2010 a Linux distribution with a DE just started did consume 100Mb of RAM, an optimized version 60Mb of RAM. I remember it perfectly. I had 2Gb of RAM and did not have even a swap partition. Now just a decade later, a computer with less than 8Gb of RAM is…

I have a Macintosh Plus, SE, 7200, and iMac G3 (System 6, 6, 7, 9) I've been using for fun lately after fixing many of them up. Even with real SCSI harddrives in the SE, 7200, and iMac, they're such a joy to use compared to a modern OS. Often much more responsive, UI is always more consistent, not to mention better aesthetics. They really don't make software like they used to. A web browser or OS should not be slow on any modern hardware but here we are.

Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

#308

Post by ehnto »

ryandrake wrote: post #291
teeray wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Customers refusing to upgrade on-premises software After a certain period of time, that software worked just fine for those customers. Photoshop is a great example. Sure, you won’t get the flashiest features, but CS4 will still work for you on a Win7 machine without any additional fees paid.

Once I commit to buying a version of Software X, I'm happy with it. As a user I expect Software X to work as-installed for decades to come. I don't want new features. I don't want the UX to change on me all of a sudden. I don't want it to get slower. Bugfixes and security fixes are fine, as long as everything else remains the same. I wish more developers understood and respected this.

This is the real reason I use linux and open source, I want stability and flexibility not inevitably enshittifying SaaS. I am not an OSS or FOSS die hard, and I even advocate for a return to selling software as a deliverable so making small applications is a viable small business. But SaaS is the only viable business model it seems.

Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

#309

Post by modeless »

cosmotic wrote: post #206
s1k3s wrote: post #6

I want to make native apps but Apple and Microsoft seem to be trying really hard to stop me. I have to buy developer accounts, buy certificates for signing binaries, share 30% of my revenue with them for barely any reason and so on. Not to mention the mess they've introduced in their APIs - especially Microsoft. So of course we choose the much simpler, much cheaper way of the web.

Devil's advocate: you now get a lot of tooling for 'free', which used to cost hundreds or thousands of dollars.

The problem with this argument is that the tools for proprietary platforms are inferior to the cross-platform ones in many cases. VSCode is better than XCode or Android Studio. GCC and Clang are better than MSVC. We don't need platform lock-in to subsidize good tools because the best tools are unencumbered.

I'd happily build iOS apps without XCode or any of Apple's frameworks to save the 30% fee. Heck, I'd do it even if I still had to pay the 30%, I hate being forced to use XCode.

Re: Did we lose our way in making efficient software?

#310

Post by AnonymousPlanet »

bitwize wrote: post #253
fragmede wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't sign your binaries on macOS, the friction for the user to run your app is prohibitive, outside of developer-focused communities.

And if you don't sign your binaries on Windows, Windows Defender will assume they're malware and silently delete them.

That statement is just not true. We don't sign our software and we never had that happen with any customer. It neither happened to any unsigned software on any of my own machines, in spite of running Defender on them.
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