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Nylas Mail is now free

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Re: Nylas Mail is now free

#311

Post by bpizzi »

blub wrote: post #196
bpizzi wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> JavaScript is NOT the first language to provide cross-platform GUI. Of course it's not. > There is no reason to use JavaScript just so you can get a "cross platform GUI". The main reason (imho) is that "JavaScript" (as you call it, but you should say "the web platform") is more future proof than "old toolkits". Qt would be the best candidate for a "cross platform GUI", but you are relying on the [Qt company/nokia/w…

Your message left me scratching my head. How can JS be more future-proof than old UI toolkits when JS libraries and frameworks are constantly changing? Sure, nobody will kill HTML and JS, but that's not the point. Nobody knows how UIs will be built with web technologies in two years! Edit: based on your reply below, it looks like I have to spell it out. GUIs are built with UI frameworks, not just with programming lan…

> Edit: based on your reply below, it looks like I have to spell it out. GUIs are built with UI frameworks, not just with programming languages and markup languages. JS frameworks are so short-lived that one can't be sure if their code will still work in one year.

Ok, so let me spell this out too (frameworks/librairies mixed):

  - jquery: 10 years
  - backbone: 6 years
  - angular v1: 6 years
  - ember: 5 years
  - react: 3 years
Otoh, Qt5 with QML: 3 years.

Quoting from wikipedia:

> Qt 5 was officially released on 19 December 2012. This new version marked a major change in the platform, with hardware-accelerated graphics, QML and JavaScript playing a major role. The traditional C++-only QWidgets continued to be supported, but did not benefit from the performance improvements available through the new architecture.

Re: Nylas Mail is now free

#312

Post by blub »

cookiecaper wrote: post #193
lj3 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Javascript gets used everywhere because it successfully commoditized programming. It requires very little knowledge to get it to work, so anybody can pick it up without much effort. For businesses, this means an endless supply of cheap labor. Most people here on HN and elsewhere believe this is a good thing. It furthers their dreams of programming becoming a basic literacy, like english and math. Keep in mind I don't…

I don't think that JavaScript did that. I think web development in general did that, and continues to do that. JavaScript is only contributing insofar as JavaScript-based backends are inexplicably now becoming more employable than some much better alternatives (which not too long ago I would've also been deriding, but they look beautiful compared to node). Until recently, and I know the "front-end devs" are going to…

If a company's doing web (as a lot are) they have processes and tools in place for that, so they would like to reuse them. These companies have also discovered that they can still hold on to most customers if they deliver merely adequate solutions.

They will then naturally choose the convenient-for-them known quantity and dismiss concerns regarding usability, performance, etc.

I don't see a real trend toward building apps using web technologies, but there is a lot of noise, making the topic seem larger than it is.

Re: Nylas Mail is now free

#313

Post by blub »

bpizzi wrote: post #212
blub wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do people expect nowadays from their toolkit? It can't be performance, because Electron is slow. It's not conservative power usage, because browsers are power hungry. It's not disk space or memory usage either. Nor is it a native-looking UI. Nor security. Nor privacy. Nor accessibility. The only thing I can think of is that it's free and allows the typical web developer to avoid learning anything new.

You missed the ecosystem ;) NPM, even if it has plenty of do-not-use-that-packages crap, is still far more furnished that Qt will ever be, for example. > The only thing I can think of is that it's free and allows the typical web developer to avoid learning anything new. One could say the same for the typical Qt developer that refuse to get serious in learning the web platform.

I think the front-end world has a big culture problem, and your answers are an example of that.

Ignoring arguments, aggressive advocacy, "you too"s, asserting that web technologies are great in the face of so much evidence to the contrary and most of all, insisting to use the same inadequate tools for everything from desktop to mobile to embedded.

I've been having the same discussion for six years with different characters now. One thing has never changed - web apps consistently show poorer quality than their native counterparts, especially in performance, resource usage and usability.

The software this community so focused on PR and advocacy is building is not good in spite of the bragging.

And regarding your arguments:

* Java, C++, .NET, Python, etc can claim having ecosystems. JS has a continuously churning collection of libraries. Nothing has been forgotten.

* a lot of Qt developers use it where it makes sense by bulding hybrid apps or together with QML.

Re: Nylas Mail is now free

#314

Post by bpizzi »

blub wrote: post #313
bpizzi wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed the ecosystem ;) NPM, even if it has plenty of do-not-use-that-packages crap, is still far more furnished that Qt will ever be, for example. > The only thing I can think of is that it's free and allows the typical web developer to avoid learning anything new. One could say the same for the typical Qt developer that refuse to get serious in learning the web platform.

I think the front-end world has a big culture problem, and your answers are an example of that. Ignoring arguments, aggressive advocacy, "you too"s, asserting that web technologies are great in the face of so much evidence to the contrary and most of all, insisting to use the same inadequate tools for everything from desktop to mobile to embedded. I've been having the same discussion for six years with different char…

> Ignoring arguments, aggressive advocacy, "you too"s, asserting that web technologies are great in the face of so much evidence to the contrary and most of all, insisting to use the same inadequate tools for everything from desktop to mobile to embedded.

Don't get me wrong, I'm actually a nice guys who has nothing against Qt/C++. I'm glad it exists because I can use it when what matters is power usage, native looking UI, security, privacy and all. It's just that I don't, personnaly, need those requirements.

> The only thing I can think of is that it's free and allows the typical web developer to avoid learning anything new

I'm sorry but this is simply wrong. And I think you don't need to show disregard to "typical web developers" when you're trying to make a point.

What do you choose when you need to quickly throw an MVP in front of a customer? Surely not C++/Qt (well, maybe yes if that's the only platform you master).

When you need a web-looking UI ? Not C++/Qt.

When you need to easily deploy on hundred's of windows workstations at a plant where IT is blocking you from installing anything on said workstations? A web app, not a C++/Qt client.

So, you see, maybe the web platform also has it advantages when you start looking outside of what you do everyday for a living.

Re: Nylas Mail is now free

#315

Post by bpizzi »

cookiecaper wrote: post #270
bpizzi wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> suddenly it's become easy and enjoyable. Actually it has become easy and enjoyable ;) Even for complex UIs. Just think seriously about what a stack like es6/React/Redux brings on the table against plain old ES5, and you'll be struck by how well things have become.

Last time I implemented a complex web frontend was about 2 years ago. I can assure you that the process was anything but "easy and enjoyable". I will, of course, grant that things have improved greatly since the bad old days of IE6. But that's not a good anchor point to use for "easy and enjoyable".

> I will, of course, grant that things have improved greatly since the bad old days of IE6. But that's not a good anchor point to use for "easy and enjoyable".

Totally granted, the web platform suffer from a very bad reputation. And what does not help at all is that one need to carefully choose his tooling among a zillion of short-lived, hyped github repos.

But there is future-proof gems for those who invest the time in trying and learning. In a jumble: React, Redux, Reagent, Re-frame, Typescript, Clojurescript, Om, Immutable.js, Om.next, and so on.

Re: Nylas Mail is now free

#316

Post by TheGrumpyBrit »

karim wrote: post #158
jcranmer wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could implement RFC 3798, an update of RFC 2298. It's not like these things haven't been standardized for almost 2 decades.

Unfortunately, standardization != widespread use. Tracking pixels are still the most reliable way to know whether a recipient (or many) opened your message.

https://xkcd.com/927/

Re: Nylas Mail is now free

#317

Post by TheGrumpyBrit »

thatcat wrote: post #178
jcranmer wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless your recipients use email clients that don't load remote http images except on demand. I can think of one email client with ~15 million users that does that.

Which client blocks remote images by default? Is it a cli or gui?

Every mail client I've used, including webmail, has blocked external images by default for at least the last decade.

Re: Nylas Mail is now free

#318

Post by Fnoord »

jamesgeck0 wrote: post #275
Fnoord wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The backend speaks SMTP, IMAP, and HTTP. It is basically a glue (or proxy) between SMTP/IMAP (including those protocols over TLS) and HTTP. Nylas Pro talks HTTP to the glue (I assume that is using TLS, so HTTPS). Nylas Mail also talks HTTP to the backend, but the backend runs locally, so you're self hosting the backend. I suppose this has a performance loss. (With Nylas Pro, you can set a separate backend server if y…

I don't think the free version of Nylas Mail is storing IMAP passwords, plaintext or otherwise. For Gmail, at least. 1. You never enter them into the client. It uses Oauth to authenticate. 2. By the comment here, it seems that they're using Google's Gmail API. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13417904

Oh, it does save the password.

Oauth makes sense that there's no password saved. A unique key is saved which is authenticated with Google. If this key leaks, you are hosed, too, but at least you can revoke that key.

I tried grep mypasswd ~/.nylas-mail/* and grep said Binary file shared.sqlite matches. This did not occur in ~/.nylas it makes sense and it is inevitable, a client like Thunderbird suffers from the same.

It can be circumvented by saving the password encrypted and decrypting it using a master password. That is akin to how LastPass and Mozilla save their cloud data.

Using containers etc would also lower the threat.

In a way its good the password is saved locally. The engine also runs locally. It moves the threat model to the client, away from Nylas servers. Kudos.

Re: Nylas Mail is now free

#319

Post by Fnoord »

notwhereyouare wrote: post #113
Fnoord wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I used Nylas for a while and really liked it, until they they forced everyone to pay $7 per month to use it. Sorry, but that isn't a fair way of describing what occurred. Nylas is a startup, trying to figure out a business model which works for them. You're not yet forced to pay. If you had a Nylas ID back when Pro was announced you got a gratis year of subscription. Now, they released a gratis version once more, c…

> If you had a Nylas ID back when Pro was announced you got a gratis year of subscription. If you didn't, you had to pay.

True, if you did not have a NylasID before May 1st 2016.

Re: Nylas Mail is now free

#320

Post by allover »

e12e wrote: post #284
allover wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His lazy comment doesn't need rationalising. VS Code is not 'a very bad app'. If you know of a comparable app that uses fewer resources to a significant degree please let us all know and I'm sure we'll all switch.

Vim?

I did say 'comparable'.

Built in debugger is just one example that makes Vim not comparable to VS Code: https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/editor/debugging

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