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I'm done making desktop applications (2009)

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Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)

#81

Post by miki123211 »

ryandrake wrote: post #17

Almost all of Patrick's points are great if your software development goal is to make a buck . They don't seem to matter if you're writing open source, and I'd argue that desktop apps are still relevant and wonderful in the open source world. I just started a new hobby project, and am doing it as a cross-platform, non-Electron, desktop app because that's what I like to develop. The onboarding funnel: Only a concern i…

Attitudes like these is why non-developers don't want to use open source software.

These concerns may not matter to you, the developer, but they absolutely matter to end-users.

If your prospective user can't find the setup.exe they just downloaded, they won't be able to use your software. If your conversion and onboarding sucks, they'll get confused and try the commercial offering instead. If you don't gather analytics and A/B test, you won't even know this is happening. If you're not the first result on Google, they'll try the commercial app first.

Users want apps that work consistently on all their devices and look the same on both desktop and mobile, keep their data when they spill coffee on the laptop, and let them share content on Slack with people who don't have the app installed. Open source doesn't have good answers to these problems, so let's not shoot ourselves in the foot even further.

Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)

#82

Post by mattfrommars »

I have lot and hate relationship with windows native desktop application. As a kid, I use to look for something GUI application and .exe application since they are breeze to run and just felt right. Now in my day job, I just dislike developing for windows desktop application - partly probably the application is massive and super slow to develop or just there isn't a lot of investment from the company stand point into the product.

Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)

#83

Post by the__alchemist »

ryandrake wrote: post #17

Almost all of Patrick's points are great if your software development goal is to make a buck . They don't seem to matter if you're writing open source, and I'd argue that desktop apps are still relevant and wonderful in the open source world. I just started a new hobby project, and am doing it as a cross-platform, non-Electron, desktop app because that's what I like to develop. The onboarding funnel: Only a concern i…

They're also ubiquitous for creative works, i.e. the sort of things a small set of people spend much time on, but is not something most people use. Examples:

  - CAD / ECAD
  - Artist/photos
  - Musician software. Composing, DAW etc
  - Scientific software of all domains, drug design etc

Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)

#84

Post by MarcelOlsz »

miki123211 wrote: post #81
ryandrake wrote: post #17

Almost all of Patrick's points are great if your software development goal is to make a buck . They don't seem to matter if you're writing open source, and I'd argue that desktop apps are still relevant and wonderful in the open source world. I just started a new hobby project, and am doing it as a cross-platform, non-Electron, desktop app because that's what I like to develop. The onboarding funnel: Only a concern i…

Attitudes like these is why non-developers don't want to use open source software. These concerns may not matter to you, the developer, but they absolutely matter to end-users. If your prospective user can't find the setup.exe they just downloaded, they won't be able to use your software. If your conversion and onboarding sucks, they'll get confused and try the commercial offering instead. If you don't gather analyti…

I'm a seasoned developer and I frequently come across OSS projects where I spend half an hour or more in "how the fuck do I actually use this"-land. A lot of developers need to take the mindset of writing the documentation for their non-tech grandma from the ground up.

Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)

#85

Post by shevy-java »

Well ... 17 years ago.

"Over roughly the same period my day job has changed and transitioned me from writing thick clients in Swing to big freaking enterprise web apps."

I mean, the web kind of won. We just don't have a simple and useful way to design for the web AND the desktop at the same time. I also use the www of course, with a gazillion of useful CSS and JavaScript where I have to. I have not entirely given up on the desktop world, but I abandoned ruby-gtk and switched to ... jruby-swing. I know, I know, nobody uses swing anymore. The point is not so much about using swing per se, but simply to have a GUI that is functional on windows, with the same code base (I ultimately use the same code base for everything on the backend anyway). I guess I would fully transition into the world wide web too, but how can you access files on the filesystem, create directories etc... without using node? JavaScript is deliberately restricted, node is pretty awful, ruby-wasm has no real documentation.

Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)

#86

Post by satvikpendem »

ryandrake wrote: post #17

Almost all of Patrick's points are great if your software development goal is to make a buck . They don't seem to matter if you're writing open source, and I'd argue that desktop apps are still relevant and wonderful in the open source world. I just started a new hobby project, and am doing it as a cross-platform, non-Electron, desktop app because that's what I like to develop. The onboarding funnel: Only a concern i…

Agreed, desktop frameworks have been getting really good these days, such as Flutter, Rust's GPUI (which the popular editor (and more importantly a competitor to a webview-based app in the form of Electron) Zed is written with), egui, Slint and so on, not to mention even the ability to render your desktop app to the web via WASM if you still wanted to share a link.

Times have changed quite a bit from nearly 20 years ago.

Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)

#87

Post by sharts »

MarcelOlsz wrote: post #84
miki123211 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attitudes like these is why non-developers don't want to use open source software. These concerns may not matter to you, the developer, but they absolutely matter to end-users. If your prospective user can't find the setup.exe they just downloaded, they won't be able to use your software. If your conversion and onboarding sucks, they'll get confused and try the commercial offering instead. If you don't gather analyti…

I'm a seasoned developer and I frequently come across OSS projects where I spend half an hour or more in " how the fuck do I actually use this "-land. A lot of developers need to take the mindset of writing the documentation for their non-tech grandma from the ground up.

LLMs to the rescue

Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)

#88

Post by jstanley »

ryandrake wrote: post #66
theK wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. We did, it is the browser.

"The Browser" has turned out to be a pretty terrible application API, IMO. First, which browser? They are all (and have been) slightly different in infuriating ways going all the way back to IE6 and prior. Also, a lot of compromises were made while organically evolving what was supposed to be "a system for displaying and linking between text pages" into a cross-platform application and system API. The web's HTML/CSS…

They're not that different, and it's a pretty good platform and pretty easy to program for. That's why it won.

Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)

#89

Post by satvikpendem »

miki123211 wrote: post #81
ryandrake wrote: post #17

Almost all of Patrick's points are great if your software development goal is to make a buck . They don't seem to matter if you're writing open source, and I'd argue that desktop apps are still relevant and wonderful in the open source world. I just started a new hobby project, and am doing it as a cross-platform, non-Electron, desktop app because that's what I like to develop. The onboarding funnel: Only a concern i…

Attitudes like these is why non-developers don't want to use open source software. These concerns may not matter to you, the developer, but they absolutely matter to end-users. If your prospective user can't find the setup.exe they just downloaded, they won't be able to use your software. If your conversion and onboarding sucks, they'll get confused and try the commercial offering instead. If you don't gather analyti…

This presupposes that the OSS creator even wants users in the first place, which might not always be the case as it could be personal software; and that these users actually want these features, as many do not want analytics, ads, and A/B tests in your app.

Re: I'm done making desktop applications (2009)

#90

Post by MarcelOlsz »

sharts wrote: post #87
MarcelOlsz wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a seasoned developer and I frequently come across OSS projects where I spend half an hour or more in " how the fuck do I actually use this "-land. A lot of developers need to take the mindset of writing the documentation for their non-tech grandma from the ground up.

LLMs to the rescue

It's the principle.
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