Hacker News Reader

Comment by debaserab2 | Hacker News Reader

Not really. Especially not on Hacker News. There's an expectation when someone says native app that you're getting a binary that you compiled from source you created with a reasonable expectation of performance.

No one thinks native as being a webview wrapped executable where the authored source is actually a series of HTML, CSS, and javascript. They just don't. Calling it "native" is a misnomer.

View on HN

You're right about the meaning of 'native', but if you expect to have a 'reasonable expectation of performance' just because an app is written as a native binary, you may be sorely disappointed. There are plenty of poorly performing native applications out there, and it's also certainly possible to write minimal, fast HTML/CSS/JavaScript.

Absolutely. But you don't start out with a large memory footprint like an electron app, you actually have to code yourself into that problem instead of immediately inheriting it.

I'd still argue that most people are going to assume that a native app is probably faster than your average electron app, for a whole host of reasons.

That's comparing outlier to outlier. If you compare two averagely coded apps, something written in C++ will make an absolute joke of something written in Javascript.

What if the application does have compiled libraries generated from the authored source?

I'm not trying to define what a native app is, I'm only explaining the way many users such as myself perceive it today. The waters are obviously getting much murkier on what fits the definition of native and it does look like the writing is on the wall that the state javascript on the desktop is just going to continue to improve.

What about using electron with the cachedData option...? Or some webassembly thrown into the mix? Is native a development style or a product?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com