Hacker News Reader

Comment by RockIslandLine | Hacker News Reader

Why would you ever build that kind of application using web technologies?

Simple: every machine has already installed the gateway to your program: a web browser. No need to deal with issues like antivirus going bonkers, weird MSVCRT versions installed leading to support requests, you save a ton of money when you need to support OS X or god forbid Linux, and last but not least, an SaaS business model has recurring revenues while it doesn't have to deal with rampant piracy at the same time.

There's a weird subset of HN that think people should still be building desktop apps. It's like they haven't paid any attention to the software market for the last 10 years.

I for one would love the return of the good old days, where I could pay once for $software, have it on a physical medium and could work with it as long as I managed to have a computer/VM that runs it.

So much culture, especially in gaming, will be inevitably lost with the SaaS and streaming trend. For media like video, music and books at least many national library laws require the deposit of two or more copies at the national archives, but interactive media? Games that require online activation? That's all gonna be lost forever.

A browser gives you robust networking, caching, rendering, and security out of the box. SaaS means updates and versioning aren't issues. Online means I don't have to consider network installs behind law firm's firewalls. I'd prefer not to have to touch any of those myself even if it means I have to deal with JS and SVG rendering performance (which is actually really interesting).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com