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Comment by outworlder | Hacker News Reader

> It's clear users in general don't care about an app being pure Mac OS controls/SDKs/etc.

They may not put it in those terms, but they do. They can tell when an app feels 'weird' or slow (be it actually slow or just higher latency). That depends a lot on the user base for the specific app in question. The more 'casual' the user base, the less it matters.

Being native also allows you to get functionality for free that other users may depend on. In OSX it translates to things like scripts, or more often, assistive devices, like screen readers.

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I like to write native apps (Swift).

I won’t go into why (as everyone here seems to be trying to convince everyone else, who aren’t really listening, anyway. I’m not really looking to change my viewpoint).

Figma is cool. I’m working with a designer, now, and we’ll see how it goes. Not sure I’d really say it was a direct Sketch competitor, though. I think Adobe Illustrator is Sketch’s biggest competitor, and that says a lot about Sketch.

What can Sketch do that Figma can't?

Work offline, Better font rendering

Better support for the built-in accessibility features of macOS.

I wonder how many people with visual accessibility issues would take a graphic design job

Accessibility features are used by people regardless of whether they have visual accessibility issues. For example, I (and many others–watch some WWDC presentations closely and you'll see this) use the "display zoom" feature during presentations and when doing UI work to focus on things. The feature where you wiggle the mouse cursor to make it big? That's an accessibility feature, but it got a prime spot at the keynote when it was announced. I have subtitles enabled all the time since it helps me catch things in videos if I miss what someone said. macOS has text-to-speech, which is quite useful to read me back things I write for grammatical errors or typos. Accessibility features can and are used by everyone. (Disclaimer: I have partial colorblindness and wear glasses.)

You can use voiceover as a way to add a lot of context and “color” to a UI. I make a big effort to support voiceover in my apps. In fact, most of the text that I translate is never seen by the user[0].

On the Mac, I also like to use tooltips, applying the same string as voiceover.

[0] https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/ambiamara/blob/bbb1d98... (Note, also, that these voiceover strings have been localized in French, German, and Spanish).

of all the features you mention, except TTS none depend on the app being written in a specific framework as far as I know ? (and I don't remember TTS not working in e.g. Qt apps for instance - at least I know that I sometimes bash my keyboards repeatedly to stop the damn thing that I opened by whatever goddamn shortcut :D)

This was a direct response to your comment, so I was mainly focused on what accessibility features I use. However, one I missed but I use all the time is being able to control applications using accessibility APIs.

They could certainly take copywriting and proofing jobs.

Run natively on the Mac /s

Why /s though? It is a huge pro for some people.

Because it's already been mentioned a number of times in the thread and is a very major selling point (IMO).

Custom keyboard shortcuts

VS.Code users aren't exactly casual users and in the main are happy enough to use it as their main coding interface many hours per day (and yes I understand that this is HN so now there will be a bunch of people saying "I'm not happy).

I love VSCode, but Electron apps are still pretty brutal on battery life, so it’s hard to work for very long without being plugged in. I’d personally love a pure native version for that reason alone, but the feature set wins out for day to day usage since I work mostly from home anyways.

I love the things VSCode offers that its competition doesn’t. I can’t imagine working with any of the other available editors for the Mac. I hate how I feel like I’m working in a weird web app all day every day. I feel both simultaneously.

Give Panic's Nova a try:

https://nova.app

Wanted to say I started taking a look yesterday and I’m not sure how I feel about it yet. But I don’t have my whole workflow set up yet. Thanks for the nudge, I’d been meaning to give it a look!

No vim plugin makes it DOA as far as I'm concerned

Compare it to plain vim and you'll be shocked at the responsiveness difference. I even find the jetbrains IDEs kinda laggy.

I’ve always found Jetbrains stuff really laggy, even when I tried Clion on my current maxed out 16” MBP, to be honest it’s one of the things that has always put me off their software. The text entry might not be laggy but the general UI has that “laggy Java” (sorry, I know it’s not a Java fault but I just associate it with Java GUI apps!) feel. Personally I find VS Code much more responsive on the whole.

I've been a software developer since the 1990s. I know how Vi(m) feels and I much prefer the affordances offered by VS.Code.

Ironically Jetbrains IDEs are Java, using Java Swing for the UI[1]! This is even less native than VS.Code where at least native widgets are used.

I guess this shows how much our impressions are formed by expectations!

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/a/12311981/280795

Swing is definitely not "less native" than Electron. The entire window is a web view in Electron apps. I believe Java Swing was even an officially supported UI toolkit on the Mac a long time ago.

Not in the way Cocoa is, but it had a PLAF coming from Apple at the time.

The menus in Swing aren't native but are in Electron.

Maybe Electron supports native menus, but VS Code certainly doesn't use them, at least on Windows and Linux.

Simple experimental proof: resize the window to be very small, and open a menu. The menu can't go outside the bounds of the window.

What menus?

>"I even find the jetbrains IDEs kinda laggy."

On my laptop (6 core 3,9GHz 32GB RAM and NVME) VS Code is fast and responsive, still wastes lots of RAM though. Jetbrains tools meanwhile were way more laggy on the same setup.

VSCode users never seen snappy and well-made IDE. Most probably think "source code highlighting" + "project drawer" = IDE.

Just going to leave this here https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/

I just suck it up and adopt the tooling required by customer's IT, on private laptops I use Sublime instead, and pay for it.

And I dream the day that React Native for Windows/Mac team at Microsoft manages to force a VSCode rewrite.

It’s a huge mixed bag. Great and terrible at same time.

I still don’t think the vast majority of users care. Slowness is something separate and I’d agree that a laggy interface is an awful one, especially with a visual tool like Sketch. But I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone make that complaint about Figma.

It’s true, the vast majority of users don’t need accessibility features, but those who do absolutely cannot compromise on them.

I'm not involved with figma in any way, just a user. But from what I understand, it is written in c++ and uses webassembly. Some ui parts are in standard TS+css. [1]

There is absolutely no reason not to be responsive, low on memory and as powerful as a native app.

[1] https://www.figma.com/blog/webassembly-cut-figmas-load-time-...

The backend is rust I believe. But at the end of the day I've used figma and the UI isn't anywhere near as responsive as a native app. You might not care about this but some people do.

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