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Comment by dewey | Hacker News Reader

Not necessarily. The concern was "because it’s not web-based", which could mean that they don't like the web UI or the web based technology stack behind it.

For me a native app has to both look and feel native. An app that looks like a native app (Like an Electron app can) isn't fully native for me because it still runs a web browser under the hood.

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I dislike Electron as much as the next guy, but that description of what's "native" is IMHO quite arbitrary. Anything using a cross-platform UI toolkit doesn't fit that description, e.g. Qt apps definitely don't look like they are native outside KDE, GTK outside GTK based DEs/WMs, Java apps don't look native anywhere, nor does Tk, etc. while an Electron app that used native-like UI elements could.

I think on macOS the definition of native is most often “Cocoa” and not the absence of web technologies.

It's a spectrum. My hierarchy for Mac apps goes something like: Cocoa > Java > QT >>> Marzipan > Electron.

On old OS's, Carbon would be between Cocoa and Java. And individual apps can vary a bit. But Electron apps generally feel less foreign than QT apps, which at least makes some attempt to use native Mac elements.

^ I'm past the edit window but noticed a bad typo I need to correct—Electron apps feel more foreign than QT apps, not less!

Of course. However, between the close to sweet f*ck-all support we used to get on Linux for some software vs. a decent enough Electron app, I'll still take Electron. But I admittedly do have some RAM to spare.

Could have at least used Java :(

Eh. Outside Jetbrains' IDEs, I don't remember ever using a Java app that didn't feel like clunky as hell.

They're often better on macOS (assuming the developer put in some amount of effort) because Apple helped design the Mac SWING.

I think that's exactly what 'keep[ing] building the native macOS application as a first-class citizen' means.

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