Hacker News Reader

Comment by yannoninator | Hacker News Reader

I think the desktop seriously needs a production, RAM and developer friendly breakthrough that isn't Electron.

Tauri may be it, but the desktop SO needs this moment, I don't want to see 50 years on and Electron is still being used.

View on HN

I'm really hoping Flutter or Kotlin Desktop have a breakthrough here soon. Personally, I'm rooting for Flutter, but I'll take what I can get.

It would be fun that Dart finally takes over Javascript this way (Flutter is written in Dart, which was originally written to be the new Javascript)

I wish the dart language was more common than typescript. but this is very hard.

What do you like about Dartlang? Every time I've looked at it it's seemed like a rather uninspired language, almost like a slightly more dynamic Java (and an older Java too). I've never used it for anything production though.

I think that's one of the draws so the language honestly. Familiar, structured, and easy to pick up if you already know a c syntax language.

There's React Native for Windows/macOS, though if you don't like Electron I doubt that's very appealing either.

I've had some nice experiences using PyInstaller to create desktop apps.

React Native is fantastic as a user on macOS and Windows. Personally I think if there’s any hope of winning the Electron crowd over that’s it. I like to develop with stronger typed languages than JS, but there's clearly demand given electron’s popularity.

I started getting in the habit of using Typescript with JS. It's annoying at first, but worth it for any decent sized codebase. All the bugs from JavaScript's unexpected type conversions just disappear.

Depends on why OP doesn't like Electron.

To be clear to everyone: Electron and React Native are not alike. Electron is a big web browser. React Native work completely differently: It neither renders, computes, or runs the same. React Native uses the Hermes engine, puppeteering native components.

I feel like this is a monkey's paw wish. I've wanted to see QT and GTK replaced with something better for a long time.

We got Electron, and other browser based toolkits.

SwiftUI is pretty good, if you don't care about Android/Linux/Windows.

For the GUI-parts (and more) there's always wxWidgets and Qt, at least.

No there isn't (with resigned sobbing tone) there isn't. Everything GUI related on desktop is depressing prehistoric garbage that still takes ages to make and if god forbid you want something nice you might as well shoot your self.

That's not my experience, at least. I haven't had any major issues I wasn't able to solve with either.

Even if I were more comfortable with web tech when I first started experimenting with this stuff (some time around 2012-2015) I still found the end result much better.

If you don't go beyond standard interactions and look it's probably fine but let's say I want system chrome to look like the one in photoshop and some custom dropdowns for starters...

Why would your desktop users want your weird drop downs? UI consistency used to be a thing.

Some companies/people take branding too seriously.

... it'd be doable ? E.g. look at telegram which is a Qt app and even more foreign-looking than Photoshop: https://images.app.goo.gl/JVNR4Jetmh7frvwo6 . Or allegorithmic substance, also made in Qt: https://images.app.goo.gl/CbJaGhRvSswymAjQ7

Reply on news.ycombinator.com