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Comment by gfxgirl | Hacker News Reader

> GUI development has apparently gone backwards a decade or so

I find this the exact opposite. Okay, maybe I could break out Delphi or Visual Basic and make a crap UI that only ran on Windows and required users to install the software.

Today, in a few minutes, I can make an app in HTML/JS that runs in a webpage and several billion people can access and use immediately on either their PC, Tablet, or phone. That it me is way better than it was 30 years ago.

And, if I want it to be an app I can use some HTML/JS wrapper and be done in a similar amount of time. I can have a new electron app up and running and on 3 platforms in under an hour. If I had more mobile experience I'm sure I could do the same there.

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> And, if I want it to be an app I can use some HTML/JS wrapper and be done in a similar amount of time. I can have a new electron app up and running and on 3 platforms in under an hour. If I had more mobile experience I'm sure I could do the same there.

So now you have made a crap UI that is running on 3 platforms. It was quick and easy for you, but now every user has to suffer with a slow and bloated electron "app".

GUI development definitely has gone backwards at least a decade. Of course it can still be done right, but with so many low skill web developers everywhere, electron "apps" are what we get.

> up and running and on 3 platforms in under an hour. If I had more mobile experience I'm sure I could do the same there.

Simply, not.

We're accustomed to great mobile/desktop UIs from big companies with dedicated people for each platform. And these UIs take months or years to polish.

An individual maybe could setup a project skeleton in 1 hour, but no more.

> I can have a new electron app up and running and on 3 platforms in under an hour.

I do the same with Lazarus, except that my app will have a richer interface with better widgets.

The nice thing about Windows programs was that you knew how big the display was likely to be, and more recently, the scaling has gotten much better.

The modern trend towards tiny screens that have to be scrolled in order to fit any usable amount of data in, and the various different scroll / UI paradigms means that you can technically have something that most of humanity could have access to, but most users aren't likely to be happy.

That is an advantage for you, as a developer.

Maybe users today have zero expectations because they don't know better? I'm a dev too but my expectation as a user is higher. I never saw a modern UI framework not being a complete piece of garbage. This includes relatively "performant" stuff like QML.

I'm pretty sure regular young users would notice too, but it seems that most people just accept and adapt to crappier trends every year.

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