Comment by corethree | Hacker News Reader

Comment by corethree | Hacker News Reader

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No it's better for an os UI. A web page UI is better with electron where you click on a link an open a page. But floating windows with resizeable and highly dynamic UIs Godot is likely easier, better and much more well suited.

HTML was never intended for dynamic interfaces. Whenever you diverge beyond what it does best which is hypertext, things become more and more hacky and awkward. If you wanted to design an os UI in electron, you would use a framework called react, and you would use a language called JavaScript that compiles down into typescript and you'd need a whole build ecosystem and connect everything together, then you might find HTML to awkward so you have to switch to webgl which is too low level or you might switch to svg... In both cases you miss the text rendering from HTML. If you stick with HTML then you'd be using css to move shit around and create windows which is also incredibly awkward.

People use electron because it's easy. The reason why it's easy is because of familiarity not because of actual superiority.

Web UI is one of the most hacked together technology stacks ever. Developers with nothing better to do keep coming up with new abstractions trying to build for a moving target. It's not unique in this regard but it doesn't change the reality. Godot has the benefit of a very specific design implementation for a target that is highly dynamic and likely will never change. Plus it's new so you don't have armies of developers trying to "abstract" shit on it over years and years of horizontal progress.

> HTML to awkward so you have to switch to webgl which is too low level or you might switch to svg

HTML is replaceable by WebGL which is replaceable by SVG?

> JavaScript that compiles down into typescript

JS compiles down to TS?

I am not sure if anything in this comment indicates you have any experience with developing for the web but that is not my primary issue with this comment. My gripe is claiming that things are "awkward" or can't be done without even looking around. None of the examples below use WebGL

Here's a WinXP UI clone that runs in your browser with floating, resizable windows. - https://winxp.vercel.app/

Here's one that mocks macOS - https://macos-web.app/

>JS compiles down to TS?

It's called a typo.

>I am not sure if anything in this comment indicates you have any experience with developing for the web but that is not my primary issue with this comment. My gripe is claiming that things are "awkward" or can't be done without even looking around. None of the examples below use WebGL

I think you're smart enough to recognize it's a typo. The primary issue with your comment is hiliteing issues as if it weren't typos but actual lapses in experience. It's like saying someone misspelled a word and claiming they therefore have no experience with the English language. If someone did that, the intent is 100% malice, not a misunderstanding. Don't be malicious. Don't debate and use malice to prove a point. What you should do is Make a point and change your stance based off of evidence.

Also I never said it can't be done. I said it's awkward. It certainly can be done.

WebGL is low level. Same with WebGPU, it means you have to use shaders. Godot has a library for UI. Which makes it less awkward. I'm saying it's JUST as awkward to build these things with webGL then with other web front end technologies.

>Here's a WinXP UI clone that runs in your browser with floating, resizable windows. - https://winxp.vercel.app/ >Here's one that mocks macOS - https://macos-web.app/

What do these examples prove? That it can be done? Did I say it can't be done? Again I didn't. It's obvious these examples exist, everyones seen them. Heck you can probably do the whole thing with CSS and no JS. The gist of my comment is that it's awkward to do, not that it can't be done. You can construct a house out of toothpicks and glue. I'm sure it CAN be done. But bricks are the less awkward tool.

I'm another person who read your comment who doesn't like Electron/web dev and, while reading your comment, I thought "does this guy even know what he's talking about?".

So as someone aligned closer to your team (preferring other toolkits to Electron) I don't think the other user who replied to your comment previously was being malicious in interpretation.

So did you think i actually meant that Javascript compiles down into typescript?

I'm sorry but that comment alone makes me think malice. It's too obvious. To each their own.

Yes, I did and I was confused (hence my thought it was someone focusing on things other than web dev that made the comment).

It's not like I'm attributing ill intent now that you've clarified what you meant (I mentioned having the same anti-Electron inclination as you to demonstrate that) but I probably can't change your mind if you think two people's misinterpretation of the same comment came from malice.

Such typos are common and obvious.

It's more likely someone utilizes such errors as ammunition. Such an action is quite common. It's obvious to me that this is the more likely scenario here from the other replyer.

Another common thing is to team up with people who have similar intentions. When such a situation happens they synchronize their biases. Two coworkers with the same intent will synchronize their biases in a meeting in order to push their intent... Happens all the time.

You like the front end, my guess of what's going on with you is a team up of sorts. Malice is too strong of a word for what you're doing. You're doing a team up and you're adjusting some obvious biases to favor your intent and create alignment with your team mate. This is all done subconsciously too. But that's just my guess on what you're doing.

These are all obvious human behaviors that are quite common but people don't think about it until it's explicitly pointed out.

But in the end. Who cares. We both are now clear about what's going on. No point in debating this further.

> Developers with nothing better to do keep coming up with new abstractions trying to build for a moving target

Bullshit. React is almost 11 years old, the only other two really popular competitors are 10 and 13 and use the same paradigm.

Everything else in this area is very experimental and tentative, as it should be, but it is mostly celebrated by people who, surprise, complain that "the web is too complex".

Even "new hotness" like Tailwind is based off quite old Atomic CSS ideas that started in the late 2000s and early 2010s at Yahoo.

>Bullshit. React is almost 11 years old, the only other two really popular competitors are 10 and 13 and use the same paradigm.

React has been changing a lot. And before react it changed even more. There's all kinds of change in the front end world and you know it. Not even close to bullshit.

>Everything else in this area is very experimental and tentative, as it should be, but it is mostly celebrated by people who, surprise, complain that "the web is too complex".

Webgl and svg are experimental? I don't think so. Using CSS + HTML + Javascript to build an Windows like application is more experimental.

>Even "new hotness" like Tailwind is based off quite old Atomic CSS ideas that started in the late 2000s and early 2010s at Yahoo.

I never talked about whether something is based off of old technology. I'm just saying all the state of the art is always changing constantly as people build new things. Whether those new things are recycling old ideas is besides the point. The main problem is that each "new" thing is placed as this big ugly layer above something that was designed to be a high level interface anyways.

React had a single major incremental change in the form of hooks. It was built upon existing established foundation: functional components. And even then, it still didn't break backwards compatibility. That's far from "changing a lot" in 11 years.

And "before react it changed even more" is a terrible argument. We had a handful second-tier frameworks who never gained enough traction compared to React/Vue/Angular even in their first months. None of those temporary frameworks achieved more than a very small fraction of jQuery popularity in their heyday. jQuery was king since almost launch, and was never really threatened, until React came along.

By "in this area" I obviously mean frameworks. And good call: WebGL is gonna be 13 years old this year and SVG will be astonishing 25 years.

And no, the "state of the art" is not really changing, unless you're going for non-market-tested technology. But that's you, that's not the market, that's not what people are hiring for, and that's not even what's getting stars in Github. New experimental projects are not "change".

The "state of the art" is still React/Vue/Angular, perhaps with SASS or CSS, which is from 2006. Even Webpack is 10 years old next February! And only now it is getting serious competition. Typescript is still 100% optional but is 11 years old.

The meme that "Javascript changes too much" was already old and tired in 2015. In 2024 it's absurd.

No the meme is frontend changes too much not JavaScript changes too much and that meme is still relevant and will be relevant for a while.

Heck you can argue for how HTML and JavaScript are 20 years old!! Wow that means front end hasn't changed at all for 20b years! Come on man.

Anyway my overall point wasn't even about what's changed. My point is that these are all awkward apis to use to develop a windows style UI.

Even if you think they are old, these frameworks are bending and adjusting an underlying layer to do something it wasn't designed to do in the first place. Hence the awkwardness.

I'd be happy to discuss specific changes in good faith, but "Wow that means front end hasn't changed at all for 20b years!" is a gross misrepresentation and dismissal of my arguments.

I will maintain that the pace of change is not the same as you portray. Definitely not when it comes to professional frontend developers working in the industry. Blog-oriented-development or experimental niche frameworks that reach top of HN don't count as "industry" yet.

It's not a gross misinterpretation. I'm sorry, but a huge portion of the evidence you've stated was simply the ages of certain technologies and using that as invalid evidence for your arguments. I've clearly presented evidence to the contrary and you simply call it a gross misinterpretation without even providing a counter argument?

Your job is to prove why ages of technologies is relevant to your argument. If it's not then the only thing you can do is admit how that part of your argument is fucking baseless. You may be happy to discuss other things with me but until you admit or prove me wrong on this point there is zero further discussion about anything. Just walking up to someone and telling them they're wrong is useless. When you say gross expectation I expect some evidence to back that shit up. If not then you can just leave.

That being said I don't think I'm in the mood discuss anything with you. Let me be clear, any response you make to me after this will be illogical because I won't care for it or respond and it will be a complete waste of your time. We are done.

My point was simply that the technologies we use are established, and haven't changed much. The age matters, because the current dominant players have been dominant for longer than jQuery was at the top.

Your counterpoint was instead that React changed a lot, but I counter argued. You are free to disagree with that, of course, but instead chose to answer with "Come on man!!"...

I understand that it might seem overwhelming to see lots of "new things" here at HN and other sites, but the reality is that those things are pet projects or new incumbents that haven't been adopted at large by the industry, if at all. In reality, movement in frontend has been slower after 2015 than it was in the 10 years before.

And sorry but you can't preemptively call my response illogical. This is not cool.

Hey I'm not reading your response. As I said, I don't want to talk with you, so you are wasting your time irrationally talking to me. This conversation is over. Please leave.

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