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Comment by paradite | Hacker News Reader

Ah finally the Western tech ecosystem has caught up with WeChat/Alipay mini programs.

https://developers.weixin.qq.com/miniprogram/en/dev/framewor...

China had this DSL for building mobile apps for years. Those these apps are initially embedded inside WeChat/Alipay, there are now frameworks that allow it to run outside, like uniapp.

https://en.uniapp.dcloud.io/

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I've had very limited exposure to Alipay mini-programs (took a daytrip to Shenzhen from HK); but anything I had to touch (couples of restaurant menus; buying tickets for metro) was _screaming_ "this is poorly constructed webpage", not native-like experience.

Are there some you would recommend to see as an example of it being done right?

You can buy plane tickets, railway tickets, book hotels on wechat via popular 3rd party booking platforms.

I think there are first party integrations in wechat app, go to Me - Pay and Services, you can see a bunch of them.

Sorry, just to clarify — I meant examples of services that "feel" nice to interact with in the app; not examples of what they can be used for.

It's a bit like asking which power company has pretty technicians.

We're in a thread talking about a technology that purports to make creating "native mobile apps, as easy as creating a website"; and the parent claimed that the Alipay/WeChats mini-app stacks are similar.

I don't think asking for examples of this resulting in an experience that's pleasant is unreasonable?

I think the point OP is making is that the relative pleasantry of the experience isn't as important for end users as it is for us developers. My anecdotal experience bears that out: I shudder when I see a web-heavy native app, my non-tech friends don't bat an eyelid. People learn UIs, no matter how janky, very quickly if the end goal is important to them.

I think my point was that an application that exists, is up to date and works is a better application than the one that doesn't exist or is stale because it's harder to write and maintain but feels (or would feel if it existed) nice and polished.

For practical purposes like buying stuff or accessing information I want practical applications that can be quickly iterated on.

FPL. Tone bodies with good tans. Don't see that with IP&L.

Well, do those WeChat services have competition? That's where I've seen the push for better UX: it's a signal to users that your product is overall higher quality. So not so much 'pretty power company technicians' and more 'Is the lobby of the hotel clean?'.

I mean those 1st party integrations directly listed in WeChat services page are probably good examples of services that "feel" nice to interact, because they are used by millions of people everyday and they are need to optimized and polished to be able to serve millions of users.

Here's a screenshot of the list, if you want to Google and check out some of them: https://imgur.com/a/KKEdliE

Minions of people use SAP daily that does not mean it's a nice thing to interact with.

I agree that numbers alone might not mean much, but I do think B2C apps with millions of users have a higher bar in terms of design and polish compared to B2B/ERP apps.

Also, fixed typo!

But it's not like you can choose in China either :)

It's not like you can choose in the West either, either :).

Number one goal of any software service today is to make its offering exclusive in some way - exclusive content, exclusive deals, exclusive integrations, exclusive set of participants (network effects), going super-broad super fast because infinite VC money lets you keep operating at a loss indefinitely, etc.

You're making it sound as if the difference in choice between China and western countries is negligible. Surely that's not the case? If every VC company tries to pull you into their walled garden, I can still choose from among a variety of said walled gardens.

I could be wrong of course, since I don't know how many AliPay and WeChat competitors there are.

The competitors at the consumer-facing super app level (with mini programs of varying awkwardness) include Meituan, XiaoHongShu, and to an extent, Toutiao, JD.com, and Baidu. But you don't need those gardens as a publisher if you're on Android--ironically because Google services are banned, there are over a dozen app stores to competing to fill the void. Compare that with the western duopoly of Apple App Store and Google Play.

> If every VC company tries to pull you into their walled garden, I can still choose from among a variety of said walled gardens.

When they play it right, you're forced to choose all of them, or at least a significant subset of them, so that their partially overlapping offering add up to the actual thing you need.

Ah, modern video streaming services and every restaurant's special snowflake app.

It's probably easier to switch jobs to avoid B2B apps you don't like than to avoid WeChat in China.

There's a pretty big difference in what UX "feels nice" to East Asian audiences vs Western audiences. This video provides some insight into why this might be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSMFnJnY7EA

The comments make it seem like it's more a case of users tolerating it due to the apps usefulness. Interesting video though, haven't had any contact with Chinese apps, so that was enlightening.

Tolerance of bad UI because of its usefulness (or if it is the only available option due to approval process and/or lack of competition) strikes me as a time-tested approach in enterprise environments. I dread to imagine that, but in real life. Is that how it is for people in the most populous country?

That's all fine if the particular customers you want to reach are among the millions used to WeChat services.

> poorly constructed webpage", not native-like experience

yes "poorly constructed" is the key here. Poorly constructed "native" apps are not better.

Let's not pretend that all apps need native capabilities. The vast majority of them, or the vast majority of their functionality, can boils down to showing lists and images. Pretty wasteful to make apps in native languages just to do that if you ask me.

Those mini apps are built on the same web stack. I believe the main advantages of creating mini apps are that the platform provides identity (allowing you to know who the users are upon permission approval) and payment APIs.

I believe Telegram has something similar too.

They use a mixture of web rendering stack and native rendering stack. See my other comment.

There are also more architectural diagrams thst illustrate the layers in the links I posted in my original comment.

Aren't those just web apps running inside a webview widget? What's "native" about that? (but tbh, at first glance this Hyperview thing looks like it's just re-inventing web browsers too).

When I was still using wechat (and in china); it was a mix; native buttons and payment integrations mixed with webviews for content.

I think the key idea is not the renderer layer, but the concept of DSL so that it can run on multiple platforms natively.

To go back to your question. WeChat actually has two sets of renderers for mini programs, one based on webview, and one based on native iOS / Android components. But you are right that most mini programs are using mostly webview to render, with only a few things being natively rendered.

The "Western" (whatever that is) tech ecosystem has long had this technology out there .. its the "Western" marketing ecosystem that has been squashing it - for example, Apple quashing any and all use of JITs and VMs in order to keep their native platform relevant ..

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