I wish we would see more developers embrace desktop native apps again. We have such powerful machines, only to use them as glorified dumb terminals
But for anything I consider work, that takes toil, like writing, editing media, or programming. I'll avoid using web apps, these tasks are hard enough on their own, I don't want to make them harder by using software that, to me, lacks joy (due to it not hitting my bottom line in performance, reliability, or even beauty). I just hope enough folks out there continue to appreciate native apps, because I think my continued joy at being in tech depends on it.
In the past I've noted how absolutely glacial it is with some tasks, and it's baffling to me how this stuff doesn't drive folks insane (much like the enjoyment of web apps is baffling to me), I guess people just care about different things:
1. It takes nine times as long as Vim to open a minified JavaScript file, and then format it with Prettier: https://twitter.com/robenkleene/status/1285631026648276993
2. It takes 14 times as long to open an empty text file than BBEdit: https://twitter.com/robenkleene/status/1257724392458661889
(Note those time trials are years old, this may be different now.)
But even though VS Code is objectively slow for some tasks, I would still categorize it as extremely high-quality software. So at the end of the day, I don't know. VS Code isn't for me, but I'm not confounded by it having fans the same way I'm confounded by web apps in general having fans.
I know native apps are likely faster and use the full capabilities of he device, but the advantages of web apps are too many. Also, web app failing to inspire joy is a indictment of developers who don't care, not of the medium itself.
Native mac apps for example get a whole tabbing system for free so long as they support multiple windows (and most apps that one might want tabs in do). Deep linking is not difficult to implement in native apps and in fact some do.
As far as tying data to devices goes, with the exception of apps built around databases this is usually trivially changed by placing the data in question in a folder synced with SyncThing/iCloud/OneDrive/etc and most importantly gives you the choice, whereas many web apps will happily keep you pent up in their cloud with little or no capability to export full-fidelity data.
Sure they do, and sure you can. It's up to developers to support, but it's certainly doable.
I think you hit the nail on the head in the subsequent sentence: native apps need to be carefully designed to compete with web apps. No one cares enough to do that.
Sharing files is trivial, and just putting files in a folder is the file-native to find something again (i.e., bookmark). Personal preference whether one of these systems is better or worse than the other, personally I'd just call them different.
But I would specifically callout collaboration on a single document as a strong suit of web apps. E.g., two people editing the same document (like a Google Doc) is pretty much the only task that I'd prefer a web app for. Also referencing a single specific line in a document. Again I use web apps for doing that (e.g., find the exact line number of some code on GitHub to share), but I can't say I enjoy the process.
> You can't easily open multiple instances of the app in multiple tabs.
I'm mainly talking about desktop apps, which today almost always support multiple windows and/or tabs.
Might be missing what you're getting at here, are you talking about mobile apps? I'm pretty sure iOS also supports multiple instances of apps, but I don't need this functionality often enough myself to care. Again, maybe I'm missing what you mean here?
> Your data is usually tied to the specific devices you are using.
I don't think this has been problem since the first release of Dropbox in 2007? Again I might be missing something, but native apps are either file-based in which you can easily sync the file, or are a front-end for a database, in which most apps have a way to sync across devices? Syncing is kind of table-stakes for apps these days.
> Unless carefully designed, desktop apps might not be responsive or adaptive to various viewport sizes.
I'd argue this is more of a problem on the web than desktop, a well-designed desktop app will enforce a sensical minimum window size, whereas in my experience most web apps absolutely fall apart when you shrink them too small.
> Also, web app failing to inspire joy is a indictment of developers who don't care, not of the medium itself.
I don't agree with this type of reasoning, i.e., I don't look at a technology and say "there's nothing stopping it from making great software!" Instead I look at how great software is being made, and then prefer that technology. At the end of the day the only real proof that great software can be made using a technology is the great software itself.
I like the security model of browsers, and I like using browser tabs to organize my apps like Gmail, Docs, etc.
And webapps can use your CPU and GPU just fine. We have such powerful machines, but checking your email isn't going to use that power regardless of whether it's a desktop app or a webapp.
It is less so for those of us who would prefer more control over our machines and our data.
What security model?
Relying on a third party cloud provider for your secrets is the opposite of a security model.
If you are talking about the browser sandbox, then it helps nothing with keeping your data secure from actors you dont realize are bad.
2. For any decent software it needs update. Even most opensource tools are hundreds of MB. For example, a school teacher in Zambia does not need to download digikam or okular or notepad++ or ffmpeg every week to get security updates.
> it helps nothing with keeping your data secure from actors you dont realize are bad
Once you enter that then you have only https://www.raptorengineering.com/ and using terminal.
This brick/EOL is a different issue but common man benefits from simplicity. Yes, environment is trashed or software obsolescence - but yet - most of them buy a new phone or device every at least 5 years (of course, I am talking within my circles - there may be people at different ends).
I used to buy expensive nexus phones. Then I realised I use only WhatsApp and Banking. Now I buy cheapest Motoroola for $100. Works fine. Become EOL in 2 years as they are bad in updates. Get another one for $100. Latest OS.
Instead if one spends latest pixel flagship for $800 - no benefits.
> Updates aren't something inherently bad but they're being used in evil ways with no resort from users other than leave.
Yes there is no resort but people live in real life. They need banking, recent cool apps etc. Some could live like RMS and not use anything modern or use Terminal but most people don't.
You must be relying on inferior update mechanism. This is a solved problem since long with a central package repository as you will find in most linux distros. On windows you have scoop, chocolathy and winget (from microsoft btw) attempting something similar, on macos there is macports and homebrew.
> Even most opensource tools are hundreds of MB
Even if this was true, and it isnt, I dont think you realize how heavy most web pages are today. Those hundreds of MB is used up fast, while the offline app is still there.
> For example, a school teacher in Zambia does not need to download digikam or okular or notepad++ or ffmpeg every week to get security updates.
Agreed. Noone needs to do that. If you are concerned with security, then you should also learn to understand your attack surface. Otherwise it is just FUD.
Example dont feed ffmpeg with unknown files in a uncontrolled fashion. You should understand that the videos you recorded yourself are safe and wouldnt need the very latest update to be processed.
> Once you enter that then you have only https://www.raptorengineering.com/ and using terminal.
What, no. Using normal offline apps is all it takes.
Why? If you encrypt your data, it doesn't matter where it sits. And if you don't, then there's not much difference between the government getting the data from AWS or them seizing your laptop. And a non-state actor will probably find it much easier to steal your laptop than to get access to your cloud account.
> If you are talking about the browser sandbox, then it helps nothing with keeping your data secure from actors you dont realize are bad.
Of course it does. My tabs from different domains can't steal data from each other or from the rest of my machine. The desktop applications I install can.
There's zero technical and human reason for allowing that to continue. The visible-on-the-screen messages are cached and you can, you know, just get on with it by painting the whole thing on the screen right away.
It's "fine", he says. "Fine"...
[grumbles under his nose, annoyed, and ventures into the far distance]
I can forgive a free and open app running on Electron (hello, Signal), but never a commercial one, full stop.
Edit: Just to clarify "need" is in the context of working in a big company on a complex product. These products are a lot bigger than they appear.
They absolutely can allocate even 100 in total.
Spotify the company only moved to a electron remake later, I can only guess because it was hard to find more quality devs.
People might not remember this, but µTorrent used to be amazingly snappy too before it got bought and shovelwared.
What "can" be done is kind of irrelevant. What's much more important is what metrics would the default (or lazy as you called it) way of doing things with framework X or Y net. If the defaults are a slow and laggy app then that's what 95% or more of the using apps will be.
Not to mention that desktop UI development is just unpleasant. I say this as someone who would really prefer that not to be true, it's just that in my search I've been disappointed. You choose between a number of imperfect "cross-platform" frameworks (and deal with their licensing), or maintain native code for several platforms. Creating custom "widgets" often requires you to start at the drawing API level and have a deep understanding of the framework.
I am keeping an eye on Avalonia, though. The tooling wasn't quite there yet when I tried it.
:(
The result is people can use more efficient terminals to do most of what they need. And the powerful native machine is available when that extra power is justified.
Less Electron's, more OpenGL's - Less XML and more Swing (just not swing, plz).
This is actually a big factor in why web apps have the perception of being bloated. Basic widgets being missing means that everybody and their dog has their own custom implementations, nearly all of which are somewhat slapdash in nature due to speed of implementation being prioritized over quality. They never meaningfully improve either since there’s little sharing of efforts, with everybody instead preferring to reinvent wheels for themselves.
If the platform provided a more robust set of widgets, much of these problems would go away since devs would be using those instead either as-is or with light cosmetic customizations. Over time the browser implementations would get better and all users would benefit with more performant, less buggy apps.
> […] pick the one that’s already winning and make it the best we can.
I agree, it can be much better. Tons of incremental improvements have been made, and should continue being made.
I too would like to see browser close the gap completely, supporting everything needed to build real applications, not hacked together applications that accidentally work. We seem so close…
The main problem I think is what you have identified: we need sophisticated composable widgets with practical and sensible defaults, that are also really customizable with scoped CSS, built right into the browser. This alone would be the biggest QOL improvement as far as web development goes, in several generations. I really don't know why this is not the highest priority for the W3C
Browser-based word-processing and spreadsheets pretty great. I love VS Code. The multimedia capabilities of browsers are pretty good and up to the tasks I need them for.
If you're on Discord, it's a pretty active community and I'm pathologically online helping newcomers
At some point applications completely broke my trust, and the OS manufacturers failed to protect us, and now we're all paying for it with inefficient garbage everywhere.
For native apps, I treat non-obvious need for sudo or admin priveleges as a smell. The way everything on Windows needs admin is actually one of the reasons why I don’t use it for anything but games.
And I say this even after the adventure of trying to decipher whatever Microsoft is doing/going with their 4 or 5 competing frameworks and SDKs.
But I still find huge value and love a good web app whenever what you need doesn't really need to be native which was not my case.
There will still be uses for native apps for a long time IMHO.
Sure many people don't update like ever, but Apple's and Microsoft's app stores do updates without asking people anyway (they learned, finally).
Not such a big problem as you make it out to be IMO, even for very casual non-technical users.
I get it, I work with some multi platform apps and I just don't want 20 layers between me and the damn device and some crazy build process ... I hate it.
But I can't argue that going native everywhere isn't it's own hassle.