Hacker News Reader

It is the result of cheaping out by the entire tech industry. Responsive design to support multiple resolutions and pixel density was extrapolated to use a single framework (HTML+JS+CSS) for every single device that exists. Except for a few, most businesses deploy Web based apps on browsers, desktop apps and mobile phones. Usually from the same monorepo. Add developer laziness and unnecessarily tight deadlines, we end up in the current situation.

View on HN

These days, I'd say Flutter is the closest alternative to something like VB6 or Delphi.

While I get the aversion, HTML+CSS is a pretty good combination for layout and there are efforts towards application tooling for other languages. That said, I don't dislike JS/TS nearly as much as some on here. It's a highly expressive language that's flexible enough to get things done in a number of ways. And yeah, the overhead is kind of crazy, especially when devs bring in massive dependency chains. As a whole, it's still one of the better options for getting an application "everywhere".

One reason for this is when the big players move their business models over to taking your data and renting it back to you, there's no profit motive in pushing state-of-the-art ux when they just give their apps away to act like honeypots. MSFT gives their stuff away if you get on Azure. Atlassian charges 14 bucks a seat if you use their cloud. Lots of people who use this stuff have a laptop plus a bigger monitor their company bought to get their work done and it's like staring into an empty desert every day.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com