Windows 11 Start Menu Revealed as Resource-Heavy React Native App | Hacker News Reader

Windows 11 Start Menu Revealed as Resource-Heavy React Native App

winaero.com

37 pointsfidotron17 comments

This has been making the rounds on Twitter and the story never dies despite being essentially false. (Backed by “I hit Start and got a CPU spike”)

Just the “Recommended” section - the lower frame showing M365 files & frequent apps - is built with React Native[1]. And, AFAIK, it uses Microsoft’s React Native for Windows that renders real XAML components, so it’s not just a masquerading WebView or something.

The Start Menu itself is still C++ and XAML. (And I think WinUI 2, i.e. the system-included variation of WinUI) It’s not just all a web thing or a JS-backed React Native app.

1: https://youtu.be/kMJNEFHj8b8?t=4m47s

Is that supposed to make us feel better about the fact that there are noticeable performance issues with it?

No, it's supposed to refute the title & assumption of the article linked here.

just shows that the platform/tool/framework are not always the problem and that you can write bad code with anything

Microsoft 1995: No, the taskbar clock can't show seconds as that causes an unacceptable overhead on a 16MHz 386SX with 4MB of RAM.

Microsoft 2025: Lets write the start menu in fucking react, who cars about anything like RAM, CPU or common sense.

The decay of the start menu into a laggy, unpredictable surface for advertising is perhaps the pinnacle of windows' downfall. Conversely, MacOS's reputation as a great UX is perhaps largely driven by favorable comparison to the fractured mess of Windows.

Windows user interface is getting worse and worse. It's been a trend since the last good NT version, Windows 2000. Since then everything is a mess of inconsistencies and UI experiments.

Really incredible how each new version of Windows somehow manages to be a regression from the last version while remaining a usable and popular operating system.

I think the "how" is answered with advances in hardware performance.

The consequence is that we have the same (or worse) perceived performance for new (and better) hardware.

Probably there's more than that.

I've been using WinDbg to debug a kernel driver and have seen a few React Native messages popping up on WinDbg's console.

I'm just wondering, if AI replaces programmers, will our super AI also fix all the slowness and bugs in current software?

I saw an Anthropic Claude guy talk about how AI will replace most programmers within 2-3 years, but definitely by the end of this decade. I suppose an additional data center of AI agents could also fix all known bugs.

> will our super AI also fix all the slowness and bugs in current software?

If the OS you are using is open, then yes, that's doable and we were doing that also before the AI era. With a closed OS, the only thing you have is hope.

> I saw an Anthropic Claude guy talk

When people from genAI companies are speculating about the future of AI, remember that they have a heavy bias and large economic incentive to say things like that. You can't take their statements at face value.

Software is a gas: https://blog.codinghorror.com/software-its-a-gas/

Probably vibe-coding and blindly accepting without realizing it introduced a new stack...

Install OpenShell

Is this Microsoft’s AI initiative at work?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com