Hacker News Reader

Comment by m-schuetz | Hacker News Reader

Consistency is the reason why Electron is great. Consistency of the UI across operating systems.

Great for the developer. The user doesn’t use Mac, Windows and Linux. Just one for work and one at home, with mostly different apps, so they couldn’t care less if it looks the same on different platforms.

They may care, however, if they get anything at all. I do not have the resources to target something to all platforms, so the alternative wouldn't be "Users get UI targeted towards their OS", the alternative would be "Users get nothing since developers don't have the time to also target their system".

> I do not have the resources to target something to all platforms

What resources is actually needed? More often than not it just requires good engineering. You do not have to duplicate everything across platforms.

Time. I have the time to maintain a single GUI. I do not have the time to maintain three GUIs. Of course they'll be 99% the same, but checking that this 1% difference behaves and looks fine accross systems adds a substantial amount of effort that I simply can not support. And for what exacatly? I want them to be identical accross systems, not different.

> And for what exacatly? I want them to be identical accross systems, not different

For your users. Engineering is about designing things for the convenience of the builder, but for the convenience of the user.

> I do not have the resources to target something to all platforms

Some speculate that agentic engineering will enable the return of native apps

If you think operating systems have nothing to offer in terms of UI patterns or guidance, then yes, that's a different type of consistency.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com