• fury@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    ITT: some people are mad the web became the application platform of choice, in part due to handy dandy cross platform app tools like Electron and accessible languages like JavaScript.

    There is no perfect answer. Qt isn’t using the platform’s native capabilities to the fullest extent either. Qt requires a “wrapper” too–all those libraries your app depends on, to name a few (unless you got a commercial license and are compiling statically, you rich devil).

    Let’s celebrate the onslaught of apps that work with Linux instead of trying to scare off developers any more than Linux already did. Make love not war. <3

    In my experience, Electron and other “web wrapper” apps run just fine and I have enough CPU and RAM to run a dozen of them alongside my 50 browser tabs. Slack, Discord, VSCode, Teams, IRCCloud, it all works fine. Hardware is cheap compared to my time.

    • 31337@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      It always seemed over-complicated to me to use web technologies to create a desktop application and run it in what is essentially a browser. The tool-chain of modern web and electron apps also seems overly complicated to me (writing in a slightly different language then transpiling to an interpreted language).

      I don’t find JS any more accessible than any other language with automatic memory management. JS is actually a bit of mess due to bolting on new features while keeping backward compatibility.

      I don’t mind using electron apps. VS Code is pretty great.

      I think Java Swing was the apex of desktop development :)

      • Sir_Simon_Spamalot@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        always seemed over-complicated

        Technology-wise? Yes it is.

        Development-wise? It actually makes dev process much simpler by making it grossly cross platform instead of having to care about little gotchas on each use case (which may or may not actually be popular. Not saying it’s optimal, but as a developer myself, I say it makes a lot of sense.

      • dx1@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s a poor architectural choice, but making cross-platform apps is even more problematic with the current UI tooling out there. Too much fragmentation in the base OS’s. If Mac moved to support Wayland or something like that, maybe we’d start getting somewhere.

    • Viper_NZ@lemmy.nz
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      1 year ago

      With you for the most part, except where you say the bloated, slow, unreliable, piece of crap Teams is fine…