alt Hacker NewsYour post is touching on a key question: why write a Windows-specific app?
I'm a developer who has built and published several apps. I want the biggest possible audience for those apps. Why would I limit those apps to Windows? (Or even to any single platform/OS?)
Web apps work everywhere. The web has grown increasingly powerful and capable. Why would I invest in a technology that can only run on a single OS? Doesn't make sense.
Just build for the web. You can package web apps for all the major app stores using PWABuilder[0], no Electron needed. Just fast, lightweight apps distributed by app stores and accessible from the web.
[0]: https://pwabuilder.com. Disclaimer: I work on this
Replies
> Web apps work everywhere. The web has grown increasingly powerful and capable. Why would I invest in a technology that can only run on a single OS? Doesn't make sense.
You mean the hypertext platform that has been shoehorned into Java's paradigm, suffering from the same boof-o-rama as Windows, and whose lowest common denominator to support must be Safari for iOS?
Because many of those features aren't Web, rather Chrome OS Application Platform, but apparently folks forgot everything about IE history lesson.
I used to get hung up on this native vs web thing. But when it comes down to it, it's just one renderer or another unless you're actually drawing the controls yourself pixel by pixel. The sticking point is following the system style / theme. But all the popular desktop OSs seem to have deviated on this so much themselves I'm not sure how important this is.
What happens when the user doesn't have internet access, or only has very slow internet? What if they're on a metered connection?
Features. Speed. Do your web apps only work in Chrome by the way?
>Your post is touching on a key question: why write a Windows-specific app?
Why write an anything-specific app?
> Web apps work everywhere. The web has grown increasingly powerful and capable. Why would I invest in a technology that can only run on a single OS?
There are other options besides "web app" and "only one OS". A cross platform app which uses something like GTK or QT will be a massively better experience for your users, one a web app cannot hope to equal.
> Web apps work everywhere. The web has grown increasingly powerful and capable. Why would I invest in a technology that can only run on a single OS? Doesn't make sense.
For me, I see these following advantages:
- Performance; Native & compiled is king.
- Ram usage; Kilobytes vs Mega(giga?)bytes.
- UI control which integrates with the rest of the OS (and updates when the underlying OS tweaks the UI)
From a business standpoint, I get your point that these points don't really matter. Users have shown to not care in the slightest at the bloat in programs.
However for code I write in my spare time, I would much rather write my native Linux program in compiled code than to ship a subpar experience to the few who will interact with it.