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| ▲ | fbrchps 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Counterpoint: is the web browser not already fulfilling the "universal app engine" need? It can already run on most end user devices where people do most other things. IoT/Edge devices don't count here, but this day most of their data is just being sent back to a server which is accessible via some web interface. Ignoring the fragmentation of course; although that seems to be getting less and less each year (so long as you ignore Safari). |
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| ▲ | rustcleaner 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | >Counterpoint: is the web browser not already fulfilling the "universal app engine" need? Counter-counterpoint: Maybe it's time to require professional engineer certification before a software product can be shipped in a way that can be monetized. It's to filter devs from the industry who look at browsers today and go "Yeah, this is a good universal app engine." | |
| ▲ | abdullahkhalids 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yes. But it consumes at least 10x-100x more resources to run a web app than to run a comparable desktop app (written in a sufficiently low level language). The impact on people's time, money and on the environment are proportional. | | |
| ▲ | mpyne 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > But it consumes at least 10x-100x more resources to run a web app than to run a comparable desktop app (written in a sufficiently low level language) Does it? Have you compared a web app written in a sufficiently low level language with a desktop app? |
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| ▲ | theK 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| No. We did, it is the browser. |
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| ▲ | ryandrake 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | "The Browser" has turned out to be a pretty terrible application API, IMO. First, which browser? They are all (and have been) slightly different in infuriating ways going all the way back to IE6 and prior. Also, a lot of compromises were made while organically evolving what was supposed to be "a system for displaying and linking between text pages" into a cross-platform application and system API. The web's HTML/CSS roots are a heavy ball and chain for applications to carry around. It would have been great if browsers remained lightweight html/image/hyperlink displayers, and something separate emerged as an actual cross-platform API, but history is what it is. | | |
| ▲ | jstanley 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | They're not that different, and it's a pretty good platform and pretty easy to program for. That's why it won. | | |
| ▲ | irishcoffee 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | It didn't win. It just survived long enough. The web is a terrible platform. I haven't ever shipped a line of "web code" for money and I plan to keep it that way until I retire. What a miserable way to make a living. | | |
| ▲ | jstanley 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Perhaps you're taking the npm/react/vercel world to be the entire web? I agree that that stuff is a scourge. But you can still just write html and Javascript and serve it from a static site, I wrote an outline in https://incoherency.co.uk/blog/stories/web-programs.html which I frequently link to coding agents when they are going astray. | | |
| ▲ | irishcoffee 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | When I was a kid I was running websites with active forums and a real domain name, and I did it with vBulletin and my brain. Someone bought the domain name and website off of me, haven't touched web tech since. I did use Wt at an old job once, but the "website" was local to 1 machine and there were no security concerns. |
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| ▲ | jimbokun 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| We have failed to design a universal app engine…except for the one that dwarfs every other kind of software development for every kind of device in the world. |
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| ▲ | jcelerier 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Can a single webpage address & use more than 4gb of ram nowadays? I was filling 16gb of ram with a single Ableton live session in 2011. | | |
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| ▲ | criddell 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > design a universal app engine You've reminded me of the XKCD comic about standards: https://xkcd.com/927/ Do you really want a universal app engine? If you don't have a good reason for ignoring platform guidelines (as many games do), then don't. The best applications on any platform are the ones that embrace the platform's conventions and quirks. I get why businesses will settle for mediocre, but for personal projects why would you? Pick the platform you use and make the best application you can. If you must have cross-platform support, then decouple your UI and pick the right language and libraries for each platform (SwiftUI on Mac, GTK for Linux, etc...). |
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| ▲ | Cheese48923846 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Remember Flash? The big tech companies felt a threat to their walled gardens. They formed an unholy alliance to stamp out flash with a sprinkle of fake news labeling it a security threat. Remember Livescript and early web browsers? It was almost cancelled by big tech because Java was supposed to be the cross platform system. The web and Javascript just BARELY escaped a big tech smack down. They stroked the ego of big tech by renaming to Javascript to honor Java. Licked some boots, promised a very mediocre, non threatning UI experience in the browser and big tech allowed it to exist. Then the whole world started using the web/javascript. It caught fire before big tech could extinguish. Java itself got labeled a security threat by Apple/Microsoft for threatening the walled gardens but that's another story. You may not like browsers but they are the ONLY thing big tech can't extinguish due to ubiquity. Achieving ubiquity is not easy, not even possible for new contenders. Pray to GOD everyday and thank her for giving us the web browser as a feasible cross platform GUI. Web browser UI available on all devices is not a failure, it's a miracle. To top it all off, HTML/CSS/Javascript is a pretty good system. The box model of CSS is great for a cross platform design. Things need to work on a massive TV or small screen phone. The open text-based nature is great for catering to screen readers to help the visually impaired. The latest Wizbang GPU powered UI framework probably forgot about the blind. The latest Wizbang is probably stuck in the days of absolute positioning and non-declarative layouts. And with x,y(z) coords. It may be great for the next-gen 4-D video game, but sucks for general purpose use. |
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| ▲ | MrDrMcCoy 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | As I recall, Flash and Java weren't so much security issues themselves, but rather the poorly designed gaping hole they used to enter the browser sandbox being impossible to lock down. If something like WASM existed at the time to make it possible for them to run fully inside the sandbox, I bet they'd still be around today. People really did like Macromedia/Adobe tools for web dev, and the death of Flash was only possible to overcome its popularity because of just how bad those security holes were. I miss Flash, but I really don't miss drive-by toolbar and adware installation, which went away when those holes were closed. | |
| ▲ | tolciho 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Flash had quite a lot of quite severe CVE; how many of those do you suppose are "fake news" connived by conspiracy (paranoid style in politics, much?) as opposed to Flash being a pile of rusted dongs as far as security goes? A lot of software from that era was a pile of rusted dongs, bloat browsers included. Flash was also the first broken website I ever came across, for some restaurant I never ended up going to. If they can't show their menu in text, oh, well. |
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