Desktop web-apps won. Simply because native UI libraries never evolved past their 90s days. Either the UI is defined in some DSL, that’s loaded (or compiled) and then you spend most of the time writing getElement(pathToElement) and wiring it up, or you have to boilerplate create each element and parent.addChild(element).

And wiring it up is also a pain. Send a signal or event, add a listener or slot, or whatever fancy name each framework comes up with, and if you have to modify another element, it means querying for it, or having a singleton, or passing a reference/pointer, or whatever. It’s so friggin-old school.

In the meanwhile, the web discovered reactivity, components, declaring the UI and having the logic in the same file, live debugging, tight development loops, and so much more.

Is it just too difficult for native frameworks? Is it a sunken cost issue or fear of breaking backwards compatibility? Why can’t native UI development be as easy and approachable as web dev?

Don’t get me wrong, I need webdev like a child needs cancer, but I’ve tried Slint, imGUi, Qt, Gtk, wxWidgets, and more and the experience makes me want to blow my brains out every single time. I dread writing any native GUI that I got desperate enough to try writing a TUI but that’s unbelievably worse!

It’s gotten so bad, that Tauri and Dioxus are now on the menu. I never wanted to mix web dev into my native applications, but it feels like the abominably anachronistic state of native UI development is just forcing not only me, but anybody who wants to have a good experience writing native UI apps (especially those that are multi-platform), to use a fucking web view! A memory-hogging web view!

  • folekaule@lemmy.world
    20·
    6 hours ago

    As a developer who has mostly worked with web, but also dabbled in some native app work: It’s not that the web UI frameworks are so much nicer. The native libraries I’ve used, at least, are actually much nicer to work with. I’ve worked with Delphi, Java Swing, various Windows frameworks, etc. React and friends are a chaotic mess in comparison and HTML was not designed for app development. You want a button? Here’s a div, go ahead and style it. Thanks, let me add 500 npm packages to my project.

    No, the main reason I prefer to develop web apps is because they’re effortlessly cross-platform and automatically updated and distributed. No maintaining multiple versions. Updates are basically instant and happen across your user base. No code signing or paying to compile code on a Mac. No asking for install permissions on stupidly locked down enterprise workstations. Just deploy and go.

    I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve needed to create a native app due to some restriction like local file access or device access. Most of the time you’re just entering values into a database, so that can just be a website. PWAs are a pain to develop but they are much easier to deal with once they’re in the wild.

    YMMV of course.