[HN Gopher] So you want to write an "app" (2025)
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So you want to write an "app" (2025)
Author : jmusall
Score : 21 points
Date : 2026-03-09 20:50 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arcanenibble.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (arcanenibble.github.io)
| fsflover wrote:
| Now, make a web app and compare the effort and tooling.
| sublinear wrote:
| > I wanted to get a personal "feel" for what the "new developer
| experience" is actually like across all of the current
| platforms...
|
| I don't really understand what this means. Without explaining
| that, the rest of this blog post is just rambling notes about
| developer ergonomics. Of all the things to focus on, that's going
| to be by far the lowest priority in app dev.
|
| Maybe I'm just too young to have ever experienced the kind of
| stability expected here. My opinions of tools are based on what
| they are capable of doing and how well it lines up with _what I
| expect them to do_. That 's my definition of "feel" as an app
| dev. I don't care if the interface is stable. I want the
| capabilities to be stable. To make an analogy, when I buy a new
| work truck I care more about the specs and not the stuff on the
| dashboard.
|
| > ... if you don't resort to web tech such as Electron
|
| And that's precisely why everything is now a web app for over a
| decade, and why W3C standards and big tech bureaucracy won out.
| BoppreH wrote:
| > Without explaining that, the rest of this blog post is just
| rambling notes about developer ergonomics.
|
| That's how I took it, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. If you're
| making a small app by yourself, sufficiently bad developer
| ergonomics can be the reason that the app doesn't get made at
| all, or the frustration makes me regret it. That's important
| for me.
|
| > Maybe I'm just too young to have ever experienced the kind of
| stability expected here.
|
| This could be it. I've been around many cycles of technology,
| and it always feels like a great waste when you have to abandon
| your tools and experience for something that's buggy and better
| in only a few small ways. I'm willing to tolerate a lot more
| bullshit for something that I know will be long-lived, like QT
| or a static website, than Microsoft's UI-framework-of-the-
| month.
| jmusall wrote:
| I guess the author's perspective is one of someone who has
| little experience with current tools/frameworks, so
| "ergonomics" become somewhat more important. Most of the
| complaints are actually about lack of documentation, not
| instability of interfaces.
|
| I also liked the article especially _because_ it avoided web
| apps, which I think are a subpar solution to a problem the
| software industry created itself by not developing more
| standards like W3C.
| analog31 wrote:
| I did something similar. I'm not a developer, but I use
| programming as a problem solving tool, and have written little
| apps for limited uses such as controlling a fixture in the
| factory -- stuff that the devs won't touch. My first language was
| BASIC on a mainframe, before I had access to a microcomputer.
|
| I was getting sick of Visual Basic and Excel, and besides, my VB
| license was more than a decade old. So I went "language shopping"
| by trying out the same two tasks in a whole bunch of languages.
| And I also let myself be influenced by online discussions, blogs,
| etc. Between computers at work and at home, I tried out each
| language on both Windows and Linux. One of the tasks was
| computational and graphical, the other was controlling a widget
| connected to USB.
|
| I ended up with Python, and have been loyal to it for 13+ years.
| Did I make the best choice? I can drum up a list of pro's and
| con's, but it would be based on hindsight.
| dvh wrote:
| When I need desktop app for my personal needs, I'm still writing
| them in Lazarus (text editor, git client, music player,
| spreadsheet, image cropper, various oddball one off desktop
| apps). It works on Linux and windows. If it really doesn't need
| to be desktop (typically visual apps that works on different
| files in different local dirs, or opening it in browser would be
| awkward) then I make browser app or extension in vanilla js. If
| it can be both desktop or browser, I chose browser most of the
| time, Lazarus is not exactly pinnacle of bug free apps.
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