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A comment on Ask HN: Is web programming a series of hacks on hacks?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: Is web programming a series of hacks on hacks? by TimJYoung on Monday September 12, 2016 @08:48AM (#12479206)
Yes, from a purely presentational aspect, HTML/CSS is way better than Win32, etc. Things like a virtual DPI, easy-to-use transparency and alpha blending, no paint cycles, and much more.

However, displaying a modal window and handling messages in a local window-specific message loop is easy in Win32, and much more difficult in HTML/JS. In general, the browser makes it much more difficult to deal with synchronous operations like modal windows and server requests that require the application to wait on the response. This is how you end up with the overly-complicated mess that is callback-hell, which is then solved by another overly-complicated mess called promises.

So, presentation functionality = A+, foundational functionality for UIs = D.

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Re:Ask HN: Is web programming a series of hacks on hacks? by aclsid on Monday September 12, 2016 @09:44AM (#12479599)
But you should really compare these with modern desktop UI development. Anchors are awesome in .NET and don't get me started with Java layouts. UI design truly is better on the desktop side. Maybe it will be more difficult for a designer to develop a nice interface for a desktop program but that's about it.
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