do you really though

If it makes for easier programming, yes.

Writing Slack as a native app would be a massive pain. Especially due to all the web-like features it has, the fact that it's one codebase (mainly) for desktop and web.

They also have to support Windows, Linux, Mac and mobile. Not an easy task

> Writing Slack as a native app would be a massive pain.

If it was allowed I'd write the native macOS app for them. I'm sure it'd pay off selling it for $5 or $10 in the Mac App Store

Do it then: https://api.slack.com/

Slack APIs aren't perfect, but they're good enough to allow 3rd party clients for terminals, Emacs[0], and the like. I've never dug into it because I avoid Slack in general, but I think the biggest hurdle right now is just user authentication.

That's a pain, and does limit your audience, but maybe you'd still find some buyers on HN.

[0]: https://github.com/yuya373/emacs-slack

OAuth2 is as standard as it gets. Any language worth it's salt has ready-made libraries for it. There's tons of documentation and guides online too.

Not sure why that's an issue.

There are more complex apps with native versions for multiple platforms, by smaller companies.

Such as?

Affinity Designer, Photo, and Publisher to name a few, from the same company. [0]

Then there are many games, which by their nature require native performance, and of course have to present the same frontend. :)

[0] https://affinity.serif.com

These are powerful pieces of software which massively benefit from native code doing processor/GPU intensive tasks. Totally different use-case.

Slack is literally just a fancy messaging app.

Games feel like a separate edge case. One of the most common complaints about cross-platform apps is they don't "feel native" or adhere to platform UX expectations. With games, there's an expectation they'll provide their own wholly own UI that doesn't match an existing commercial OS.

Also, video games aren't generally expected to be accessible to blind people via screen readers. If you develop a cross-platform app with a custom UI, it's going to have zero accessibility unless you implement each platform's accessibility API.

Yes, game devs already put in the effort of providing their own UI stack, and port that to every OS.

If most Electron apps were built as "games", i.e. providing their own UI via DirectX/OpenGL/Metal etc., I wonder if they might still be more efficient and less bloated than Electron apps are now.

LibreOffice has native versions for all major desktop platforms, does many more things than Slack, and is maintained by open source volunteers and the Document Foundation staff of six.

qTorrent, VLC, CMAKE, Obs, AbiWord and Touch Designer. That's off the top of my head.

To say a company that has 200 MILLION in revenue can't re-write their client in Qt is indefensible nonsense.

You're probably right about cant, but why would they want to? A native version of their app would either embed a web browser or end up half-implementing one poorly. Why not just start with one?

Any Qt app can use QtWebView. There's a difference between putting a web browser inside your app and putting your app inside a web browser.

Yeah, the latter feels more put together, you don't have the awkwardness of communication between C++ and JS, and your web browser app will work in a web browser.

And all cross-platform apps made before Electron.

blender

The Mac cocoa version of Telegram achieves most of the same features as slack without resorting to webviews and shares 99% of its code with the iOS app (meaning the Mac build adds practically no overhead).

Windows and Linux are another beast, and Telegram’s solution is to use Qt for those platforms. Again, slack like capabilities with no webviews.

The difficulty of native dev is not as high as it’s often represented.

I have little experience with native iOS development, so you might well be right. That said, Telegram strikes me as quite a bit simpler than Slack. Not just in number of features, but also considering how many of the features are 'strange' UI.

As an aside, apparently the next version of Telegram will be a complete rewrite done in Swift, and snappier as a result.

For a billion dollar company? Give me a break.

Slacks annual revenue was 200 million in 2017, when they were a 5 billion dollar valued company. 200 mil is just 1000 Bay Area salaries, and they do have other budget items.

Its entirely possible that they cannot fund 5 native development teams, while building their core features to justify their valuation, and paying their sales and marketting team to actually generate revenue.

5 Devs on each team, which should be more than enough if they're getting 200k a year would cost a total of 5 mil. A tiny amount for such a huge improvement for users.

I legitimately can't tell if you are joking.

It does sound like a joke. It also ignores that fact that other, proper, multiplatform technologies exist that still produce a far superior end result for the user even if not 100% platform guidelines/conventions compliant.

What do you mean? Slack is valued at ~5 billion dollars, that has very little to do with their actual cash on hand. In 2016, they were bringing less than 65 million in revenue, for example.

I think I like when programming is hard.

When you're working on your own project, some time sink that you didn't anticipate may be frustrating, but other than that, I definitely prefer it to coding something I already know how to do well.