> If the priorities of its developers keep shifting, it doesn't matter (Qt from the old Qt widgets to the new declarative ones).
This happened nearly a decade ago.
Re:Electron 6.0
by adrianmonk on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @02:51PM
(#20577091)
Point well taken, but I think it can be both:
1. More value used to be placed on efficiency.
2. As time went on, the value of powerful, cross-platform tools and platforms became more obvious.
3. Since this was later in the evolution of the industry, the people who made it happen were a different generation that didn't prioritize efficiency.
That is to say, perhaps there's no fundamental reason you couldn't have the nirvana of efficiency and portability (best of both worlds), and it's just that no community of developers has actually aimed for that.
I attribute this to the older generation of OS developers and project managers and CEOs, who have not offered easy to use, powerful tools to create cross platform applications.
If the programming language is not memory managed, it doesn't matter (so anything C or C++ based is out).
If it's not cross platform, it doesn't matter (Win32, WPF, Cocoa, etc.).
If the priorities of its developers keep shifting, it doesn't matter (Qt from the old Qt widgets to the new declarative ones).
If it doesn't support high DPI or responsive design, it's out.
And I say this as a middle-aged developer, my first PC was a Pentium 1 and I've also used home computers from the 80's.
The incentives for OS creators are to create walled gardens. Which they've done successfully. But because of that, they can't also bitch and moan about "slow cross platform applications" when they do everything they can to kill or hinder cross platform stacks.