Re:Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
by Piskvorrr on Monday May 18, 2020 @05:36AM
(#23220285)
> If we save developer-cycles, it's not wasted, just saved somewhere else.
In other words, pass the buck to the user (the noble word is "externality").
Re:Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
by icebraining on Monday May 18, 2020 @07:51AM
(#23221170)
No, an externality is when a cost is passed to a external party (not involved in the transaction), like air pollution or antibiotic resistance. Passing a cost to the user is just a regular business transaction, like IKEA sending you a manual so you can build the furniture yourself.
If we save developer-cycles, it's not wasted, just saved somewhere else. In the first place we should not go by numbers, because there always will be someone who can complain for a faster solution.
> For example, IM, video/audio calls, and working with email shouldn't take hundreds of MB of RAM, a GHz-level many-core processor, and GBs of disk space. All of that was comfortably possible --- simultaneously --- with 256MB of RAM and a single-core 400MHz Pentium II.
Yes, no. The level of ability and comfort at that time was significant lower. Sure, the base-functionalitify was the same, but the experience was quite different. Today there are a gazillion more little details which make life more comfortable, which you just don't realize there are there. Some of them working in the background, some being so naturally that you can't imagine them not being there since the beginning of everything.