Re:All Programming Is Web Programming (2009)
by bmitc on Wednesday June 16, 2021 @09:32AM
(#27528329)
> At some point you browser will just turn into another operating system running on top of your operating system.
Why is that good? This is what people keep saying, but now instead of having Windows, Mac OS X, and a few Linux distributions, we know have several different browsers (Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox, etc.) running on top of several different OSs. The surface for error and behavior differences is much greater and the browser "OSs" are still inferior to the base OS. A desktop app gives me files I can manipulate and pass around, ability to use things offline, multiple windows, etc.
To do real work, I almost exclusively still use desktop (non-Electron) applications, where the web is mainly used for searching things, reading documentation, e-mail, and the like. I can't imagine working everyday inside a webapp. The main Electron app I use is Visual Studio Code, and it is held back being a desktop web app, namely due to an inability to have multiple windows within a single app.
Why is that good? This is what people keep saying, but now instead of having Windows, Mac OS X, and a few Linux distributions, we know have several different browsers (Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox, etc.) running on top of several different OSs. The surface for error and behavior differences is much greater and the browser "OSs" are still inferior to the base OS. A desktop app gives me files I can manipulate and pass around, ability to use things offline, multiple windows, etc.
To do real work, I almost exclusively still use desktop (non-Electron) applications, where the web is mainly used for searching things, reading documentation, e-mail, and the like. I can't imagine working everyday inside a webapp. The main Electron app I use is Visual Studio Code, and it is held back being a desktop web app, namely due to an inability to have multiple windows within a single app.