Indeed, compared to any native app it’s terrible.

If you care about UX, you should make native apps.

You guys are technically correct, but also dead wrong with your outlook

They're trying to make a useful app for humans, not trying to win the HackerNews Award for Excellence in UX. If accepting a little unfixable edge case jank makes their goal way easier to attain, they're going to end up with a much better app overall

I am not trying to nitpick - just giving my honest feedback. This submission is not for a technological breakthrough that I would admire from a theoretical perspective.

This problem has been solved many times over the last decade or so. So claiming that _this_ is the future and not the more established (and smooth!) solution has to be supported by at least some evidence.

It’s perfectly reasonable to not care that much about UX.

We should however be clear about our trade offs and not pretend that web apps can replace native apps.

> pretend that web apps can replace native apps.

We don’t need to pretend. Web apps must and already did replace a whole class of apps that never should’ve been native to start with.

For example: why would you even need native app for HN?

Depends on the app. For example, I'm using Wikipedia's excellent native app even though Wikipedia is basically text-and-images only site.

I could imagine a nice native app for Hacker News, too

What does it do that web version won’t be able to?

I don't lose a tab among hundreds others if I need to reference something. It has all the necessary navigation on-screen (language switch, search inline, table of contents)

Don't get me wrong, wikipedia website is also brilliant: fast and reaponsive. The app is simply adjusted to the platform it's on, including all the mobile interactions you've come to expect. For example, there's no hover on mobile. In the app I can tap-hold a link and see the preview that you see on hover on Wikipedia's site.

I pretty much never use the HN website, fwiw. The UX is worse than the iOS app Hack.

I’d hate to use a web app for maps, notes, document writing, IDE, messaging, etc. I always prefer a good native app to a good website.

UX is a real thing. Any user that feel your app is crappy, slow, inconsistent, ugly, breaking OS paradigms, janky. Will just dump it, and just get another one (there are plenty) Users are the real judges giving you the Award of Excellence, any minute they keep using your app