How might software development have unfolded if CPU speeds were 20x slower?

Re:How might software development have unfolded if CPU speed... by josephg on Tuesday April 09, 2024 @07:06PM (#39985285)

The big problem is that nobody wants yet another platform-specific UI framework. Even Microsoft is using electron (or something like it) to build Microsoft Teams.

If you build a cross-platform UI framework, it'll probably end up looking a bit ugly and custom on every platform (eg Java Swing). Making a cross-platform UI toolkit that looks native everywhere is an insane amount of work, because different platforms have very different UI toolkits, with different built-in components and different platform conventions. This problem becomes 10x harder if you want to make it work on mobile as well.

Some people try anyway - and bless their cotton socks. But electron (and arguably Qt) are the closest we've got. And even then, most electron apps seem to be full of custom components.

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Re:How might software development have unfolded if CPU speed... by mike_hearn on Wednesday April 10, 2024 @05:38AM (#39988760)

That's not really the cause. As you say, Electron apps don't look native either. The issues are elsewhere.

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Re:How might software development have unfolded if CPU speed... by markus_zhang on Wednesday April 10, 2024 @10:01AM (#39990850)

Thanks, that makes sense. Where can I find a Windows specific (or Linux specific)? I actually don't care about cross-platform. Desktop is dominated by Windows anyway.

QT is not bad and I used it for a small project. But it follows native so I'm not sure how to go back to native Win2000 style.

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