Bruno is nice because unlike postman all the calls are defined in files that you can add to the git of your project.

Only thing I don't like about Bruno is that you cannot generate a documentation from your api call tests.

Are there non-binary versions of Bruno?

https://github.com/usebruno/bruno has the source code. It's a node app so i guess by binary you mean a way to run it without the normal electron wrapper? You should be able to run it standalone though i've never tried it outside it's normal distribution method.

Bruno was supposed to free us from the other bad guy, then they added a subscription too. Fuck Bruno I guess.

I find this funny from people that make their living from $$ from software! Lol

But apart from that Bruno is open source (MIT), you can fork it and have it anyway you want…

The paid option seems just like the traditional open source model of make software free but offer enterprise support. And given that CTOs tent to want to pay for stuff (postman is terrible nowadays but is still picked and paid for) why would Bruno straight up say no to money?

Open-source is about having the whole stuff, not restrictions on "Embed Bruno into your SDLC with deeper Git integration, automation."

What I do resent is the fact that Bruno was a reaction to shitty restrictions from another application, and they did the same thing a few months/years later.

I'm not sure how adding a subscription is 'the same thing'. Postman forced all of your data to be stored in their cloud, and held it hostage for $1,000/user/year.

Bruno seems to charge somewhere between 70-130 dollars user/year for unlocking GUI features. The same features are all accessible via the terminal or IDE.

Sounds like you're looking for https://yaak.app/.

that's close but it uses Tauri, which maybe lighter than electron but we're still running an instance of a web browser/web view

There's a TUI application out there that might be up your alley, but I can't remember what it's called...

EDIT: There's one called Posting which seems to be the most popular: https://github.com/darrenburns/posting

https://github.com/LucasPickering/slumber is also a good TUI alternative

Yes, Tauri isn't that much different than Electron. I also bundles Node JS to power Yaak's plugin system, which makes it even more similar.

I think Electron gets a bad rep mostly because big companies use it to build low quality apps.

Tauri doesn’t bundle Chromium and Node. My app bundle is 10MB and it even bundles a sidecar binary in Go. A hello world electron bundle is 100+ MB.

Ya the bundle size is different for sure. The memory usage isn't far off though, since it's still a web app.

Why is webview a problem? I hear this a lot but not sure why (with the exception of gtk WebKit on Linux which has legit perf issues). We’re on web right now and I’ve never heard anyone complain hackernews is sluggish and that they want a native app instead (or rather 5 native apps minimum for the big OSs).

This is mostly the case because most solutions provide more than the bare minimum of DOM rendering and event binding that a web view originally entails. Once you "accidentally" ship an entire browser inside your app, you've opened up more vectors for vulnerabilities—such is the price of humanity's hubris in attempting omnipotence.

Then second aspect is the "well-hidden" JS runtime or the general dislike of Javascript, but this point has been explained by other commenters well enough.

> Once you "accidentally" ship an entire browser inside your app

That’s not needed. Generally there’s a webview available on the system of choice. All major platforms have it, including mobile and many Linux distros.

> vulnerabilities

Such as? I mean yes if you load remote content with local access to FS etc (although that’s not within the webview). But you don’t need to (nor should you).

> Without sounding like every other developer who hates on electron

Electron is hated for very good reasons. Postman in particular is just so insanely bloated and sluggish, it's painful to use on anything that doesn't have a higher end CPU.

I haven't tried it but there is Posting in a TUI: https://github.com/darrenburns/posting

> Without sounding like every other developer who hates on electron, I would really appreciate an http client with a Gui that was lighter, like iced or slint.

How much would you be willing to pay for such a client?

I'm not being facetious, I'd really rather like to know, because as an independent developer, every single time I suggest a native application using native widgets to a client, they choose the HTML interface rather than a Qt or similar based interface.

The easily doable pretty animations in CSS in a 800MB-in-RAM-while-running application is, to paying clients, preferable than a 50MB-in-RAM-while-running that doesn't have the fancy spinning, tilting, animated wizz-bangs.

I have been writing software professionally since the mid-90s; I can do you a quick GUI-based cross-platform HTTP send+receive application based on libcurl in about 2 weeks. Looking at the minimum I need to make to pay my bills, I need purchasers paying a cumulative 1000USD for this effort, so 10x buyers @ $100, or 100 buyers @ $10, and so forth.

And, of course, I'd expect to only be able to sell it for a short while, if it is popular, until a clone starts up with $40k worth of SEO and advertising money.

The software you want can be had, and the skill to make it exists, in a timeframe that is feasible, but the economics are just not there.

This is a good business perspective, but I don’t really see why this couldn’t be someone’s open source passion project. The comment wasn’t really implying that they needed a paid tool, just a tool that suits their needs and is lightweight. Plenty of the software I use on a daily basis is open source software where you could argue that the economics shouldn’t have been there.

> Plenty of the software I use on a daily basis is open source software where you could argue that the economics shouldn’t have been there.

Me too. But the problem with "the economics just aren't there" means that if I cannot get, just from word-of-mouth (say, a Show HN post) 100 users @ $10 once-off lifetime purchase, then this is not a product that is in demand anyway. An open-source/free product that is exactly the same would similarly receive no love from users.

IOW, if not enough users exist for this product at $10, not enough users exist for this product at $0. Your passion product will still result in the dev burning out on the fact that no one wants their passion enough.

Doesn’t that depend on the buyer? I can think of several products that I would only use if free, and would go without if it was $1, $5, or $10. E.g. todo list apps, time tracker apps, budgeting apps.

I think you can argue that, if you have enough demand at $10, that you’ll have enough at $0, but I don’t see how not having demand at $10 implies that you won’t have demand at $0, since usually making something cheaper can change buyer’s minds.

> Doesn’t that depend on the buyer? I can think of several products that I would only use if free, and would go without if it was $1, $5, or $10. E.g. todo list apps, time tracker apps, budgeting apps.

My point is not that the user would go without. My point is that if your product is not desirable or differentiated enough that enough people would pay $10 for it, then making it free won't help because it will be lost in a sea of clones that already existed before you even started working on your product.

After all, look at your list - todo list apps, time tracker apps and budgeting apps; you cannot, in the sea of free competition right now, deliver a desirable enough app in any of those classes, unless it provides so much value over and above the others that many people are willing to shell out $10 for it.

IOW, if the product does not provide enough value for some people to pay $10 for it, making it $0 won't make a difference because it doesn't provide anything over and above the entrenched free offerings.

You see the problem in your comment:

why this couldn’t be SOMEONE’S ELSE passion project

I think you can also easily do the pretty animations in a 50mb in ram "native" application

Yes, you can, especially if you use Qt with QML like I do[1][2][3].

[1] https://rubymamistvalove.com/blog/orchids.mp4

[2] https://rubymamistvalove.com/block-editor

[3] https://www.get-notes.com/

Wow! The blog post was an inspiring read. Thank you for showing what’s possible.

I'm glad to hear that, thanks!

HTML/CSS can still be used for the frontend even without Electron. Some frameworks use the OS bundled web renderer instead:

- For Rust apps: https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri

- For Go apps: https://github.com/wailsapp/wails

I know it misses the sweetspot you are looking for, but have you tried curl?

uvx posting

https://posting.sh