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this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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Programming
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Um, what? There are very few GUI toolkits targeting both desktops and phones, and none of them are reasonably usable from C.
You forgot to read the very small fineprint after the rant hyperbole: *) true for desktop applications. You could go with C++ and QT. Though, writing C++ code is never easy/fun (still better than JavaScript, though). Any argument about natively compiled multi platform GUI applications regarding mobile is moot either way for multiple reasons. The angle I'm going to push here is: Everybody and his mother tries to push their custom iOS and Android apps, relegating web sites to the desktop. Any multi platform GUI toolkit with a cross-compilable language will give you twice the functionality in half the development time over HTML+CSS+JavaScript. And don't get me wrong: I'm not really suggesting that websites have no place. And there are good reasons to want websites. I'm trying to paint a picture what a horrible absolute clusterfuck the web GUI technology stack is.
Hundreds of companies have tried to solve this exact problem for years and already did the cost/benefit analysis. It turns out that writing almost all of your code exactly once is cheaper than doing it in the multiple stacks that would be required with whatever your dream architecture is. They are not idiots just because you want them to be.
You sound like someone with zero practical experience in this area who just wants to rant about code purity. The rest of us are trying to get shit done while you pine for a perfect technology stack that will never exist.
Right ... that must be why no website ever is trying push their mobile app on me, and why all complex software for developing, video and graphics editing, CAD, ... is implemented on web stacks.
You sound like someone who's replacable by ChatGPT.
At least you got that (partially) right.
Exactly my point: all you get done in web stacks is shit. And the trying is spot on: what do you really expect to come out the other end when the input is shit?
I don't even have to do that, though improvements never hurt. Just take any C-Style language other than JavaScript or any other dynamically typed abomination of a scripting language, and you're bound to be happier and more productive.
Complex software for developing, video and graphics editing, and CAD all have very capable web stack counterparts to the usual desktop applications. vscode, Canva, photopea, onshape, etc
Sounds like something a web developer would say. Don't kid yourself; none of these play in the same ballpark as proper desktop applications they try to imitate. Saying otherwise is as cringe and sad as linux fanboys suggesting GIMP was a fully featured alternative to and on par with Photoshop. And I say that as a linux user who loves to use GIMP for hobby graphics editing since ~25 years.
Ignoring phones in 2023 is patent nonsense.
It's also ludicrously expensive, so as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't exist.
Madness. I'm not going to develop and maintain three completely different versions of the same app in perpetuity.
Maybe it would if one existed.
I don't disagree, but I also don't see any viable alternative.
QT, writing C++, or both? Paying for a good technology can be cheaper in the long run if you save development time. And sure, developing in C++ is more expensive than JavaScript, because you can't let cheap web code monkeys do it.
Indeed. But, very common madness.
I think I made it quite clear, that I set the scope for the desktop. There are several. At least QT even includes mobile.
It's nice to "agree to agree" sometimes ;-)
Qt.
Only until the price gets jacked up beyond what you can afford, and then you're scrambling to rewrite your entire application to use something else that's still affordable.
An awful lot of code is written in C++, so I'm not sure that was ever a serious constraint.
Sure, if we're targeting desktop only, then there are lots of options: GTK, wxWidgets, Swing…
But what does it matter? You can't ignore mobile in 2023.
Little add-on re viable alternative: Silverlight could have been nice, hadn't Microsoft fucked it up and implemented it as a Windows-only ActiveX control.
With .NET Core/.NET 5+ being open source and platform independent, that idea/concept could be revisited. A trimmed down .NET framework in a sandbox with proper DOM integration would be a massive upgrade over all the JavaScript garbage.
That only helps if there's a viable FOSS toolchain for .NET, including editor and debugger, which as far as I know is still proprietary. Using proprietary development tools is to be avoided if at all possible, not only because of principles but also because they will create problems that you are powerless to solve.
There is the fully open source debugger from Samsung, the Red Hat derivate/extension for eclipse and others are in the works. I'm happily debugging .NET applications with JetBrains' debugger on linux. One tool by Microsoft for the ecosystem not being open source, doesn't change .NET (Core/5+) being open source. Embedding a stripped down .NET Framework in browsers as a replacement/alternative to JavaScript, even if not required, would likely lead to the development of one or more new debuggers anyways, to have an in-browser development experience similar to how it is now with JavaScript.