Ask HN: Write once, run anywhere front ends failed. Thoughts?

10 points by grumblingdev 2 years ago | 23 comments

I think the idea of one programming language everywhere has sailed, for a while at least.

It looked like JavaScript was going to be able to do it. React and React Native were very promising.

But since we now have Swift/SwiftUI and Kotlin/Jetpack, each platform has a language and framework specifically tailored for it. Except for Windows which is still a shit show.

Attempts to abstract this in a cross-platform layer are becoming more and more difficult, and offering less marginal value (e.g. we now have declarative frameworks natively whereas before we only had React).

Each platform has a recommended way to do everything, and we should follow the conventions of each platform.

I would be interested to hear if anyone has actually had successful though with frontend code sharing...

PaulHoule 2 years ago |

Web applications. If it is at all possible to make it a a web application why mess around with anything else? The other day I was struggling with "How the hell do I tell Android users how to find a QR code that really works in the play store" and then it hit me... Web based QR code reader and done!

It can be depressing that you have 20 electron applications running to put icons in the tray but heck... everybody wants to stuff icons in your tray and most of those x-platform frameworks can't make a tray icon. I did an evaluation of a whole bunch of x-platform frameworks and they all sucked, though I do like JavaFX best of all. There's a reason why Electron is as big as it is.

quickthrower2 2 years ago | |

I agree but to go further, for an MVP: Just release a regular web app that does a decent PWA!

In Chrome you can turn any page into an taskbar iconned app from the menu now. Tell your users to do that. Actually an easier “install”. Web APIs do so much and you can integrate with Dropbox/OneDrive for file access (or use the apis if you want).

Offline is available using service workers. Camera, location, touch, gyro, etc. are all available.

endisneigh 2 years ago |

JavaScript has accomplished this, though. It's just that React Native/Phone Gap isn't as performant as native. I'd argue though that the web is a "run anywhere front end" given that pretty much everything has a web client these days, even TVs.

The main issue around this is that there's not a great interface to use native functionality on the web, hence all of these compilation attempts.

entaloneralie 2 years ago |

My partner and I run a small video game studio and we wanted a bytecode format we could run on every device we owned, so we made a 100ish lines VM spec, and implemented these thin emulation layers for the different platforms. My wiki, our games, the compilers, linters and type checkers are all written in that same language, assembling to rom files that will run equally well on a GBA, Playdate, RPi, Thinkpad, PSP and so forth.

It's worth looking into. I hope you find something that works :)

https://100r.co/site/weathering_software_winter.html

zzo38computer 2 years ago |

For some things, uxn/varvara will do; it is simple enough that it can run anywhere.

For other things that can run by internet, a subset of telnet and terminal codes might do; however, that is only good for remote services and not for stuff that is more useful to run locally.

For some things, C will do, especially command-line stuff, but also is possible to use SDL, etc.

You do not need so much extra stuff that just makes it slow and takes up more memory and makes it difficult for the user with program working together; for this reason, UNIX pipes are useful because you can put any program together by pipes. (Like, another comment also mention something similar)

superchroma 2 years ago |

I have been on two projects now that use web frameworks to ship complex management applications and both were nightmares. The cost of doing even simple changes was not small. React has been way worse than angular on this front too. People do not understand it. They do not think "the react way". They invariably code something that doesn't consider reacting to change properly and now you have a complex component that is refreshing all the time

catlover76 2 years ago |

Do you have thoughts and opinions on the various options for Windows desktop development? I would be curious to know, I am starting to work on a Windows desktop app. I am assuming that the first, MVP-style, attempt will be using Electron.

But I am also wondering if Maui will end up being a better option, or if I will be able to have an excuse to use the Avalonia framework for F#

grumblingdev 2 years ago | |

> the first, MVP-style, attempt will be using Electron.

Good choice.

If you want to stick to HTML...WebView2 is suppose to replace it, but it assumes your backend code is .NET or C++, instead of JS/Node.js. Microsoft Teams is using it.

If you want to use native Windows UI components from JS code, then React Native for Windows is recommended. Facebook Messenger is using it.

All approaches require C# or C++ modules to be used to interact with the Windows Platform. Or there is: https://github.com/tjanczuk/edge.

The recommended approach is WinUI 3 which would involve C#/C++ and XAML.

To SwiftUI/React/JetPack are called module-view-update (MVU). There is an MVU for C# called Comet. https://github.com/dotnet/Comet#key-concepts

catlover76 2 years ago | | |

Cool, thanks for this info.

Seems like there are kind of many, many options, but none of them are particularly great.

superchroma 2 years ago | |

I think avalonia is much more promising than Maui as the latter seems to be kind of mythical in nature.

catlover76 2 years ago | | |

What do you mean? That you've never seen anything actually built in Maui even though people mention it?

asfarley 2 years ago | |

I’ve been working on a complex desktop WPF application and I’m happy with the results.

satvikpendem 2 years ago |

I don't know, I'm using Flutter just fine for all that you're saying.

yathxyz 2 years ago |

I will poison my own well and state that I don't think my opinion is a good one but I've come to admit the reasoning behind suckless-type software.

Might not even be adjacent to the topic of this thread but I remember the one time I accidentally found out about UNIX pipes in a bioinformatics course. I didn't know you could use computers in a way that would help you get things done gracefully and without GUIs. I didn't know I could just type in `curl wttr.in` and get the weather results instantly. I didn't even know about vim. I didn't know that an OS could occupy less than 1GB RAM on idle and still let you fully operate and do all the work that you need to do.

You can't just keep abstracting things to work with ways of computing that are just more painful to work with. At one point the end-user has to adapt and simplify for his/her own sake. I wish I did sooner.

max_ 2 years ago |

What is wrong with Flutter it seems to satisfy your my needs of "Write once run every where" for frontends.

tomcam 2 years ago |

Livecode does all that stuff.