[deanCommie]

Did we read the same article? What is this condescending bullshit. Nobody is arguing these things CAN'T be done, just that it's too much effort on the web, and the only web devs that know the ins and outs of every browser enough to make it work are unaffordable and unavailable.

[mrlatinos]

This is also what I took from the article. Everything they're wanting to accomplish is certainly possible, but instead of just knowing the ins and outs of each platform, you have to know the ins and outs of each browser AND how each can affect the other browsers.

Beyond this, it is clear to me when an iOS-minded developer creates a web app that ends up on Android. Each have their own specific styles, and this gets lost with web apps.

[LnxPrgr3]

Not to mention the effect of time. The Web is not a stable application environment, and you may get caught in limbo, where the old way to do something is technically deprecated, but only one browser implements the new scheme, and only in nightly builds and even then only if you launch with --please-segfault-hourly. But using the deprecated API means at some arbitrary point in the future your working code will stop working.

[asadotzler]

The Web rarely deprecates features. Browsers still have to display the Web of 1995.

[LnxPrgr3]

How about the Web of 2012?

WebSockets changed wire formats multiple times before we settled on something. Last I checked, the API still isn't final, and changes in browser behavior forced a project I was on to abandon it for socket.io. Web Audio has been through at least one breaking rewrite since 2012, and still isn't finalized.

Sure, '<h1>' still gets me a big, bold heading (probably, subject to CSS), but playing a sound file without plugins is still bleeding edge, and subject to arbitrary breakage. But we've broken plugins (for the best, eventually), so the old solution to that problem no longer reliably works.

[dragonwriter]

> The Web rarely deprecates features.

No, it rarely removes deprecated features.

[hatfieej]

What I thought the author was trying to say was that you can make a car that floats. It's just a much better understood problem to buy a car and a boat, then call it a day.

[tracker1]

"If you have a ship that can carry a tank, why not just put guns on the ship?"

[stcredzero]

the only web devs that know the ins and outs of every browser enough to make it work are unaffordable and unavailable.

The market has spoken. Doing those things is hard enough, people can charge lots for it.

That sucks. "Sucks" == suffering. Suffering == opportunity. (Deliberate Yodaism. Actually high market price == market opportunity.)

[StefanKarpinski]

Which is why it's cheaper to build multiple native apps... which was the point of the article.

[stcredzero]

You seem to be laboring under the false impression that I'm disagreeing with the article. I'm agreeing with the article. I'm also pointing out that this situation would indicate there's a market opportunity somewhere. (In the words of Jeff Bezos: Your margin is my opportunity.)

[djsumdog]

There are a lot of those little frameworks that try and bridge all this together: PhoneGap, Titanium, etc. They're all varying levels of terrible (unless you want to make games, in which case Unity mobile is a pretty solid bet).

So there is a market, people are trying to fill those gaps, and yet none of them seem to be able to bridge the gap in such a way that devs prefer maintaining two or more native apps over one that compiles for multiple devices with a common framework.

So there is a market, but it doesn't look like it's an easy problem to solve.

[bartof303]

The "condescending bullshit" is the title of the original post. I read the title "the fucking open web" and thought that 54mf's response was pretty diplomatic in comparison.

[baddox]

> and the only web devs that know the ins and outs of every browser enough to make it work are unaffordable and unavailable.

Really? More unaffordable and unavailable than at least one native developer for each platform you're targeting? I find that hard to believe.

[sievebrain]

Ye gods people.

The entire article is saying "I used to believe it was too expensive to do native apps so we did web, I now believe I was wrong, even though it may seem cheaper at first the costs of the web are far less predictable and it's now economically better to just do native apps"

[baddox]

But the author didn't actually compare the difficulties and costs of web development to native development. The article just lists a bunch of (debatably valid) difficulties of web development. But most (all?) software development has difficulties and annoyances.

[tracker1]

I'm available... and semi-actively looking... ;-) But I'm not cheap. That said, I provide great value.

I've been writing web based applications for about 20 years now. It's a lot better than it was in the late 90's and early 2000's, so stop bitching or get off the lawn. (sarcasm) Seriously though, I'd much rather deal with webpack, babel, react, redux and the like than angular 1&2 (just feels like a decade old solution now), and heaven forbid having to ever look at an <ILayer> again, or breaking up forms dynamically in the v4 browsers.

Yes, there are a few features not broadly supported, but there is also tooling that makes web dev as good, and in some ways better than app dev (though less than natural, and all out performance on a complex app is hard)... all of that said, it's a VERY valid option for many/most sites/applications.

[fixermark]

But do you provide an amount of value that offsets the cost of two or three completely-adequate devs working in parallel on mobile apps? ;)

That's the killer.

[dave2000]

> Nobody is arguing these things CAN'T be done, just that > it's too much effort on the web,

They're saying it shouldn't be done, or that it's possible and if you can't do it you're a lame developer. I didn't see it as condescending at all.

[st3v3r]

I read it as entirely condescending. The several "It's your fault" replies? Nothing but condescension.