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by BubRoss 2575 days ago
> That being said, creating a native app for 2-3 (depends if you include Linux) different OS with completely different frameworks and maintaining feature parity between them involves a lot of specific knowledge and (probably) separate teams.

Why do people believe this? It could be written once in C++ using Qt, Juce, or Fltk and be blazingly fast. This has been done thousands of times over the last few decades. Where does this myth come from?
2 comments
c256 2574 days ago
I can’t think of any applications written using those (or any other, actually) cross-platform toolkits for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android that were even moderately successful in the market. Generally, cross-platform UIs are disliked or hated everywhere; sometimes with the exception that they’re considered decent in their one truly native environment and terrible elsewhere. Qt definitely falls into this group.

Can you suggest a couple examples? I’m no fan of Electron, but I don’t see it as being so easily replaced as you seem to be suggesting.

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giovannibajo1 2574 days ago
You’re thinking of a timeframe in which apps embraced native style of operating systems. Slack does not do that, it’s a web app with a custom UI that doesn’t feel native on any OS. Thus, it would be perfectly sensible to rewrite it once in QML with a single codebase.

If anything, the main objection should be difficulty of hiring QML developers compared to JavaScript/CSS.

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ubercow13 2574 days ago
Doesn't the success of Slack counter your whole point? It is built using a cross-platform toolkit for Windows, macOS and Linux, and is to some degree disliked or hated everywhere for the same reasons that Qt might be.
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BubRoss 2574 days ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_(software)#Applications_u...

Some notable programs:

Adobe Photoshop Album, Adobe Photoshop Elements, AMD's driver tool, CryEngine, Autodesk Maya, Google Earth, Mathematica, Opera, OBS, Skype, Teamviewer, Telegram, VLC media player, Wireshark, QtCreator, Qbittorrent, Nuke, Xnview

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dmitriid 2574 days ago
> It could be written once in C++ using Qt, Juce, or Fltk and be blazingly fast.

So, it was written once using Electron and is sufficiently fast.

> This has been done thousands of times over the last few decades. Where does this myth come from?

There are surprisingly few cross platform apps written using these technologies that are fast, functional and have any degree of visual polish.

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BubRoss 2574 days ago
Neither of these things are true and there is enormous evidence.

First, if it was fast enough, people wouldn't bring up its bloat and speed in every discussion of slack.

Second, there are hundreds if not thousands of programs much more complicated than slack that work exceptionally well and have been made with these GUI libraries. A minimal amount of searching would show this.

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