[a4isms]

The nice thing about this question for old-timers is that we can recycle the answers we already heard about using Java for cross-platform desktop development from 20+ years ago. Or the rationale for using a cross-platform toolkit with C++ from 30+ years ago.

You get substandard desktop applications that tend to frustrate people who are deeply immersed in any one ecosystem and expect native applications to have deep integration with each platform and comply with each platform’s design sensibilities.

But history shows that applications written against cross-platform toolkits have done just fine, as have applications that completely embraced “going native” on particular platforms.

I’m left with the thought that either strategy works if you go “all in,” the mistakes come from:

1. Going cross-platform but then doing ridiculous back-flips to try to make the app feel really, really native. Just take what the platform gives you, and accept that you’re giving people a web-like experience that happens to have some native affordances. Learn to live with the few complaints from retro-grouches.

Or, 2. Going native, but skimping on deep integration and fully embracing the look and feel of each platform. This is one of those “penny-wise, pound-foolish’ strategies: You ship faster, but you lose the big benefits of a cross-platform tool, and you don’t satisfy the users that appreciate what a native app offers in look, feel, and integration.

[stnmtn]

I think Discord strikes the balance of your two mistakes well.

[vxNsr]

As in, their app is really bad all around?

Totally agree.

[stnmtn]

Ha, I meant it in the opposite way, that it avoids making either mistake. Yes, it consumes a lot of resources, but it's success has proven that users don't mind this as much as commenters on hacker news seem to.

And it's a program that is slick, intuitive, and supports so, so many use cases without ever feeling overloading.

[Y-bar]

Disagree fully. As an app I feel Discord is slow (on an Intel 9700K), clunky, and not really intuitive. Just the text input delay is noticeably slower than example Word or Sublime text.

I'm only member of 6 channels and have maybe only that many private messages open at a time, maybe it becomes more intuitive it there are more? But I don't understand how that would be.

One thing that is extra annoying is that the settings window can't be a separate window, so every time I have to adjust audio settings I get muted and lose the chat focus.

[kroltan]

Over-100-server lurker here. I majoritarily use servers, not DMs, and could see why people that use a lot of DMs would find the layout inconvenient.

I think the UI mostly makes sense, it has a hierarchy from left to right, so it is essentially a amped-up tree-view. You could argue for actually using a tree view (a la TeamSpeak), at least on desktop, and I wouldn't disagree, but it kind of makes sense given parity with the mobile app.

I don't see a need for minimal input delay for text, compared to a code editor, as when writing natural languages, they are mostly formed in sentences and therefore have a lot of "buffer" in my brain, I don't need a closed feedback loop to type. Suppose that someone that relies on that would be rightfully befuddled with any delay.

It uses 156 megabytes of memory even on this high-volume scenario, so I would say that while baseline performance is low, it doesn't get slower, which is good.

That being said, I can always find what I want in the UI, it is rather internally consistent. The voice features are excellent and it has less outages than Slack, in my experience!

[jcelerier]

> It uses 156 megabytes of memory even on this high-volume scenario, so I would say that while baseline performance is low, it doesn't get slower, which is good.

no ! it's not good ! this mindset is why everything sucks :( at no point one should have to accept that "baseline performance is low" for a software developed by a multi-hundred-million-dollar company that was almost bought by MS for a few billions

[smoldesu]

I'm using Discord (with BetterDiscord and a CSS theme overtop) on an i5 4460, and I can barely notice any latency when typing. The only time when I can get input latency past 100ms is when I'm rendering something in Blender, or have a high-CPU game running in the foreground.

[nyanpasu64]

The UI is getting worse, as they overload existing UI elements with new functionality. On mobile, they replaced the "recent mentions" button with a "stages" button (I don't use stages), making it harder to look for recent mentions just to promote their Clubhouse clone. On desktop, they replaced the "upload image" button with a button to open a "upload image or create thread" menu (I find Discord's implementation of threads to be half-baked, threads expire quickly unlike forum threads, you have to pay to reduce expiration, and they override server-wide mutes). You have to double-click to skip the menu.

Not to mention stuffing their UI with payment prompts left and right, showing emotes you can't use in the emote menu, replacing useful screen estate with "get nitro" and "boost servers" buttons.