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by Impossible 1610 days ago
The platform is still web, even if it's not using HTML and CSS. The success of figma has lead to a lot of start ups targeting the web as there main platform, but using WASM (C++ or Rust) and WebGL (soon WebGPU). This makes sense in creative tools, I think. We're also starting to see tools that run on the server and stream video to the browser.
1 comments
cercatrova 1610 days ago
Christ, don't get me started on that last point. One of the most egregious examples I've ever heard of is Mighty, an app that streams Chrome from a server to your laptop, because apparently fixing Chrome's performance is too much of a hassle that now we need to send a video of our browser back to us.

And the worst part is, they might win. Lots of apps are web based with WASM and WebGL like you say, which are purely client side, and lots of people that need to do work might not have good enough computers to run such apps, if we assume (and I believe this to be true) that applications with more and more complexity will be pushed onto the web browser as the universal app interface. If a server can render those apps better and send them back, the client doesn't have to any work.

We continuously invent and reinvent the terminal/mainframe architecture, it appears like.

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pjmlp 1610 days ago
Basically what was done in X Windows and Citrix/RDP is now the browser's role, and the wheel keeps on turning.
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friedman23 1610 days ago
> And the worst part is, they might win

Might? They will win, is it not obvious at this point that every single app in the near future will be sandboxed in some way? The unix grey beards had a couple decades to prove they could write secure software and they failed.

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WA 1610 days ago
Or to write a UIKit that works across Windows, Linux and macOS with no hassle, making cross-platform development easier. But no, we have 3 SDKs on a single platform already and it apparently is confusing.

Oh wait, they did create a true cross-platform platform: the browser.

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pjmlp 1610 days ago
It is so cross platform, that some think it is too much work to support various browsers so they bundle Chrome with the application.

Could be worse I guess, there are those that ship a whole OS with the application.

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