[BackBlast]

I work with lean, business speculative software mostly. Which means not cross-platform native development is simply not economical to do. I generally need to be able to hit Windows, iOS, Android, and MacOS square on with one code base.

A "native" electron or capacitor distribution system is a fine extension of a local-first web client. And an advantage of building fat clients generally is they lend themselves to such distribution models much easier than say, htmx or hotwire.

Native fat client have had their benefits and lots of people still prefer them, but always had the drawback of manual data management and installs. Being able to leverage any device you own with a cloud synced local-first client really gives you the best of both worlds.

But not all software fits readily within this model.

[eternauta3k]

Why not Java?

[BackBlast]

Java fails on multiple points.

First, my list failed to include web because of the context. Web is, by far, the largest and most important platform. Even if I'm building only native installers for a project, I need to be able to build web projects with the same tools to make this work.

Java also fails "one code base" requirement as desktop and mobile are very different. The poor iOS support is going to cause it to fail the "square on" requirement as well.

No on Java.