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by thrownaway561 129 days ago
I'm just asking, but is there really a need for a native programs anymore? Where I worked a decade ago, we started porting all our native programs over to the browser and this was when MVC beta was just being released. At this point with Electron and Tauri, is there even a need to write a native program

Now with AI, I would think that porting a native program to the browser wouldn't be the chore it once was.
4 comments
MomsAVoxell 129 days ago
Yes, very definitely. There has always been a need for high performance native applications. Even in the beginning of the desktop computing revolution, these questions have been asked .. and yes, there is a balance between native and cloud/browser-based computing - some of it is personal, much of it is industrial and corporate, and yet more of the spectrum where both methods are applicable exists, even still, decades later.
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well_ackshually 129 days ago
> is there really a need for a native programs anymore

As long as you don't give a shit about the fact that your baseline memory consumption is now 500MB instead of 25MB, and that 80% of your CPU time is wasted on running javascript through a JIT and rendering HTML instead of doing logic, no.

If you don't give a shit about your users or their time, there's indeed no longer a need to write native programs.

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botusaurus 129 days ago
what if caring about users means giving them features instead of fighting with obsolete unproductive native GUI frameworks

funny how Electron apps tend to have many more users than their native "performant" counterparts, isn't it?

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pjmlp 129 days ago
Where do you think Linux gamers get their Proton powered games from?
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PlatoIsADisease 129 days ago
I use COM and DLLs to extend software/automate. Using Visual Studio gives me some really nice debugging options.

I did try using python and js but the variable explorer is garbage due to 'late binding'.

I thought this was just my ignorance, but I've asked experts, AI, and google searched and they unfortunately agree. That said, some people have created their own log/prints so they don't need to deal with it.

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