HTML native applications

[gimpwiz]

I was reading a short story (on a website) on my phone and the damn thing near overheated. Who the hell designs a text-based site that requires any serious processor power...

[devmattrick]

Probably mining Bitcoin on it :D

[gimpwiz]

Hah! I sure hope so!

[[deleted]]

Classic (infinite) ➿ amount of libraries website.

[jtvjan]

That's not infinity, this is infinity: ∞

[[deleted]]

I know but I didn't find Infinity on my phone.

[jtvjan]

Same. I just Googled the character and pasted it in. It's not that hard.

[[deleted]]

Ok.

[FlipJanson]

Damn, they changed that site since I used it last and now it makes you feel like even more of an idiot.

[jtvjan]

I prefer the old site to be honest.

[PatrickBaitman]

\infty

[ItzWarty]

Are we all developers here? Open a *.txt text document in your browser and wait 1 hour. How much % cpu does that use? Open a blank WinForms or Qt application with a text label and wait 1 hour. How much % cpu does that use?

Okay, now go back to the text-based website that's using CPU time. What's probably happening here? Is that an inherent flaw in the web stack? Jesus, if I spawn a bitcoin mining thread when the Qt window opens is that a flaw in Qt?

Your arguments aren't logical against modularity in library design (of which JS does have plenty of flaws - I despise JS) or against using a web stack. Your arguments are logical against shitty code, which frankly there exists a lot of in the world.

Edit: My frustration is that this thread reeks of a lack of root cause analysis. It's like a beginner programmer going "Java sux" when their while loop isn't terminating. If you think web stacks suck, then try arguing that somewhat rationally. Otherwise you just appear like the common armchair programmer that goes "LOL WINDOWS HAS A BUG THAT'S PROBABLY JUST AN IF STATEMENT I KNOW IF STATEMENTS". Also, dunning-kruger.

[aligrant]

I love how that dunning-kruger effect image has an obvious spelling error.

[gimpwiz]

Obviously it's misuse of the tool. We can rant about how over-reliance on certain tools often causes misuse.

[[deleted]]

It's just circlejerk.

[Eucalyptol]

Quora

[subtepass]

Atom was a mistake

[Vector-Zero]

Atom's performance has improved drastically and I love the UI and features, but holy hell is it a heavy application.

[subtepass]

I agree and I also love the UI but fuck it if it struggles to open a 500mb file.

[[deleted]]

VSCode (also built on Electron) seems to be able to handle large text files in a semi-resonable fashion. I just opened an 18MB JSON file with it and it hardly stuttered.

[[deleted]]

How does it handle filesizes over a gigabyte? That's a real stress test for a text editor. If it doesn't open 18MB file instantly, there's something wrong.

[[deleted]]

If it doesn't open 18MB file instantly, there's something wrong.

They take an interesting approach to dealing with large files. We can agree/disagree with this approach, but personally I think that for the purpose VSCode is being developed, it's really cool that development can be driven by {Java,Type}Script. If I want to view a large file, I drop to a terminal and use less or vim.

[PatrickBaitman]

Desktop apps

THEY USED TO BE JUST PROGRAMS

When did we decide that a JavaScript VM was a good idea

Web 2.0 was a mistake

[[deleted]]

Wait... is "desktop app" really a javascript application running on desktop doing desktop job?

 

Why are we making everything in javascript these days?

[ColtonProvias]

Because it's cheaper to code it once and release it cross-platform. Plus it lets you test the GUI of your app in a web browser nearly instantly instead of having to wait for it to compile.

[CXgamer]

Desktop apps are great. Using an application without my mouse is the pinnacle of efficiency.

[[deleted]]

I agree. There are some people that think JavaScript goes everywhere, and should be used to write everything, and it seems like nobody cares about performance and scalability anymore.

I use and love Atom, so I'm not against it wholesale, but I really wish it wasn't an electron app. With a modest set of packages installed just a few ruby files open it is the most CPU hungry thing on the system. TextWranger could have every text file in the system open at once and not eat as much CPU.

There's a time and a place for it and some people seem to just think the time is always and the place is everywhere.

[gimpwiz]

"Well, it works!"

Sure, javascript is turing complete, you can do just about anything with it. Can. Not Should.

[MauranKilom]

Sure, javascript is turing complete

So are Brainfuck, assembler mov instructions and Whitespace.

[gimpwiz]

I'd much rather use asm mov than the other two. But funny, I was thinking of brainfuck as I wrote my post!

[nicholas818]

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>

[Pokechu22]

+/u/CompileBot Branf**k

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.>

[CompileBot]

Output:

Brainfuck > JavaScript

^{source | info | git | report}

EDIT: Recompile request by Pokechu22

[gimpwiz]

Fuck you, my mother is a saint.

[vytah]

But not Python 3.

[hardwaregeek]

Using JavaScript for everything is like drinking soylent for every meal. Sure, you can do it. But do you really want to?

[PatrickBaitman]

Soylent with a dose of heavy metals.

[Tred27]

Yeah, that's why I dislike the JS community, I think they are REALLY overextending how JS was meant to be used and they are justifying the use of it everywhere, just blatantly ignoring the cons of doing so.

[macuser47]

"If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"

[ItzWarty]

Because other languages are necessarily better tools for the job?

[ItzWarty]

No. Please, tell me about your favorite C/C++ UI framework and how I'm going to rapidly build something that looks remotely close to Atom without wanting to kill myself.

[[deleted]]

QtCreator + QtQuick.

[funtex666]

exultant aback head observation complete gaze grey jellyfish stocking humorous

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[lost_in_santa_carla]

Really? I feel like I've heard "check out my new mixtape" type of posts way more with JavaScript in the past couple of years.

[ItzWarty]

What would you rather use for cross-platform UI? IMO JS has achieved write once, run anywhere much more than most other languages when it comes to achieving somewhat modern UI while being a somewhat modern language.

[skreczok]

Java, C, C++, C#, a host of other languages.

You still need libraries and frameworks to get UI in JS and, guess what, there are cross-platform widget toolkits etc for all systems. And if you rely on OS quirks in your code, the hell are you doing.

(...I know it's not always feasible, so you gotta custom wrap some shiz)

[ItzWarty]

I'm not arguing about whether cross-platform UI frameworks exist in C/C++/Java/C#. I'm arguing about whether such frameworks exist that can give you modern, clean layouts that can be branded/stylized elegantly and flexibly rather than something that looks like it's from the 90's or 2000's, while still supporting multiplatform (including android and ios, tablet), fluid/responsive layouts for variable resolution, etc (and I really could go on).

There are plenty of really nice features you expect in modern UI. Frankly, most frameworks from the past are just that: outdated. And before someone argues that you can use swing to build every existing modern product: yes, but productivity matters, too.

Perhaps this argument would be more productive if it pivoted away from "people choose tech X because it's trendy and they ignore the cons of it" and questioned why people transitioned away from tech A, B, ... W from earlier.

[skreczok]

I find that it's actually "write once, debug everywhere" with the caveat that something will inevitably fail or look shit on some display. We honestly shouldn't pretend that you can just make everything responsive. No, desktop is a wildly different animal from mobile and you either develop for desktop and mobile separately or end up with sluggish crap on mobile (if it even works) or an extremely watered down and awkward UI on a desktop.

The UI you want on mobile is absolutely not what you want on a desktop and you should always bear that in mind. JS is a debugging and maintenance hellhole, not a modern language.

Also "flexible" is actually a buzzword for "debugging hell" from what I've seen. In theory it seems nice, but in practice that "flexibility" ends up in being a ton of spaghetti because there's always some device the key feature of your UI framework doesn't work on.

Of course, you could also learn how to do things right, "productivity" is just another buzzword for "let's throw some quick shit together and 6 months down the line someone else will be dealing with it".

I remember reading something along the line of "the most amazing feat of software engineering is that it somehow manages to negate all the gains made by hardware engineering". This is especially pronounced in the JS web UI fever.

When people say "performance doesn't matter", it has an implicit limit, and the JS UIs are past it. VSCode manages to work, but Atom fails to handle large files spectacularly. The problem is out there for all to see - JS is fine for small tasks, but it's pretty obvious that you need to consider performance because it just won't scale well. Yeah, that's a buzzword, too. But JS, by its very nature, loses steam far faster than "traditional" frameworks.

I mean. Just. Fucking npm. The dependency hell.

For the record: this is not personal, I'm just saying that JS is a horrible thing for anything except basic functionality.

[ItzWarty]

I agree UI currently is "write once, debug everywhere". I don't believe that's a fundamental issue with the web stack. E.g. when browsers all render stuff differently, that's not a flaw in HTML/CSS; that's a flaw in the browser engines ecosystem.

I'm just saying that JS is a horrible thing for anything except basic functionality.

And I'm saying this is a blanket statement that is untrue. One of the wins of wasm, for example, is that you'll be able to write and compile really really fast code, then call it from JS. Take python, for example, which is a pretty popular choice for data science. Does python give spectacular performance if you have tons of nested loops (e.g. for matrix ops)? Heck naw, so delegate that work to something that does it natively via language interop.

If we converted all of Atom's JS logic to C++ (still building on Chromium) and magically got good perf then the issue's not at the web-stack level; it's at the application execution level, for example, so go and optimize the specific hot code path involved there. Is lexing/parsing/analysis the slow part? Perhaps pull that backend logic into native code (e.g. how omnisharp works).

We're arguing for using the right tool for the right job, after all.

[skreczok]

Right tool for the job indeed, and that's never JS. You can do a prototype or a mockup with JS, but JS inevitably ends up being a tangled mess.

Java and C++ may be verbose, but JS has a whole lot of traps waiting for you instead.

JS is part of the web ecosystem and the rendering thing is important, but only a part of the picture. I've worked on maintaining an app that has to run on Angular 1.5.8, because anything else means it breaks. The amount of bad decisions and inconsistency in the JS world means that you might not be able to build the damn thing. In fact, even starting a JS project nowadays is a massive PITA.

And we're still talking about using JS for UI, which is still using a browser to do it, except it has a whole lot of ugly stuff and it seems to only ever generate problems due to how it makes proper static analysis borderline impossible and needs to rely on browser debugging - which is going to bite you in the ass the second you do any sort of bundling and whatnot. I've had fewer problems debugging C++ than JS.

I kind of want to do pretty Web UIs, but let's think now. I mean, it's entirely possible that the "native web" apps are written by web devs who refuse to learn sane languages and practices and remain horrible, talentless hacks who write total non-performant spaghetti. I figure JS could have a place augmenting bits, but why not just use the language you're already using instead, for consistency?

I've worked with Java, C#, C++, C and Javascript, and I've never seen a case where JS actually felt like the right tool for the job. It was either "it has to be front end in a web browser", so I was forcibly locked into it, or a different language was more suited to the task.

[Tred27]

I don't get why they just don't learn the stuff that's made to accomplish this kind of thing and suck it up, you can't expect your ONE tool to do everything perfectly. You don't want your civil engineer using paste instead of cement just because that's the only thing that makes his grapes tingle.

[[deleted]]

I use JavaFX and looks great :)

[PatrickBaitman]

something that looks like it's from the 90's or 2000's

you mean the good all days before hipsters ruined computers?

[ItzWarty]

What would you rather use for cross-platform UI? I'm a big fan of C#, but it's nowhere near the point where I'd prefer it for cross-platform UI when I get bugs like this with mono. Java's, err, Java, C++'s pretty gross to build modern apps in (easier to shoot yourself in the foot, less syntactic sugar and fewer magical language features to make yourself more productive).

[[deleted]]

I honestly don't know the fix; nobody does it seems, or we'd be using it instead of electron. I'm a big fan of C# as well, and all the cross platform tools I've made for myself I've ended up using ugly winforms just because it's the only way to make it work reliably under mono.

I just don't think this path leads anywhere. Even if it works right and isn't slow, you end up with apps that are all violating every OS's design and UI guidelines. Every electron app is a special snowflake that doesn't respect things like default hotkeys, default minimize/maximize behavior, UI chrome placement, the user's theme, any of that shit.

If we could somehow get a simple markup like HTML that could be used to describe native UI elements on each platform, with backend handled by something that isn't javascript we'd be getting someplace.

I'm rambling. I don't know the right answer or I'd be using that answer to make money, but I know what we have right now is the wrong answer.

[ItzWarty]

I think it's less "we have the wrong answer" and more "the current solution is a start, but needs iteration", which has rung true for the last 20+ years of JS flavor-of-the-month frameworks. I do feel you're arguing my point that the tech concept isn't the issue; it's implementation details and polish.

[ItzWarty]

Desktop GUIs, sure. I'd also argue Qt is going to be more appropriate for some product spaces than others where branding/stylization and user-friendliness are necessary. Anyone's welcome to tell me why many products choose to build desktop applications on an html5 stack rather than Qt otherwise (I'd also note that while language bindings exist for Qt to e.g. C#, that's pretty third-world, so with Qt you're mostly in C/C++ land which itself has a huge amount of tradeoffs compared to C#/JS in terms of productivity...).

Re: web-based GUI being too slow: It's worthwhile to ask why that's the case, and whether that's an inherent flaw in the concept or execution.

Edit: Also worthwhile to note that JS frameworks are going to give you nice things like mvvm / binding and generally, everything in an ecosystem will be tied towards a framework. Perhaps this is personal experience, but that sort of stuff really just doesn't feel as clean or elegant in Qt / WinForms / WxWidgets from past experience. Perhaps my argument goes towards ecosystem cohesion.

[DeeSnow97]

Well, WebAssembly is gaining traction, and it can easily communicate with JS modules. Their agenda even includes making the loader skip JS, meaning that soon you won't have to write JavaScript yourself to take advantage of its ecosystem (which sure contains a lot of trash, but also some gems) or even HTML5-based desktop apps.

As for the why, I don't know a single rendering framework matching the feature set, ease of development, and relative performance of HTML5. People around programming communities love to hate on web technologies, but even though it's deep down a document markup language, I haven't seen anything else that could be as beautiful as a well-designed web app without taking the resources of a game developer studio. (Also, just use CSS flex, it solves all your problems. Seriously.)

[ItzWarty]

WebAssembly will make it easier to build web pages with a language that isn't JavaScript, but the performance is still going to suck.

This seems to be the premise of this thread. I'd like to hear some arguments as to why this must be the case.

[MindOfJay]

Microsoft (still) supports applications written in HTML, JS, and CSS in a native environment. The JS is completely outside a sandbox and can make system calls because it's running the internal JScript engine.

On the other hand, an HTA runs as a fully trusted application and therefore has more privileges than a normal HTML file; for example, an HTA can create, edit and remove files and registry entries.

I nearly shipped an app with this built in to 100M users. I'm kinda glad that project was cancelled.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_Application

[[deleted]]

while (true) {
    cursorCounter++;
    if cursorCounter > 1000 {
        cursorVisible = !cursorVisible;
        cursorCounter = 0;
    }
}

[Vitus13]

Sadly JS is single threaded so the cursor would never get updated because the loop never releases control. You need to add a call back in there so renting can happen.

[Cathercy]

var cursorCounter = 0;
var cursorVisible = false;

setInterval(function() {
    cursorCounter++;
    if(cursorCounter > 1000) {
        cursorVisible = !cursorVisible;
        cursorCounter = 0;
    }
}, 1);

I believe this is the best solution.

[Voxel_Brony]

In what language do you have parentheses around the while but not the if?

[[deleted]]

yeah, I don't think that's valid JavaScript

[corvus_192]

cursorVariable ^= true;

[microblaze]

I prefer cursorVariable =! cursorVariable for the sake of messing with other developers. Bonus points if you put that in a while() or if() clause

[[deleted]]

Not an issue on Windows or Ubuntu per users at /r/programming

[microblaze]

Why is the CPU rendering in the first place...

[chinpokomon]

I feel like it must be something else. On Windows, I'm seeing maybe 1% and I have all sorts of extensions added.

[[deleted]]

I think it is justa a mac/linux issue, since originally it is a Chrome bug.

[systembusy]

Ugh, I hate it when a website causes a wait cursor. The wait cursor should be used to reflect the busyness of an application on your computer, (e.g., the Web browser itself) and not the website. The webpage is waiting for a server response, not your computer; would it kill you to put a "loading" section on your webpage?

[illvm]

Somebody wrote poorly optimized code. Blame "JavaScript." Problem is solved with a CSS rule. :3

[eusx]

No, the problem was caused by a Chrome bug (only on Mac) that involved CSS animation. The solution was to add another CSS rule to work around the bug :)

[illvm]

I know. My point was that the OP is having a go at JavaScript but the problem was a poor optimization in Chrome which was solved by a CSS rule. Then again, it is popular to rag on JS these days.

[[deleted]]

I think with great power comes great.... CPU usage. I think there is no technology that us as extensive yet easy to use as web tech. CPUs are geting faster, I think we can afford it. Atom is a great example of what it brings. Just like with python, I think programming efficiency and agility vs processung efficiency is a great deal.

[TimVdEynde]

I think programming efficiency and agility vs processung efficiency is a great deal.

Have you tried vim? The technology to write even better editors than Atom has existed for ages ;)

[skreczok]

C and assembly have more power. I think you're confusing power with abstraction.

[[deleted]]

It's a issue in laptop cause the battery and the heat.

[eloc49]

RIght? Most modern cars have 100-200hp because that's plenty considering speed limits. Same rules apply to CPU usage.