There's a worrying trend in modern web development, where developers are throwing away decades of carefully wrought systems for a bit of perceived convenience. Tools such as Tailwind CSS seem to be spreading like wildfire, with very few people ever willing to acknowledge the regression they bring to our field. And I'm getting tired of it
You forgot to read the very small fineprint after the rant hyperbole: *) true for desktop applications.
Ignoring phones in 2023 is patent nonsense.
You could go with C++ and QT. Though, writing C++ code is never easy/fun
It’s also ludicrously expensive, so as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t exist.
Everybody and his mother tries to push their custom iOS and Android apps, relegating web sites to the desktop.
Madness. I’m not going to develop and maintain three completely different versions of the same app in perpetuity.
Any multi platform GUI toolkit with a cross-compilable language will give you twice the functionality in half the development time over HTML+CSS+JavaScript.
Maybe it would if one existed.
I’m trying to paint a picture what a horrible absolute clusterfuck the web GUI technology stack is.
I don’t disagree, but I also don’t see any viable alternative.
It’s also ludicrously expensive, so as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t exist.
QT, writing C++, or both? Paying for a good technology can be cheaper in the long run if you save development time. And sure, developing in C++ is more expensive than JavaScript, because you can’t let cheap web code monkeys do it.
Madness
Indeed. But, very common madness.
Maybe it would if one existed.
I think I made it quite clear, that I set the scope for the desktop. There are several. At least QT even includes mobile.
I don’t disagree, but I also don’t see any viable alternative.
Paying for a good technology can be cheaper in the long run if you save development time.
Only until the price gets jacked up beyond what you can afford, and then you’re scrambling to rewrite your entire application to use something else that’s still affordable.
And sure, developing in C++ is more expensive than JavaScript, because you can’t let cheap web code monkeys do it.
An awful lot of code is written in C++, so I’m not sure that was ever a serious constraint.
I think I made it quite clear, that I set the scope for the desktop. There are several.
Sure, if we’re targeting desktop only, then there are lots of options: GTK, wxWidgets, Swing…
But what does it matter? You can’t ignore mobile in 2023.
Little add-on re viable alternative: Silverlight could have been nice, hadn’t Microsoft fucked it up and implemented it as a Windows-only ActiveX control.
With .NET Core/.NET 5+ being open source and platform independent, that idea/concept could be revisited. A trimmed down .NET framework in a sandbox with proper DOM integration would be a massive upgrade over all the JavaScript garbage.
That only helps if there’s a viable FOSS toolchain for .NET, including editor and debugger, which as far as I know is still proprietary. Using proprietary development tools is to be avoided if at all possible, not only because of principles but also because they will create problems that you are powerless to solve.
There is the fully open source debugger from Samsung, the Red Hat derivate/extension for eclipse and others are in the works. I’m happily debugging .NET applications with JetBrains’ debugger on linux. One tool by Microsoft for the ecosystem not being open source, doesn’t change .NET (Core/5+) being open source. Embedding a stripped down .NET Framework in browsers as a replacement/alternative to JavaScript, even if not required, would likely lead to the development of one or more new debuggers anyways, to have an in-browser development experience similar to how it is now with JavaScript.
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Ignoring phones in 2023 is patent nonsense.
It’s also ludicrously expensive, so as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t exist.
Madness. I’m not going to develop and maintain three completely different versions of the same app in perpetuity.
Maybe it would if one existed.
I don’t disagree, but I also don’t see any viable alternative.
QT, writing C++, or both? Paying for a good technology can be cheaper in the long run if you save development time. And sure, developing in C++ is more expensive than JavaScript, because you can’t let cheap web code monkeys do it.
Indeed. But, very common madness.
I think I made it quite clear, that I set the scope for the desktop. There are several. At least QT even includes mobile.
It’s nice to “agree to agree” sometimes ;-)
Qt.
Only until the price gets jacked up beyond what you can afford, and then you’re scrambling to rewrite your entire application to use something else that’s still affordable.
An awful lot of code is written in C++, so I’m not sure that was ever a serious constraint.
Sure, if we’re targeting desktop only, then there are lots of options: GTK, wxWidgets, Swing…
But what does it matter? You can’t ignore mobile in 2023.
Little add-on re viable alternative: Silverlight could have been nice, hadn’t Microsoft fucked it up and implemented it as a Windows-only ActiveX control.
With .NET Core/.NET 5+ being open source and platform independent, that idea/concept could be revisited. A trimmed down .NET framework in a sandbox with proper DOM integration would be a massive upgrade over all the JavaScript garbage.
That only helps if there’s a viable FOSS toolchain for .NET, including editor and debugger, which as far as I know is still proprietary. Using proprietary development tools is to be avoided if at all possible, not only because of principles but also because they will create problems that you are powerless to solve.
There is the fully open source debugger from Samsung, the Red Hat derivate/extension for eclipse and others are in the works. I’m happily debugging .NET applications with JetBrains’ debugger on linux. One tool by Microsoft for the ecosystem not being open source, doesn’t change .NET (Core/5+) being open source. Embedding a stripped down .NET Framework in browsers as a replacement/alternative to JavaScript, even if not required, would likely lead to the development of one or more new debuggers anyways, to have an in-browser development experience similar to how it is now with JavaScript.