from wikipedia:

Wirth’s law is an adage on computer performance which states that software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware is becoming faster

hardware doesn’t degrade, yet a lot of devices, that felt very snappy in the beginning, that are merely 5 years old feel outdated and slow, because if a trillion dollar corporation can’t be bothered to write a native application, and graces us with a control bar widget that’s an entire chromium browser, whose only purpose is to push two buttons, then very few others will be

on mobile, because developers are practically forced to write an app for absolutely everything, and there are easy to use tools available that will take your js and compile it into native components (like reactnative and nativescript), otherwise your app will be crippled, it is less pronounced on mobile in my opinion

on desktop, because you can write applications however you want, every bloody thing is in electron: chat apps, text editors, IDEs and even terminals and browsers (lol), it’s a complete disaster in my opinion, even a person like me, who wages holy war against electron apps, is forced to use a couple electron applications (looking angrily at you discord and zoom 😡)

the problem is that most people start with (and never go on from) javascript as their first (and final language), which is an interpreted language, made to be run in a browser, that was designed in like two weeks, and the expectations are sky-high (apps that utilize native components across five operating systems and two processor architectures), and the unfortunate result of these requirements is electron

there are some emerging solutions like extremely cross-platform flutter (but it’s not js) and there are now native macOS and windows targets for react native, but it’s rarely used

it seems like unless there will emerge some framework, that would magically sip out the project from the developer’s mind in js and transform it into native apps for ios, android, linux, macOS and windows, with zero modifications required from the developer, we have little hope, and such a framework would not only be a silly project, but also an effort of astronomical proportions

so we’re stuck with either iron grip control of corporations over mobile platforms that force everyone to write an app for everything, or with the freedom of the desktop, but we end up running 15 instances of chromium, not to mention the fragility of the web standards nowadays

what do you think?

  • poVoq@lemmy.ml
    9·
    3 years ago

    A bit of a side tangent: Why run Discord and Zoom as electron applications? They both work fine in a browser and you can just pin a tab to have them readily accessible.

    Running them in the browser is more resource efficient and also more secure. The electron app only adds a few convenience features that are very insecure because they require more system access and are thus forbidden in browsers.

    Otherwise… I use GNU/Linux and my computers all seem fast, even the old ones (at least when upgraded with SSDs) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    • Jedrax@lemmy.ml
      6·
      3 years ago

      Honest answer right here. Also I’ve recently had to use a computer with an HDD, like the old ones you can hear spinning and read/writing? It’s incredible how slow they are. We’re so lucky to have solid state tech these days.

      • seahorse@lemmy.ml
        5·
        3 years ago

        I tried running Windows 10 on a HDD and I was about to throw that machine out the window. Switched to a SSD and it’s like a brand new machine. Interestingly, my Debian installation ran perfectly fine on the HDD lol.

        • Jedrax@lemmy.ml
          6·
          3 years ago

          I’ve never really tried linux on an HDD. At least not since the old days, but it definitely wasn’t very slow back then. Yeah, Win10 on HDD feels equivalent to the computing power of a toaster.

          • sexy_peach@feddit.de
            3·
            3 years ago

            It’s the same on linux now as well. Opening Firefox takes several minutes until it’s able to load a webpage.

          • poVoq@lemmy.ml
            5·
            3 years ago

            To be fair to HDDs, the modern ones have reached about half the speed of a low end SATA SSD, so replacing an old HDD with a good new one also speeds up the storage considerably.

    • Echedenyan@lemmy.ml
      3·
      3 years ago

      Idk, my PCs are also pretty fast with HDDs including these using decade old ones (mostly SATA but also a PATA).