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doesn’t degrade, yet a lot of devices, that felt very snappy in the beginning, that are merely 5 years old feel outdated and slow, because if a trillion dollar corporation can’t be bothered to write a native application, and graces us with a control bar widget that’s an entire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?
This might not be a popular thought but : phones have far exceeded their remit - they’ve been capable handheld computers for the best part of a decade now - probably since they became powerful enough to do multitasking. I’m still a great fan of Mark Shuttleworth’s idea of convergence… It’s such a pity that didn’t take off. Most people’s handhelds are way more powerful than they need to be for what they do with them.
I agree with this. The new pinephone docks to a monitor and becomes a computer. If you could do this with the new $1000 iphones, it would be more than sufficient. I’ve read recently that the A15 bionic outperforms several last generation gaming consoles. Unfortunately, doing this would also kill the company’s market for laptops. Not just Apple, but also Google with their chrome books.
Would really be cool to just bring your phone to work and plug it in and you have a fully functioning desktop. Would be an absolute privacy nightmare though.
I wonder why Pine64 didn’t use their 8GB board for their PinePhone Pro… that really would have been a game-changer.
I guess there were power problems, or heat issues.
Absolutely! I think any extra power in the phones is simply used to suck up more data and telemetrics. The phones get faster so the Samsungs, Googles and Apples can run their useless extras for their own benefits.
That’s why the phones run so much smoother once you e.g. remove google and put on a custom rom
I absolutely agree that there’s bloat (for companies’ advantage) in phone OSs, and that a better experience is had with an open source alternative.