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0 pointspaulryanrogers7mo ago0 comments

I recall making that point with Eich here on HN. His counter was that no one could know where it was going. And even today I think it's hard to get agreement on what the fundamentals should be. Web Components are slowly getting there I suppose.

Still, it's quite sad how long we had to wait for stylable checkboxes.

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cosmic_cheese7mo ago

Personally, for something like this I’m not sure that getting consensus really matters or is even desirable (death by design by committee is real). Just pick a direction and go. If it’s sufficiently good it’ll catch on and blossom from there, if it doesn’t go back to drawing board and try again.

The problem is that there aren’t even really any attempts out there. The closest as you say are web components, but they’re still extremely primitive relative to something like AppKit or win32.

paulryanrogersOP7mo ago

> ...if it doesn’t go back to drawing board and try again.

My guess is that would put the burden of keeping up with evolving APIs on web developers and web companies. And there is a huge and very diverse ecosystem out there.

Native app developers seem to be burning resources trying to stay in stores and working on modern devices.

cosmic_cheese7mo ago

The new APIs wouldn’t be for everybody in the early stages and that’s fine. It’s impossible to build something that everybody can get on board with from day one. There will be early adopters who are willing to pay the price of admission.

Staying in app stores in my experience has not been particularly difficult or resource intensive. If you stick to first party toolkits and don’t go nuts with custom widgets, maintenance is minimal and often you only need to compile against a newer SDK every few years. The horror stories are generally coming from projects with severe NIH syndrome and sometimes of users of cross platform frameworks.

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cosmic_cheese7mo ago

The problem is that there aren’t even really any attempts out there. The closest as you say are web components, but they’re still extremely primitive relative to something like AppKit or win32.

paulryanrogersOP7mo ago

> ...if it doesn’t go back to drawing board and try again.

My guess is that would put the burden of keeping up with evolving APIs on web developers and web companies. And there is a huge and very diverse ecosystem out there.

Native app developers seem to be burning resources trying to stay in stores and working on modern devices.

cosmic_cheese7mo ago

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