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If you're writing five apps, you're doing it wrong. A huge amount of probably any app can be contained in a common blob of business logic and wiring, with some native presentation on top. Yes, I oversimplify, but folks have been doing exactly that for decades. More work? Yup, even with a common engine it's more work than firing up Electron. That's where "do we even give a shit about what we're shipping?" comes in. If there's no pride in the finished product, well, Electron isn't going to save your product, either.

by dpkirchner6 hours ago|

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IME, the UI library idiosyncrasies are the pieces that take the longest to get right. Common business logic is super simple by comparison.

by mort965 hours ago|

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> A huge amount of probably any app can be contained in a common blob of business logic and wiring, with some native presentation on top.

I keep seeing people claim this, yet most UI software I see really doesn't do anything that complicated. It's some basic database CRUD stuff and some basic algorithms, and then all the actual effort lies in making the UI feel good.

by skydhash6 hours ago|

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> Yeah the problem is having to write 5 apps, not the inconsistency.

Isn’t that what abstraction and interface is about? You can write the common business logic and presentation concerns, and then share it across each native implementation.

That is what web wrapping is in truth, but it’s just inneficient because of the huge surface area of web technologies.

by mort965 hours ago|

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For a whole lot of apps, almost all of the difficult stuff is in making the UI feel right.

by skydhash5 hours ago|

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Aesthetics, usability, and technical flavor are different axes and feel right is a subjective point. And based on anecdata, usability is what actual users want. Web wrapping is mostly an exclusive focus on aesthetics. With native frameworks, you often get very close to "feel right" without much effort.

by Karrot_Kream3 hours ago|

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> With native frameworks, you often get very close to "feel right" without much effort.

I've only seen this sentiment on nerd forums but never among my less technical friends, so I'm a bit reluctant to accept this wisdom honestly. That said, if you're just building something for a technical crowd you'll probably make them much happier if you make your implementation use native widgets and take up much less memory and redraw faster at the expense of a slightly jankier UX. Though, this is probably why IRC clients all feel janky lol.

For example a lot of my less technical friends/family really like the visual design of Spotify even though it conflicts with a lot of design language on MacOS, Windows, and Android.