Post #1658321

2026-03-02 15:54 UTC

@PinoBatch Oh yeah, there are some very good reasons JVM and .NET didn't catch on like Electron did — but they do at least prove that cross-platform app development can be done with reasonably sized dependencies shared between apps. Heck, Tauri manages that, and that's just Electron but using the OS' native webview. Even if we accept that the web is the best shared abstraction we have, we don't need to ship a whole browser with every app

Replies (3)

@PinoBatch@peoplemaking.games 2026-03-02 19:47

@andrewt I think one of the reasons that Electron caught on as opposed to Tauri's approach of using the system HTML renderer is that Apple WebKit was missing so much compared to Blink and Gecko. See "Progress Delayed Is Progress Denied" by Alex Russell. https://infrequently.org/2021/04/progress-delayed/

Open ##1658322
@operand@todon.nl 2026-03-02 20:45

@andrewt @PinoBatch and additionally, im pretty sure its possible to make webapps that dont require absurd amounts of memory, even if you're using JS and not WASM.

Open ##1658323
@bunny@mk.absturztau.be 2026-03-02 20:53

@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz @PinoBatch@peoplemaking.games I am not sure it's a good reason but most 'application's today don't really have a protocol, they are intended to run an up-to-date collection of minified javasctipts directly off the platform provider's cloud server, and out-of-date collection of javascripts is not supported. It's possible to repackage that collection of javascripts as an electron 'application' but it's not really feasible to replicate and maintain that in a different language. :abunhd:

Open ##1658324