I just watched this vid about native app development is in big trouble

I mean I'm no dev and a lot of the information is quite technical, but basically it's saying that apps from ios and Google are becoming sluggish to use because companies now just design a website and wrap that somehow and then they are able to make it fit ios google and windows mac etc

So, apparently devs used to write the code individually for each platform

which kept the whole project cleaner and more streamlined
but that means writing 4 or 5 different projects
whereas the almighty Zuck is saying, fuck that, just spin up a website and we'll throw it into a one size fits all wrapper
and then ios google windows mac can just add there branches to make it work
And the devs are saying 'well hang on, this is going to use a butt ton of memory and make the whole app slower?'
And the money guys are saying 'well, that's business, this is a faster way of getting the apps out to all the platforms'

And once Meta sets this as their standard, it's likely that others will follow

Also we know Google announced that soon every APK (even zapstore ones) must come from a 'verified developer' or google will send scary warnings and eventually block the ability to install on android phones, not sure about apple, im sure that's another minefield

And then...

It got me thinking about stacker news this works brilliantly as a PWA, (I'm assuming that is what this is) with no app store needed, the ui ux is amazing and the rendering is quite brilliant

like utube vids are automatically rendered
nostr notes
loading images and videos auto converts to a sn file
and obviously the Ln integration with it's own built in wallet and cc's
and not to forget Ln login, that's so slick!

Also i did read that google have backed down slightly on this after a backlash from devs i believe, some sort of allowance for 'advanced' devs to bypass....for now

So, question for @k00b @ek and all the SN dev gang....

Was building a first class PWA as SN a deliberate long term bet against potential platform lock downs, knowing that google/apple might tighten the screws one day, or did it just happen to be the fastest way to build it?

If google does shut the gates in the future, are we stackers glad to know we can still log in to SN regardless of the big boys throwing their toys 🧸 out the pram?

42 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 1h

@k00b's Razor - when presented with competing hypotheses explaining @k00b's behavior and both hypotheses have equal explanatory power, one should prefer the hypothesis that @k00b is lazy.

We went with the PWA because it's easier to maintain one codebase rather than two or three. Also, one of the first projects I shipped to production was an iOS app and even back then I found the process infuriating.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @Car 2h

I can remember as far as 2021 k00b being very pro pwa in pleblab.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @fourrules 2h

Redeveloping a web app for a native environment should become trivial with LLMs writing most of the code. I feel like maintaining multiple client apps doing effectively the same thing will be relatively more straight forward and the economics will make more sense.

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @zuspotirko 2h

Are you aware that you don't have to wrap a webapp with electron and the like? You can just write a native app.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Taj OP 2h

🤣🤣🤣 Simon the IT guy from the office UK