I did something similar. I’m not a developer, but I use programming as a problem solving tool, and have written little apps for limited uses such as controlling a fixture in the factory — stuff that the devs won’t touch. My first language was BASIC on a mainframe, before I had access to a microcomputer.
I was getting sick of Visual Basic and Excel, and besides, my VB license was more than a decade old. So I went “language shopping” by trying out the same two tasks in a whole bunch of languages. And I also let myself be influenced by online discussions, blogs, etc. Between computers at work and at home, I tried out each language on both Windows and Linux. One of the tasks was computational and graphical, the other was controlling a widget connected to USB.
I ended up with Python, and have been loyal to it for 13+ years. Did I make the best choice? I can drum up a list of pro’s and con’s, but it would be based on hindsight.
Im curious to see the whole list of languages you tried, and result with each. I suspect it was related to finding suitable library for each problem (usb, graphics) more so than the language itsel. But maybe ecosystem is what we need from a language.
When I need desktop app for my personal needs, I'm still writing them in Lazarus (text editor, git client, music player, spreadsheet, image cropper, various oddball one off desktop apps). It works on Linux and windows. If it really doesn't need to be desktop (typically visual apps that works on different files in different local dirs, or opening it in browser would be awkward) then I make browser app or extension in vanilla js. If it can be both desktop or browser, I chose browser most of the time, Lazarus is not exactly pinnacle of bug free apps.
They should've tried Flutter, which is what I primarily use for building apps, and it's hard to find a competitor that's as "write once, run everywhere," as Flutter. Only Dioxus with their native renderer might come close, but that's years away from being at a Flutter-level production capacity.
i worry about Dioxus. not because "they're going to be destroyed by their VC funding" directly, but indirectly. is this a sustainable endeavor? does the market really want them or care about them? it's hard to consider and commit to them, when it's unclear if they're sustainable or just running on the fumes of a passionate founder three months away from marking the project as unmaintained and walking away.
to that end, while i find beauty in dioxus, i've been more willy to play with expo.
That's what happened to Darklang, if I recall correctly. I've been hearing about it for almost 10 years now and they went through multiple language rewrites and ultimately went bankrupt and then open source. Turns out it's hard to make money in languages and tooling.
> After writing that (no-longer-)recent post on web development, I wanted to get a personal "feel" for what the "new developer experience" is actually like across all of the current platforms if you don't resort to web tech such as Electron.
> I wanted to get a personal "feel" for what the "new developer experience" is actually like across all of the current platforms...
I don't really understand what this means. Without explaining that, the rest of this blog post is just rambling notes about developer ergonomics. Of all the things to focus on, that's going to be by far the lowest priority in app dev.
Maybe I'm just too young to have ever experienced the kind of stability expected here. My opinions of tools are based on what they are capable of doing and how well it lines up with what I expect them to do. That's my definition of "feel" as an app dev. I don't care if the interface is stable. I want the capabilities to be stable. To make an analogy, when I buy a new work truck I care more about the specs and not the stuff on the dashboard.
> ... if you don't resort to web tech such as Electron
And that's precisely why everything is now a web app for over a decade, and why W3C standards and big tech bureaucracy won out.
> Without explaining that, the rest of this blog post is just rambling notes about developer ergonomics.
That's how I took it, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. If you're making a small app by yourself, sufficiently bad developer ergonomics can be the reason that the app doesn't get made at all, or the frustration makes me regret it. That's important for me.
> Maybe I'm just too young to have ever experienced the kind of stability expected here.
This could be it. I've been around many cycles of technology, and it always feels like a great waste when you have to abandon your tools and experience for something that's buggy and better in only a few small ways. I'm willing to tolerate a lot more bullshit for something that I know will be long-lived, like QT or a static website, than Microsoft's UI-framework-of-the-month.
I guess the author's perspective is one of someone who has little experience with current tools/frameworks, so "ergonomics" become somewhat more important. Most of the complaints are actually about lack of documentation, not instability of interfaces.
I also liked the article especially because it avoided web apps, which I think are a subpar solution to a problem the software industry created itself by not developing more standards like W3C.