Platform Strategy and Its Discontents

https://infrequently.org/2024/10/platforms-are-competitions/

by wmanley • 2 years ago

105 66 2 years ago

ickelbawd• 2 years ago

I have some sympathy for this viewpoint. And I think Alex’s heart is in the right place—Nextjs is a dumpster fire and react server components are when react finally jumped the shark for me.

Maybe if we had HTML6 we wouldn’t be in this scenario. HTML5 was great but form building on the web (without JS) is a second-rate experience. And it’s even more miserable once JS is in the mix, but hey developers can provide a much better UX for end users than HTML and CSS alone could possibly provide.

Sorry Alex, but without JS the web would have died a decade ago as phones took over. It’s only JS that keeps us in the ring.

Devasta3• 2 years ago

HTML can never be improved, that is at the very foundation of its current form. We are 20 years into the takeover from the W3C and still can't even do a PUT request without JS, nevermind anything approaching even one tenth of the functionality of XForms.

The web of semantic documents died years ago, it's an application platform now and that means JS. HTML is naught but a payload carrier.

forgetfreeman4• 2 years ago

All true, but an error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it. Perhaps it is finally time to let the web-as-an-application-layer paradigm die?

aragilar5• 2 years ago

https://alexanderpetros.com/triptych/ will hopefully address that.

pjmlp12• 2 years ago

I was really disappointed that XHTML effort was killed by the HTML5 folks, we could be so much better, but it is as it is.

amadeuspagel2• 2 years ago

The author actually links to the NextJS page for server components as "a tacit acknowledgement that their shit stinks". I guess this is how you acknowledge progress if you want to write an article in the tone that is expected on HN and mastodon now.

andrewflnr2• 2 years ago

He's not opposed to JS entirely (he specifically praises a handful of JS-based tech like ServiceWorkers), more so the all-JS single page type of app. To be fair he definitely could have been more clear about what he's talking about and what lines he's drawing.

ec109685• 2 years ago

All the desktop apps he cited that are a threat to native are SPA’s so it doesn’t seem like he hates them everywhere.

I agree though it’s very odd that desktop web apps are serviceable, while they universally are horrible on mobile.

nchmy2• 2 years ago

He has dozens of other exceptional essays on his site, and plenty on social media and conference talks. Check them out.

DeathArrow5• 2 years ago

Sorry Alex, but without JS the web would have died a decade ago as phones took over. It’s only JS that keeps us in the ring.

Not really. Web would still be there but for websites not web apps. The web was designed for hypertext, a medium that is just supposed to deliver information not build apps upon.

aragilar5• 2 years ago

I doubt he's opposed to JS, given the number of new JS APIs he pushed Chrome to implement as part of Project Fugu, he seems more opposed to specific frameworks.

devjab2• 2 years ago

This is a very good article and I agree with most of it. I never really understood why React and Angular became big for the general web. They have a lot of usage in enterprise applications, where you typically access them from a “pc”, but even then they suck on the tablets your employees drive around with. At least for the most part they don’t suck that much worse than the terrible native clients that came before (and still do in the rare case that a supplier actually build a native mobile app). Why that spread to the wider web is beyond me though. I get why you would use it for personal projects if it’s your day time job anyway, but a page reload never hurt anyone.

I personally think that the most responsible “father” is finance. The article states that there is more money with the web, but in my experience it’s far easier to lock down payments through apps. I agree that part of this is because native apps are better on mobile, but they are also much easier to work with and consume. It’s not easy to make payments function well on the web while in a native app it’s just a click with well powered api behind it. Serving both users and developers. Now, it probably could be easier on the web, but who would deliver it? The article calls out Apple and to some degree Google as guilty of not making browsers competitive with mobile apps, but why would they? If anything it’s in their best interest to keep the web shitty on mobile.

gruez2• 2 years ago

I never really understood why React and Angular became big for the general web.

As opposed to what? Server side rendered pages with random jquery snippets sprinkled around for interactivity? I prefer the reactive model far more than manually trying to update the page myself.

devjab2• 2 years ago

You could just do page reloads. Of course if you don’t really need very advanced authentication with role-based access control there is also HTMX which is around 10kb.

pjmlp12• 2 years ago

Apparently SSR is quite hot in JS frameworks, after a new generation rediscovered how we oldies do Web development in .NET, Java, Ruby, Python, Go, PHP....

righthand• 2 years ago

They became big because those companies paid for tech evangelism. People got excited and adopted, which in turn created more evangelists (unpaid) for those frameworks.

Compare them to HTMX that only has unpaid evangelists, each time it is brought up on HN, people compare it to React because of the strong base around React, creates a lens of how people see the world. Even though HTMX is a completely different framework with different intents.

amadeuspagel2• 2 years ago

The article refers to the JS-industrial-complex but only has stats for NextJS[1]. Maybe other frameworks are better? I would love to see a similar chart for the showcases of other frameworks.

[1] https://infrequently.org/2024/10/platforms-are-competitions/...

skybrian2• 2 years ago

I'm looking at the list of top websites and thinking "when have I ever wanted to install the mobile app?" The only one I see that I use is Spotify. Maybe the time spent on mobile is in other apps?

But I'm probably an outlier because I spend most of my time on websites, even on phone and tablet.

It would be nice to see this broken down by market segment. I don't see any banks in the list. I use my bank's app for certain reasons like depositing checks and Zelle.

nchmy2• 2 years ago

I think what youre missing is that most of these are just websites, not "apps". And they suck

gruez2• 2 years ago

But I'm probably an outlier because I spend most of my time on websites, even on phone and tablet.

Meanwhile our users are clamoring for app version of our web app, even though it's just a web wrapper. I guess some people just have a "there's an app for that" mentality.

tonyhart72• 2 years ago

because western especially people got to tech has more chance to comfortable being on the web than the app

example of Gen Z and alpha social media addict that used to use Tiktok,Snaps etc You cant deny that the use of web is dying and I still not mentioning Asia market where mobile is the first choice

skybrian2• 2 years ago

This seems like the revenge of TV. People used to spend many hours watching TV and now video is back, with algorithms that try to give you more stimulating things to watch.

Other entertainment (like video games) have to compete with that. But I’m not sure that websites have to compete with that if they have more practical purposes. What will people do when not watching TV?

The metric of “hours spent on entertainment” doesn’t seem like the right one to use. It doesn’t measure the value you get from an activity or how much you’re willing to spend on it.

For example, does a banking app need to try to compete with video games for hours spent on them? Something seems wrong with that comparison.

forgetfreeman4• 2 years ago

Pretty solid take on a roiling shitstorm that's been brewing for at least the last 15 years. One thing I strongly disagree with the author about is wanting the web to win. Of all possible outcomes the web coming out on top of the platform wars is the worst available. Simple fact of the matter is the web wasn't built for any of this shit as our bloated and still wildly insecure browsers demonstrate rather vividly. The web defaulting back to a largely static information display medium would free up so much client budget and development hours it's hard to imagine that multi-OS support for native apps wouldn't be a net savings over the long haul. Hell, just imagine the kinds of resources that would free up if forced migration of highly dynamic websites was a thing of the past (yeah I'm looking at you Drupal).

crabmusket2• 2 years ago

What are you suggesting complex Drupal sites be migrated to?

forgetfreeman4• 2 years ago

Most would get migrated into the void where they belong. A small handful that have real use cases would have their interactive services ported to native app. Solutions already exist for commerce and donations features, remote data entry and retrieval would need a rethink I'm guessing. As with any massive paradigm shift there'd be a cull. I strongly doubt much of value would be lost.

DeathArrow5• 2 years ago

I agree with points about openness and gate keeping. But from my point of view, the web is the worst platform to run apps.

I worked on microcontrollers, system software, desktop software, mobile apps, games and now I am a full stack web developer who mostly does backend and defers most of the front-end tasks to colleagues.

I don't like JS frameworks and it was far more enjoyable for me to use QT, Borland C++Builder, Windows Forms XCode and Android Studio than to use Angular and React and even Vue.

Aside from Web front-end to being a less enjoyable experience for me, the Web was designed for websites, not for apps. Web as an app platform means subpar experience for the users, too.

We tried with Flash and Java applets running in the browser. Those died and now we have the Javascript mess.

When, if ever, Wasm will have full access to browser DOM, maybe we can get rid of the Javascript mess. But then, again, why bother running a binary app in the browser when you can run it on the desktop or phone?

And even if web as an app platform is said to promote openness and impede gatekeeping it still has a terrible downside for the end user: it makes the user rent the software instead of owning it.

pjmlp12• 2 years ago

The issue with renting software, is that it will happen even in native apps, because it is the only way most companies can get some money out of their products.

Piracy doesn't bring any money, and forever licenses don't scale to keep a steady income per month after the user base is settled, and everyone likes to get a steady income for their work.

aragilar5• 2 years ago

True, but it's much easier for web apps to alter the deal than native apps, given most of their local state is ephemeral and hard to access, and much of the useful data, and potentially even software, is on the server. How many emulators are there for web apps, compared with emulators for nearly every popular OS/platform in the last 40 years?

DeathArrow5• 2 years ago

Piracy doesn't bring any money, and forever licenses don't scale to keep a steady income per month after the user base is settled, and everyone likes to get a steady income for their work.

How about selling a new version with more features? That used to work in the past. Or sell a new software. That used to work, too.

JimDabell2• 2 years ago

Businesses worth billions of dollars were built by selling forever licenses. Pretty much every big B2C software company that is older than 15 years got that big selling forever licenses. Microsoft got big selling forever licenses to Windows and Office. Adobe got big selling forever licenses to Photoshop. Every games company, etc.

We know with certainty that selling forever licenses scales because we have concrete examples of it happening with some of the largest software companies in history.

SaaS is only a recent trend, it’s not the only feasible way to make money with software.

cobbzilla• 2 years ago

You may be interested in the concept of “local-first” software — https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/

Data storage concerns are orthogonal to app distribution method, as others have pointed out.

jbjohns2• 2 years ago

The founder of Leptos makes a pretty good argument [1] that the bottleneck for WASM isn't really the DOM and that they are already faster than some popular JS frameworks even with the current constraints.

[1] https://youtu.be/4KtotxNAwME?si=IEZ5kRHR_W2o9i_k

pjmlp12• 2 years ago

Just tried the site, and already the first problem is isn't as interactive as the Websites for any JavaScript framework, because naturally there is a whole contraption to make the code run into the browser.

cdaringe• 2 years ago

I have experience in all listed categories as well. I hold the inverse opinion. I hold the inverse opinion only for a select few web stacks, and outside of that niche, pull hard back into sharing your opinion. Would love to expand if anyone is interested in the dialogue!

DeathArrow5• 2 years ago

Sure. Please name some fronted frameworks that provide a pleasurable experience to both developers and end-users.

For the developers it should be easy to learn, it should be stable without lots of changes, backward compatible with no breaking changes from version to version, have very good tooling, have very good package management, have a default way to accomplish things, have batteries included, be easy to debug and deploy.

For users it should be at least fast, responsive, have minimal to no latency, easy to interact with, easy on the eyes, have a coherent design language, be ergonomic, not be a memory or CPU hog.

DeathArrow5• 2 years ago

How bad will it be if we will run apps on desktop and phones instead of the web?

Does the Facebook app provide a worse experience on the phone than the web app? Is Gmail phone app worse than Gmail web app?

pards• 2 years ago

What does the OP mean by "web" in this context?

- UI running in browsers?

- TCP/IP?

- HTTP(S)?

I personally think ReST APIs accessed over HTTP + TCP/IP have a lot of utility but I think we can do better on the UI front. Maybe we need an alternative to the web browser that can run a different (or variety of) languages other than Javascript, with a better presentation option than the DOM.

crabmusket2• 2 years ago

This is a lengthy quote from TFA but I think it best describes what the author means by "the web" in practical terms:

<quote>

As I see it, the web is the only generational software platform that has a reasonable shot at delivering a potent set of benefits to users:

- Fresh

- Frictionless

- Safe by default

- Portable and interoperable

- Gatekeeper-free (no prior restraint on publication)

- Standards-based, and therefore...

- User-mediated (extensions, browser settings, etc.)

- Open Source compatible

No other successful platform provides all of these today and others that could are too small to matter.

Platforms like Android and Flutter deliver subsets of these properties but capitulate to capture by the host OS agenda, allowing their developers to be taxed through app stores and proprietary API lock-in. Most treat user mediation like a bug to be fixed.

</quote>

The DOM seems critical to the user mediation goal, and user mediation is IMO a critical differentiator with other platforms.

E.g. the web would be way less cool if I couldn't have "reader mode".

arkh• 2 years ago

Maybe the root problems are HTML and its browsers. Or more exactly: the fact HTML is about documents. Everything done to make apps from it are hacks.

What would be really needed is an open application format standard and a protocol to share it and maybe interact with it. And open source clients able to run those applications.

Platform Strategy and Its Discontents

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