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Comment by littlestymaar | Hacker News Reader

«native frameworks» => if you want a true native framework, you need one specific development per platform. Or more realistically, you end up developing for Windows only, unless you target a specific niche where MacOS is somewhat relevant, and never Linux.

Or you use a cross-plateform (not so native then) UI toolkit, like Qt. You have a sub-part UI experience and you still need to write C++. Why would you do that ? (And that's why the vast majority of software isn't developed this way).

CSS and JavaScript have quirks, but I mean, we're talking about C++ as an alternative …

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No, you develop like we did on the 16 bit days.

Either do a new one for platform, which was the case when Assembly ruled.

Or make a proper application architecture suited to the applications being done in-house, that wraps the native APIs into general ones.

C++ is strongly typed and compiles to native code, a much saner alternative than "anything goes JS".

And CSS + JS are miles away what something like VB, Delphi or Smalltalk allowed in the early 90's.

Yes I know they weren't responsive and whatever.

There were layout managers already available, it was just a matter of actually using them.

Vast majority isn't developed that way, because it is cheaper to pay to young inexperience JS developers that are re-inventing the idioms of the 90's desktop UIs[0], than experienced C++ developers aware of what actually takes to make a good UI/UX.

[0] - https://bitquabit.com/post/the-more-things-change/

> Vast majority isn't developed that way, because it is cheaper to pay to young inexperience JS developers […], than experienced C++ developers

I think you just nailed the essential point: in 2010+, the young and cheap developers are JavaScript ones, and not C++ ones. Maybe that tells something about which one is the most accessible, don't you think?

I can also go to craigslist and get someone that does repairs on the side, or pay for someone that costs twice as much but actually does the job only once.

I think, this goes way beyond just companies preferring to hire cheaper developers and beyond software engineering as such. There is a larger, universal force at play here. Examples of poorly designed, engineered and built things are everywhere in the world. It is seemingly cheaper to do it this way. But what may be saved upfront on production quality, is usually spent many times over on usage, maintenance and subsequent rebuilding, making the total cost higher.

For example, a road built with cheaper materials will break and need to be patched more often. A poorly engineered application will be slower, consume more CPU power, more data bandwidth and require more storage space, will be buggier and waste more users' time.

With only a very basic understanding of economic theory, I would imagine that market forces at scale would optimize these inefficiencies and ultimately work to reduce total costs. Perhaps this unconscious, natural process would even work, were we not consciously optimizing against it on the wrong variables, such as the next quarter's profits.

> C++ is strongly typed and compiles to native code, a much saner alternative than "anything goes JS".

C++ (though statically typed) is weakly typed.

C++ is not C, if that is what you are getting at.

C++ is not C, but is still weakly typed. I think even Rust is weakly typed in unsafe mode (I'm open to correction about that). This makes sense when you think about the CPU which is weakly typed and dynamically typed (it's also dynamically scoped unlike all the modern lexically scoped languages running on top of it).

"weakly typed" is not well-defined, however, I don't think that Rust is, even in unsafe. If you can provide a C or C++ example, I can tell you what that looks like in Rust.

Qt has bindings for many languages, including JavaScript. It's capable of delivering experiences much closer to native than any Electron app I've ever seen. The catch is that a minimum-effort Electron app feels like a web page but a minimum-effort Qt app feels like a bad native app. There are also frameworks like wxWidgets that use actual native controls.

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