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Comment by overeater | Hacker News Reader

My sympathies. That's a really sad story. I don't know if it's any consolation that it was at least discussed among the executives.

I don't know why you originally eschewed the web. I've developed on closed platforms in the past: Facebook (when Facebook games like Farmville and Mafia Wars were crazy hot), Silverlight, OpenSocial, Twitter, and now Google Apps Script. My work is always worthless in 2-3 years, and what I "learned" about that platform is useless.

Now when I develop for a platform, my mindset is only if it's temporary, and if I will be okay if this is shut down in a year.

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In hindsight this was obviously a mistake. We were young and genuinely loved the App Store. We bought the kool-aid (and still drinking it to be honest) that this a new better way to consume content. So we wanted to be as native as possible and take full advantage from the power of being native. We never thought Apple would someday object to us helping promote their platform.

What was the profit angle your team was planning on?

Their email has this: they got a cut of order volume.

Honestly, making fun of old platforms like the web (which isn't even that old) suggests that the writer is the kind of wide-eyed business huckster playing into Americans' cultural affinity for new tech, and folks like that are a huge chunk of the reason why we have so much technology churn today

Old, mature technology is a treasure. Not something to make fun of

I don't know if you meant to, but you just described Steve Jobs.

I've described a lot of technology businesspeople. At least Jobs had vision.

Web development absolutely epitomizes this same technology churn. Regardless if one personally sticks to older standards but its impossible to ignore the large section of commercial web applications that are just as much on the tech churn treadmill.

> just as much on the tech churn treadmill.

Really? I doubt you could run an app written for Android in 2010 (2.2 Froyo) today. But a website written in 2010 using HTML, Javascript, and CSS and no plugins will almost always work.

I use a shopping list app[1] that was last updated in January 2011 (so pretty close to 2010) and still works fine. The UI is huge and blurry, but it works.

[1] https://f-droid.org/app/caldwell.ben.trolly

Aintcha kinda makin' the opposition's point? That usage case is at a bare-minimum level of dead-simple and minimal-time-in-app usage. Any app with a more involved workflow would effectively be considered obsolete due to being so inferior.

I don't know, I wasn't necessarily making a point, just giving a counter-example. And this simple app is hardly inferior - I use it because I like it.

This is a rude and unkind way to refer another person in this conversation (the poster two comments up from you in the thread and the author of the letter in question). Reconsider your approach.

As a counter point, there are always some business oldsters who remain attached to their old technology stack, don't really contribute anything to moving innovation forward, and arrive 5 years after a tech has matured with wisecracks which are technology's equivalent of "If you wait long enough, everything reverts to the mean". Sure, but I think we already know that.

Besides, I am not sure how anyone can argue that the level of churn is bad, considering that it is usually proportional to the volume of new ideas and an eventual winner emerging (albeit not always in a meritocratic fashion).

Silverlight? What did you use it for? The only public Silerlight code I ever came across was Netflix’s client for Windows Internet Explorer around 2010-2012, then everyone switched to Widevine.

I was using it to make GUI-centric web apps. Back then, web applications were a nightmare, and the idea of being able to have .NET for layout instead of the mess that html/css layout was at that time, was compelling.

I can tell you the software provider in the insurance industry requires its claims adjusters to use IE10 and Silverlight to file a claim. Every house damaged by wind, every flood claim, etc. all goes through a Silverlight interface.

If I'm not mistaken I think MLB Advanced Media used it for a time, as well.

Riot’s League of Legends launcher’s was done in Silverlight for a while.

I think you meant Adobe Air?

You’re totally right! My mistake

Netflix and a tower defence game on Facebook I used to play are the only I know.

IIUC a web app is essentially a some very old though popular protocols plus a web browser as the runtime. IMO it will always lag behind a native app in terms of access to OS capabilities and runtime efficiency.

Much like a "desktop" app will always lag behind bare metal software in terms of access to hardware capabilities and runtime efficiency.

That's a caricature, but all these platforms provide a variety of scaffolding and security, and the optimal setup is non-obvious.

> and what I "learned" about that platform is useless.

Most of what I’ve learned about Silverlight was directly reusable for the rest of MS XAML platforms: WPF, WinRT, UWP, and now WinUI.

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