Comment by teucris | Hacker News Reader

Comment by teucris | Hacker News Reader

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> Most of the noise comes from Web technologists don't want to learn anything beyond JavaScript.

I agree with a lot of what you wrote, but not this. PWAs are the only path for allowing open publishing of apps that is not gated by a large tech firm. While I completely understand the value proposition of app stores, there are tons of app scenarios held back by them. Two instances are small web[0] and situated software[1] as app stores keep people from publishing apps meant for small audiences by their very definition. Both of these fall under your desire to maximize the user experience.

Furthermore, PWAs are the closest thing we have to a “universal” platform. Personally, if I could write an app that worked on all mobile devices and the web in COBOL, I’d be thrilled to write “PROCEDURE DIVISION” every day.

The web is a mess because it is open. The web can be scammy because some people are scammy. Restricting PWAs doesn’t mitigate scamminess - it just restricts openness.

[0] https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/ [1] https://www.gwern.net/docs/technology/2004-03-30-shirky-situ...

I wouldn't call PWAs universal platform when they are very dependent on Google being nice with Chrome. Also, browsers already have integrated blocking mechanism that is supposed to block out phishing sites etc. but that's only the case because so far the browser infrastructure operators(Mozilla, Google, Apple) are acting nice. The Push notification infrastructure is also possible only because the browser infrastructure operators are being nice so far.

At any point Google or other browser makers can choose not to be nice or can be compelled to follow regulatory orders.

The only universal thing about PWAs is the availability of Google Chrome to all major platforms and that's up to the courtesy of Google. They may choose not to do it at any time, they may choose to discontinue their push notification backend just like that.

Browsers are not standalone apps anymore, they are dependent on the backend services of the browser company. That's especially important when they need to run PWA.

> very dependent on Google being nice with Chrome

Replace Apple/Safari+Google/Chrome with Google/Gmail+Microsoft/Outlook and you currently describe e-mail. That situation is still preferable to the tons of messaging walled gardens. And the web is getting new feature albeit slowly and unevenly in a way that mail is not.

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