Ask HN: What is better for a dev tool? Native Desktop App, or Rich Web App? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is better for a dev tool? Native Desktop App, or Rich Web App?

2 pointsumbrellasun6 comments

I am working on a dev tool providing an All-in-One user management interface for various databases, deployment tools (e.g., k8s), and logging/tracing systems.

The idea of having one binary application, you open it, and have everything in there (like IDE) sounds good to me. But I also see that more and more tools combine a backend application (client CLI/daemon running in the background) with a rich frontend web application for GUI.

Even for a native desktop application, I do not exclude having a daemon running in the background or on a remote server. But the main question is, what's better for the user-facing part? Native Desktop or Web App?

Which one do you think is preferable for a better user experience?

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The web has the fairly big advantage of being cross-platform. It sounds like the system you are describing is managing resources on a scale larger than one machine (k8s) so it seems consistent that the front end would work on more than one machine too.

A browser application cons (most of them is also about Electron):

not full speed of your PC,

not enough hotkeys,

no giant lists without pagination,

no confidence that new/old version of browser will not break something,

obstructions of using 100% of display without pressing F11

and, of course, no ability to work without Internets with no afraid to wipe off "offline first" part of application if pressing something like F5 or Ctrl-W.

A web application pros: no troubles with exotic architectures, no piracy (if we are talking about proprietary things), easy networking.

I personally excluded Electron-based solutions after doing some MVPs — higher learning curve for me, unnecessary complication of the architecture, and performance.

When I say Web App, I am currently considering React/Vue-based dashboard apps that connect to the API service running as a daemon (or deployed). This daemon service is responsible for exposing all management operations via the API.

I always prefer to use native > Desktop [qt] >>>> web apps.

Would this run on mac or linux?

Mac, Linux, Windows. As a desktop framework, I am considering Java-based JavaFX or compiled alternatives like Go (Fyne). The big disadvantage of Go/Rust-based solutions is they have poor GUI development support (like scene builder in JavaFX, or a rich set of components).

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