I genuinely dislike the direction Software Engineering is going through. We have become lazy, undisciplined, soft and banal.

It seems like our solutions are always bad nowadays. Sure, we fixed the problem that previous generations couldn’t fix, but in a very bad way.

A common display of this is the use of browsers as a ui tool. I am not talking about a webpage or two, no, I am talking about bundling chromium with every single application.

It is depressing how bad we’re solving this issue, is this the best we can do? Bundling a whole browser engine with a program just to have nicer animations, or easier customization?

The issue for me is performance. I simply do not care if you wanna make better ui that is rich with silky smooth animations and looks great. Do it, but not at the expense of performance.

We all know how big electron is, and it’s getting bigger by the minute because the web is constantly expanding. This is bad both for desktop applications, and the web.

But why should desktop applications have to suffer for the web’s misdeeds. Desktop applications shouldn’t be large unnecessarily.

The only argument that stands for these types of applications is that they’re easier to build, and what a shitty argument it is.

EASIER TO BUILD != YOU SHOULD BUILD IT THIS WAY

Sure, building an application in one file is easier but it is not worth it long term because you’ll end up with spaghetti code.

Are we honestly this lazy and deluded that we think bundling a browser is worth it because we don’t have to spend 2 weeks learning something new?

In terms of security, these applications suffer. The web is open, and is very much the primary victim of security vulnerabilities. It’s a big attack vector.

Hell, hackers consistently jailbroke the PS4 through WebKit.

Also, don’t forget npm’s culture of having thousands of dependencies for simple mundane functions.

Today’s desktop applications are less secure, less performant, and more bulky, just because we are too lazy to learn a new toolkit. smh