zlacker

>>iBelie+(OP)
My primary concern with this is that different applications are inherently optimized for the platform on which they were originally designed. There are some applications that have a very dense UI because there's simply alot of functionality that the program handles (think of a video editor, an IDE, etc). Trying to slim down those applications to make them reactive so that they will scale onto a phone or tablet just seems silly, and I fear that in the name of making "everything work everywhere", we're going to compromise a bunch of apps that worked beautifully on one platform in favor of making them work adequately on several platforms.

I mean, if someone said, "I've successfully ported Vim to Android!", my first thought would be, "Why in god's name would I want to run vim on my phone?"*

* Ruling out, of course, someone plugging their phone into external KVM.

>>Admira+K7
How about, instead of creating applications that are on all levels a compromise between the two, just create applications that work hard to decouple their UIs (view/presentation layer) from their business logic; and then, for each application, write a small touch UI, a large touch UI, and a desktop UI, as separate view layers, all living together in a monorepo.

Or, in other words, do what any third-party app developer who ships apps for iOS+macOS from a single XCode project source does—but build your whole OS like that.

As well, ideally, the view layer would be modular enough that it could be unloaded and reloaded at runtime, such that you'd be able to dock your phone to an external display and have all your running applications switch to their desktop UI view-layers without losing state.

>>derefr+ce
If you are writing an IDE, it seems foolish to spend time on a small touch UI that will be used by almost nobody. If you can't do something well, don't do.