Ionic is pretty awful too, though I can't fault them. It's just that papering a web interface on top of a native app is gonna be a poor experience no matter what.

I don't think that's how Ionic developers would describe it today. Have you actually used it or Capacitor recently? The quality of apps being built on the platform has never been higher. (one random example: https://reflect.app)

For what it's worth I'm an Ionic developer and I find the grand-parent's description pretty accurate. I do like Capacitor though, but I think that's mostly because I've had to deal with Cordova before.

Please pin point the relevant DX issues so that it can get recognition and get fixed

I feel like I'm having a deja-vu. I remember having a similar discussion in the past and it turns out it happened exactly one year ago when Flutter 2 was released: https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=26336657

Every framework has bugs and feature requests that are fighting for resources. And the ones affecting you _always_ seem more important than the ones that don't.

That being said, the fact that memory leaks in widely used components (e.g.: `<ion-img>` [1]) go mostly unnoticed both by Ionic developers and by the community [2] just doesn't give me confidence in Ionic being a framework used to build quality apps.

  [1] - https://github.com/ionic-team/ionic-framework/issues/19242#issuecomment-556182556
  [2] - the issue linked above has 5 upvotes in 3 years and no one even bothered to report a separate issue for the memory leak in `<ion-img />`, which seems even more serious and the developers have been made aware of it

> the issue linked above has 5 upvotes in 3 years and no one even bothered to report a separate issue for the memory leak in `<ion-img />`

It looks like you answered yourself, this issue does not seem to affect people. Either it is a rare intermittent or only happen in very specific configurations, either there is a leak but it is negligeable, or shortlived. OR maybe this leak cause suboptimal performance but it must not be "feelable" although you did a great find, this issue has been overlooked and its severity should be better investigated. I'd like to remind you that Ionic is not the point, Ionic is simply a packaging of good practices and optimized components (because yes ion-img implement important optimizations over a normal img tag). Some might have leaking issues but the point is that you can trivially use a standard img tag, or a regular react/angular image lazy loading library or even better https://chromestatus.com/feature/5637156160667648 The web BTW will probably be the first ecosystem to provide support for JPEG XL images, which are a significant evolution in performance. Compare the discussed underinvestigated suboptimality with e.g. this 50% CPU increase over a trivial GIF, and mostly ignored/delayed https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/88858 or even https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/94205

> Every framework has bugs and feature requests that are fighting for resources. relativism has its limits, chromium has thousands more human resources than flutter and react native devs combined

welcome back, about the issue you mentioned, one of the original author wrote a blog in how to address it and how the issue is related to angular. https://github.com/ionic-team/ionic-framework/issues/25283 It does make a significant difference in profiling though

I have been working with it recently, yes. Again, I'm not criticizing their tech, moreso the underlying idea - rendering a webview as if it's a native app.

Seeing the quality of apps coming from the community especially with the latest updates in Ionic 6, I can’t agree with your framing at all. The team is highly receptive to specific feedback if you have anything we should improve or GitHub links

sounds very unsubstantiated. please examplify, Ionic capacitor native support is excellent, in fact you can arbitrarilly call the android/IOS SDKs, with or without nativescript. You do understand there is no native difference between Ionic and flutter right?

Not sure what kind of substantiation you're looking for, but I've been working with Ionic and Capacitor for over 6 months now, as part of an ongoing client project. Previously, I worked with Cordova way back in 2015/2016. So I'm familiar with the technology. My comment addressed the fact that I'm not criticizing the tech, I'm criticizing the overall concept - rendering an application inside of a web view as if it's a native app.

I fail to see the issue here > rendering an application inside of a web view as if it's a native app.

That doesn't mean anything. A native app doesn't mean anything. Native is a ad-hoc property of being the UX framework shipped by default on the OS On chromium OS, chrome is native. Who cares? What matters are the merits of framework x vs framework y. As for the graphical charts 1) material design is as well supported on the web 2) most apps should not be in material design if they want to have a personality.

You said the word awful, don't you have concrete pain points?

Just a hint: if you work for Ionic it's customary on HN to disclose that fact.

Also: what makes a framework "native" for me is that it has it's own rendering stack. With webview solutions you are still facing cross platform inconsistencies between Safari/iOS, Android and Electron.

I am not an Ionic employee, I have zero affiliation. I am a hobbyist in GUI rendering libraries technologies, which include Skia, blend2d, pathfinder, webrender, piet-gpu, etc

> what makes a framework "native" for me is that it has it's own rendering stack

lel, the point of react native is exactly that it doesn't have its own rendering stack, it defer rendering to external rendering stacks (android native lib, swift native lib) Flutter and the web are not native and are not different. They both have their own custom rendering stack, which allow them to improve it. flutter has not created its own 2d renderer btw, it uses the chromium 2D renderer named skia, in fact android native use the chromium 2D renderer since a few versions already. Simply because its the fastest to exist.

> With webview solutions you are still facing cross platform inconsistencies

crazy how reversed with reality your argument is. React native is by design inconsistent, it uses a separate library for each platform which result in an impedence mismatch of features, performance, and bugs. A webview has no inconsistencies between android and electron, it's the same chromium behind. Safari is slighly inconsistent (webkit) but order of magnitudes less than using a completely different library.