I built (vibe coded with direction) a free, open source alternative to TablePlus.
The goal is high performance and easy to use just like TablePlus but without that nagging window asking you to pay to have more than 2 active tabs.
It also runs in the browser for a fun demo since it can be compiled to WASM.
Feedback is super welcome and I'm continuing to iterate upon it and am already using it as my daily driver and ironing out the kinks. It works well enough™ already but expect a few janky things here and there.
They may be popular, but that doesn't mean they're not silly. Requiring magical signatures to get rid of the scary "this person is trying to hack you" popups is quite a silly thing for an operating system to do.
I wouldn't say it's just a step above electron, I think the term "native" has always been a little overloaded in this way. For example, a game that uses egui for the HuD/menus could be rightly called native compared to a web game.
You're talking about "native controls", which is more specific. That said, I don't see any reason why egui would be used over native controls for this type of app. They probably just didn't think to ask their AI.
I imagine with AI, something like libui-ng would be pretty easy to improve and maintain. Looks like development has stalled though.
> You're talking about "native controls", which is more specific.
No, I am using "native" the way we used it before everyone starting rendering directly to the GPU. You can go back years on HN to see how it was used if you're confused.
It's native in that it doesn't start a whole web browser with hooks to native code, like most cross-platform applications. That saves a lot of RAM and storage (unless you're willing to subject yourself to testing with each platform's web view, which brings its own problems to the table for minimal benefit).
Based on the description, it looks like the author is using Linux. Native doesn't really exist there. There are a couple of flavours, but none of them are any more native than the other, and none of them are much more native than just rendering the UI yourself.
Modern Windows and Android development also often use the very same technique. Old Win32 (and I presume macOS, though the rise of iPad apps on macOS make me start to wonder) still offer some native-ish controls but they're not usable outside of their own platforms.
With egui you don't need to actually run a full copy of every version of Windows and macOS to see if the program runs. If it compiles, it'll work.
Using yesterday's "rewrite in Javascript just because" meme while simultaneously pushing today's "rewritten in Rust, because why not" is especially genius marketing.
9 comments
[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 37.9 ms ] threadThe goal is high performance and easy to use just like TablePlus but without that nagging window asking you to pay to have more than 2 active tabs.
It also runs in the browser for a fun demo since it can be compiled to WASM.
Feedback is super welcome and I'm continuing to iterate upon it and am already using it as my daily driver and ironing out the kinks. It works well enough™ already but expect a few janky things here and there.
I hope you didn't pay for the tokens you used to vibe this thing.
yeah, the operating systems that underpin >90% of compute on the compute on the planet are silly and barely worth supporting.
this kind of “hey claude, write prose exactly as lame as usual but also make it snarky and rude in tone” writing is just fantastically bad.
You’re not truly native if you’re using egui, you’re just a step above Electron & co. TablePlus is actually native and it shows.
If you’re vibe coding this shit, why can’t you just tell it to output platform specific things?
You're talking about "native controls", which is more specific. That said, I don't see any reason why egui would be used over native controls for this type of app. They probably just didn't think to ask their AI.
I imagine with AI, something like libui-ng would be pretty easy to improve and maintain. Looks like development has stalled though.
No, I am using "native" the way we used it before everyone starting rendering directly to the GPU. You can go back years on HN to see how it was used if you're confused.
Based on the description, it looks like the author is using Linux. Native doesn't really exist there. There are a couple of flavours, but none of them are any more native than the other, and none of them are much more native than just rendering the UI yourself.
Modern Windows and Android development also often use the very same technique. Old Win32 (and I presume macOS, though the rise of iPad apps on macOS make me start to wonder) still offer some native-ish controls but they're not usable outside of their own platforms.
With egui you don't need to actually run a full copy of every version of Windows and macOS to see if the program runs. If it compiles, it'll work.