Depends on what you mean by low level I guess. Compared to web application framework churn rate, simple procedural programming without many dependencies is remarkably stable. You tend to program in a way that works for most platforms (all targetted platforms). How to best do that you learn over the years. To me personally it's very refreshing if the environment around you does not constantly change. That affords learning a bag of tricks and a list of gotchas to avoid.
> You tend to program in a way that works for most platforms (all targetted platforms).
Isn't that true for web frameworks too? Usually they'll only target unix, but if they target windows and macos, then they work on those platforms too? Or am I misunderstanding what you're trying to say here?
This is how I mean it: In case of low level programming, the "platform" is the hardware/OS/compiler. In case of web programming, the "platform" is the web framework.
If you update the OS, hardware, or compiler, you will see only few changes. If you update the web framework, you may see breakages, API deprecations or whatever. You may want to move to a different web framework entirely. TBH I don't really know, I don't know web programming beyond basic HTML/Javascript. That's what they say, though.
Well I mean you're comparing two different solutions at different layers here.
In the case of an desktop application, unless you build things against OS libraries, your "platform" is also typically a framework, like QT or AppKit or whatever you end up using. That's the equivalent of the "web framework" in the web world.
Basically, it goes "Your app > GUI framework > other/OS libraries" for desktop apps, "Your app > web framework > other/OS libraries" for web applications.
Then in both approaches you can of course skip the framework if you want, no one is forcing you to use those in either of the cases.
Edit: I realize now we might be talking past each other, I was under the understanding that "web framework" is about backend web frameworks, but maybe you actually meant frontend frameworks running client-side. If so, replace "other/OS libraries" with "browser runtime" and my comment more or less still makes sense :)
> your "platform" is also typically a framework, like QT or AppKit or whatever you end up using
That's not what I consider "low level programming". I don't use any of these.
Yes you can do try and do plain Javascript. Honestly Javascript is a much less pleasurable environment than a compiled statically typed procedural language. The main advantage of the browser is you get a viewport, you get font rendering etc. with almost no setup required at all.
> That's not what I consider "low level programming". I don't use any of these.
So say C linking to Xorg-libraries and drawing GUI that way isn't low level programming, then what is? Only assembly is "low level programming" or what?
Meh, JavaScript is fine, like most dynamic Algol/C-like languages. Could be worse, could be TypeScript :)
But personally, browser environment is a hell of a lot easier to target than doing cross-platform native application development, but I'm a web developer who started doing native apps, not the other way around, might be why.
More: If you upgrade the hardware or the compiler, you upgrade them. If you're doing web programming, you have to worry about the user upgrading their browser.
It's not so much about the browser (I'm not aware of major incompatibilities introduced by new browsers or new W3C standards). But the software ecosytems (like frameworks, or node.js) that web people are relying on in order to create their web apps.
I think you're right too. So I also think that maybe I'm viewing the changes as bigger than they actually are, based on my own standards