Comment by divan
6 days ago
Also reminder that "refresh" is just a code word for "restart (and often redownload) the whole bloody app". It's funny how in web-world people so used to "refreshing" the apps and assume that it's a normal functionality (and not failure mode).
The web is similar to android, and unlike desktop apps, in that restarting the whole thing is meant to not lose (much) state
Actually it would be amazing if desktop applications were like this too, and we had a separate way to go back to the initial screen
Restoring state is just one of the features, that can be implemented in any app if needed, with all that baggage that comes with a feature – testing, maintaining, etc. It's just if desktop app becomes so broken/unresponsive, that the only way is to restart it – we consider it a bad experience and bad software. On web "restarting the app" is a normal daily activity when something goes wrong with state/layout/fields/forms, etc.
Most desktops apps are buggy enough to occasionally require restarts or even crash. I don't currently use any program that never crashed on me. On the web "restarting the app" is seamless and not imply anything wrong happened. It's like the Erlang approach to errors, but on steroids
The trouble with leaving restoring state to the application do as they wish is that most of times they will get it wrong. Also most of them don't do any of this and will never do. Good defaults matter
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