Fig. 20 — Desktop applications
Desktop application development
Software that runs on the machine in front of someone, not in a tab. That changes what is easy and what is hard — and almost none of the hard parts are the features.
When a desktop application earns its place
Most software does not need to be installed, and we will say so. What a browser cannot do well is the reason to build one: reaching the file system directly, talking to hardware plugged into the machine, working with no connection at all, or running for hours on local data without a network round trip in the middle.
- Work that happens on large local files rather than uploads
- Hardware on the desk — scanners, readers, instruments, printers beyond a print dialog
- Operators who cannot depend on a connection while they work
- Software that has to keep running whether or not a browser is open
Shipping is the hard part
Once software lives on someone else's computer, a fix is no longer a deploy. It has to be built, signed, delivered and installed — and a version you cannot replace remotely is a version you are stuck with. We set that path up before the first release rather than after the first bad build.
- Signed and notarised builds, so the operating system does not warn people away from your own software
- Updates that install themselves, with a channel for testing a release before everyone gets it
- Installers for Windows and macOS produced by the pipeline, not assembled by hand
- Crash reporting from machines you will never see, because nobody will send you a log
One codebase, desktop and web
We build desktop applications in the same TypeScript and React the web work uses, wrapped in Electron. That means the domain logic, the types and most of the interface are shared rather than written twice — and a product that starts on the desktop can grow a web version without starting over.
When it is the wrong answer
If the software only reads and writes data over a network, a web application reaches more people with less friction and updates the moment you deploy. If it belongs on a phone, that is a different platform with its own rules. Desktop is worth its extra weight when the machine itself is part of the job — and worth avoiding when it is not.