7 ms·

Because NodeJS is popular and desktop apps were getting small and efficient so we crammed a 30MB Chrome runtime in there.

laichzeit0 11y ago
Actually it's more like this: That ugly language called Javascript that everyone derided and said was "too shit and slow to ever write a Demo in" back in the 90s when all the "real developers" were writing server side scripts in Perl and left the frontend people to their own devices caught up with them. They kept pushing the boundaries, discovering things like XMLHttpRequest, and using that crap little language. Eventually big players like Google started throwing a lot of money at the problem and Javascript became usable enough to write apps in. The front end people that all the cool Perl kids derided needed something on the backend. They wern't going to touch Perl since by this time it was an old languishing dinosaur and there was a bad taste left in their mouth. And thus NodeJS was born. The frontend dev could write his server side stuff in the one language he knew. This is my completely biased and highly selective history of events ;)
- voltagex_ 11y ago
  Yep. If this is the only thing stopping native apps from disappearing completely then it's probably a good thing.
- jakejake 11y ago
  Except the perl kids weren't cool (I was one of them) because they didn't write c++, and they weren't cool because they didn't write assembly, and on on!
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  Server-side JavaScript was a thing in the 90s with Classic ASP.
- fyolnish 11y ago
  They discovered a documented browser feature? Hooray for that.
trymas 11y ago
+1 With all respect to leichzeit0 comment, IMHO, JS is an ugly language, with way too many pitfalls [0]. Even big boys [1] use CoffeScript to transpile into JS. JS for cross platform desktop development may be an easy thing to manage, though it can become unusable and clunky super fast. You can spot JS desktop apps, just by the size of executable, which is at least 5-10 times bigger than you could expect (Spotify - 130MB). They have poorer performance, can drain your battery faster, and some OS native features/guidelines must be implemented in a custom way, or could not be implemented/used at all. Sorry, for my critical and conservative view, but it's just my opinion (probably due to annoyance of overflow of laggy (web)apps, riddled with complex JS, where it could be avoided). Probably it's the price of 'cross-platformity'. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20BySC_6HyY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20BySC_6HyY (original site does not load for whatever reason) [1] https://github.com/basecamp/trix https://github.com/basecamp/trix
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  True. Popcorn Time is written with NodeJS. Hence it takes a very long time to install or upgrade (has to handle thousands of files) and has rather high CPU use at runtime.
  - voltagex_ 11y ago
    I wonder if it read from a tar file instead of individual files on slow (NTFS) filesystems it'd be faster.
    - scrollaway 11y ago
      That's the logic behind most games. They implement a package format (sadly usually their own) for the game files for fast access.
- cristianpascu 11y ago
  >> "JS is an ugly language" >> "riddled with complex JS" If you pick a technology by the aesthetics of the language, I'm pretty sure you'll make a bad decision no matter what. Not you like in you, but in principle. :) The code is clean if you write it well. Ugly code comes in all parentheses positions.
izacus 11y ago
We also almost managed to let blind and other impaired people use their computers via OS-level accessibility settings and features so now we need to throw all that away :)
- voltagex_ 11y ago
  Crap, does Chromium-via-electron not advertise the correct accessibility things for Windows?
shoover 11y ago
How about NodeJS bindings to a native desktop library of choice and a React.js backend to said library slipped in? They're decoupling the React API from the DOM, right?
- bjt 11y ago
  Yeah, react-dom is a separate package now.

laichzeit0 11y ago

Actually it's more like this: That ugly language called Javascript that everyone derided and said was "too shit and slow to ever write a Demo in" back in the 90s when all the "real developers" were writing server side scripts in Perl and left the frontend people to their own devices caught up with them. They kept pushing the boundaries, discovering things like XMLHttpRequest, and using that crap little language. Eventually big players like Google started throwing a lot of money at the problem and Javascript became usable enough to write apps in. The front end people that all the cool Perl kids derided needed something on the backend. They wern't going to touch Perl since by this time it was an old languishing dinosaur and there was a bad taste left in their mouth. And thus NodeJS was born. The frontend dev could write his server side stuff in the one language he knew. This is my completely biased and highly selective history of events ;)

voltagex_ 11y ago
Yep. If this is the only thing stopping native apps from disappearing completely then it's probably a good thing.
jakejake 11y ago
Except the perl kids weren't cool (I was one of them) because they didn't write c++, and they weren't cool because they didn't write assembly, and on on!
MichaelGG 11y ago
Server-side JavaScript was a thing in the 90s with Classic ASP.
fyolnish 11y ago
They discovered a documented browser feature? Hooray for that.

trymas 11y ago

+1 With all respect to leichzeit0 comment, IMHO, JS is an ugly language, with way too many pitfalls [0]. Even big boys [1] use CoffeScript to transpile into JS. JS for cross platform desktop development may be an easy thing to manage, though it can become unusable and clunky super fast. You can spot JS desktop apps, just by the size of executable, which is at least 5-10 times bigger than you could expect (Spotify - 130MB). They have poorer performance, can drain your battery faster, and some OS native features/guidelines must be implemented in a custom way, or could not be implemented/used at all. Sorry, for my critical and conservative view, but it's just my opinion (probably due to annoyance of overflow of laggy (web)apps, riddled with complex JS, where it could be avoided). Probably it's the price of 'cross-platformity'. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20BySC_6HyY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20BySC_6HyY (original site does not load for whatever reason) [1] https://github.com/basecamp/trix https://github.com/basecamp/trix

MichaelGG 11y ago
True. Popcorn Time is written with NodeJS. Hence it takes a very long time to install or upgrade (has to handle thousands of files) and has rather high CPU use at runtime.
- voltagex_ 11y ago
  I wonder if it read from a tar file instead of individual files on slow (NTFS) filesystems it'd be faster.
  - scrollaway 11y ago
    That's the logic behind most games. They implement a package format (sadly usually their own) for the game files for fast access.
cristianpascu 11y ago
>> "JS is an ugly language" >> "riddled with complex JS" If you pick a technology by the aesthetics of the language, I'm pretty sure you'll make a bad decision no matter what. Not you like in you, but in principle. :) The code is clean if you write it well. Ugly code comes in all parentheses positions.

izacus 11y ago

We also almost managed to let blind and other impaired people use their computers via OS-level accessibility settings and features so now we need to throw all that away :)

voltagex_ 11y ago
Crap, does Chromium-via-electron not advertise the correct accessibility things for Windows?

shoover 11y ago

How about NodeJS bindings to a native desktop library of choice and a React.js backend to said library slipped in? They're decoupling the React API from the DOM, right?

bjt 11y ago
Yeah, react-dom is a separate package now.