4 ms·

Electron looks like it has for both worlds, but what is the drawback of this(kind of) system(s)?

by iamcreasy 10y ago

LeoPanthera 10y ago
Electron apps are huge and incredibly resource hungry. This makes it hard to recommend most electron apps.
- oceanswave 10y ago
  Source? VS Code is taking up 26/86mb of memory and weighs in at 143mb on disk... not really the most CPU intensive program either
Xiol 10y ago
You have to write Javascript.
- dchest 10y ago
  Or Go, Dart, TypeScript, PureScript, Elm, CoffeeScript, Oberon, or any other language which can be compiled to it.
  - iamcreasy 10y ago
    I am guessing I can use GWT as well, right?
  - oceanswave 10y ago
    Or, create a C or C++ NodeJS module and use it from your JS, or interop using EdgeJS or python-shell
- damptowel 10y ago
  And css...
bengotow 10y ago
There are a couple of things to consider: 1. Electron is not necessarily the best choice if all you want to do is "put your website in the Dock." In Electron, JavaScript on the page can do anything native code could do, like write to the filesystem unless you explicitly disable node integration. Just loading up your website inside an Electron window could be a disastrous security hole. 2. Electron apps run at least 50MB, and take at least 100MB of RAM. (Equivalent to one tab in Chromium) 3. JavaScript is single threaded. Node's event-driven / async design makes is a good fit for most things, but considers all work equal. You have to bend over backwards to do things that a nice threading abstraction would make easy (like Regexp find/replace in a huge directory tree. Atom actually spawns a separate process to do it so it doesn't consume the JavaScript process.)
galad87 10y ago
Non native UI. Probably not a big issue on Windows where every app use a different UI toolkit, but on OS X is kinda nice to have native apps.
- oceanswave 10y ago
  http://photonkit.com/ http://photonkit.com/
  - galad87 10y ago
    That's even worse. The almost "native" look but with the wrong spacing, wrong colors, and wrong behavior.

Electron looks like it has for both worlds, but what is the drawback of this(kind of) system(s)?

LeoPanthera 10y ago

Electron apps are huge and incredibly resource hungry. This makes it hard to recommend most electron apps.

oceanswave 10y ago
Source? VS Code is taking up 26/86mb of memory and weighs in at 143mb on disk... not really the most CPU intensive program either

Xiol 10y ago

You have to write Javascript.

dchest 10y ago
Or Go, Dart, TypeScript, PureScript, Elm, CoffeeScript, Oberon, or any other language which can be compiled to it.
- iamcreasy 10y ago
  I am guessing I can use GWT as well, right?
- oceanswave 10y ago
  Or, create a C or C++ NodeJS module and use it from your JS, or interop using EdgeJS or python-shell
damptowel 10y ago
And css...

bengotow 10y ago

There are a couple of things to consider: 1. Electron is not necessarily the best choice if all you want to do is "put your website in the Dock." In Electron, JavaScript on the page can do anything native code could do, like write to the filesystem unless you explicitly disable node integration. Just loading up your website inside an Electron window could be a disastrous security hole. 2. Electron apps run at least 50MB, and take at least 100MB of RAM. (Equivalent to one tab in Chromium) 3. JavaScript is single threaded. Node's event-driven / async design makes is a good fit for most things, but considers all work equal. You have to bend over backwards to do things that a nice threading abstraction would make easy (like Regexp find/replace in a huge directory tree. Atom actually spawns a separate process to do it so it doesn't consume the JavaScript process.)

galad87 10y ago

Non native UI. Probably not a big issue on Windows where every app use a different UI toolkit, but on OS X is kinda nice to have native apps.

oceanswave 10y ago
http://photonkit.com/ http://photonkit.com/
- galad87 10y ago
  That's even worse. The almost "native" look but with the wrong spacing, wrong colors, and wrong behavior.