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I've been building on Electron for the last 18 months (@Nylas), and it's really impressive how far it's come in the last year. Coming from native Mac OS X deve

I've been building on Electron for the last 18 months (@Nylas), and it's really impressive how far it's come in the last year. Coming from native Mac OS X development, Electron is an breath of fresh air. There's an incredible amount of energy and momentum in the web development community these days, and things like Flexbox, ES2016, React, and ESLint make it possible to ship fast and iterate quickly. Who would have thought JavaScript would be achieving what Java/Swing set out to do in the 90's? I've had a chance to work with the core team on a handful of bug fixes and new features, and they've been incredibly kind and welcoming. I think Electron will go far as an open source project, and I'm excited that GitHub is growing it beyond Atom. If you're in the SF Bay Area and interested in learning more about Electron, there's a meet-up coming up later this month! http://www.meetup.com/Bay-Area-Electron-User-Group/ http://www.meetup.com/Bay-Area-Electron-User-Group/

sievebrain 10y ago
I would argue that what Java/Swing set out to do in the 1990's was done already. You can ship Swing apps and make lots of money selling them to lots of people - JetBrains being a case in point. You don't get many people starting new projects that way (and Swing has been replaced by JFX anyway), but this seems more related to fashion than the merits of the various technologies. The energy and "momentum" in the web community is something that has been discussed extensively on HN and elsewhere, so I won't comment on that. Suffice it to say that motion is not always the same thing as progress.
- blub 10y ago
  Let's be fair and admit that the typical Java app doesn't have all the features of a modern Electron app. For instance, I downloaded Atom and after starting it, it wanted to connect to atom.io and then Google analytics. Now Google not only knows which web pages one visits, but also which apps one uses. Electron is win/win - for web developers and Google, of course.
  - sievebrain 10y ago
    Hah. In fairness though, most apps do want to report back usage stats and other telemetry these days. That doesn't sound entirely unreasonable.... though it's conventional for desktop apps to ask first (perhaps one reason people developers like web apps, the social conventions are different)
    - blub 10y ago
      It is not allowed in the EU to gather data without informing the user and (in some cases) requiring opt-in. I think this is a very sane decision, even if it makes developers uncomfortable, because it is a privacy issue. It is not usual to gather telemetry on the desktop, with perhaps the exception of some AppStore apps. Of course now that Microsoft got greedy and web developers are starting to develop desktop apps, we might see a different trend.
      - matt4077 10y ago
        That depends on the data. I believe Atom uses the analytics privacy feature that deletes the last digits of the IP. That way it doesn't fall under the privacy directive.
kuschku 10y ago
Looking at Electron apps, like Nylas N1, one quickly notices they feel very uncanny, not at all like Desktop apps. You practically have a window frame inside a window frame even! http://i.imgur.com/2C769ex.png http://i.imgur.com/2C769ex.png (Speed differences, the theming (dark theme for the whole UI, except for some electron apps?), etc are also issues.
- krisdol 10y ago
  Spotify and atom and slack feel like native apps to me.
  - markdog12 10y ago
    Atom and Slack don't "feel" normal to me, they feel sluggish. They also take up a lot of resources (CPU, RAM). With what I'm running on a daily basis, I need all the resources I can get. I think lpsz said it best, "It's cool for developers. It's not cool for the users". I'd qualify that with "It's cool for web developers".
    - krisdol 10y ago
      Atom hovers at less than 5% usage between at least 5 separate workers for me. It's no 'ed' in terms of RAM but if it's under a gig it's fine by me. Certainly better than IntelliJ was in that respect. Works pretty perfectly with rust as well. I have both a vim and an atom rust setup and they have near total feature parity.
  - intoverflow2 10y ago
    A chat app having to show a loading bar when switching between conversations is in no sense of the phrase "like native". Neither is a text editor that can't show letters as fast as a person types.
    - patrickbolle 10y ago
      You are talking about Atom ? I've never had that problem, weird
rimantas 10y ago
Coming from native iOS development (with extensive and still current experience in web) current web development is an absolute horrible mess.

sievebrain 10y ago

I would argue that what Java/Swing set out to do in the 1990's was done already. You can ship Swing apps and make lots of money selling them to lots of people - JetBrains being a case in point. You don't get many people starting new projects that way (and Swing has been replaced by JFX anyway), but this seems more related to fashion than the merits of the various technologies. The energy and "momentum" in the web community is something that has been discussed extensively on HN and elsewhere, so I won't comment on that. Suffice it to say that motion is not always the same thing as progress.

blub 10y ago
Let's be fair and admit that the typical Java app doesn't have all the features of a modern Electron app. For instance, I downloaded Atom and after starting it, it wanted to connect to atom.io and then Google analytics. Now Google not only knows which web pages one visits, but also which apps one uses. Electron is win/win - for web developers and Google, of course.
- sievebrain 10y ago
  Hah. In fairness though, most apps do want to report back usage stats and other telemetry these days. That doesn't sound entirely unreasonable.... though it's conventional for desktop apps to ask first (perhaps one reason people developers like web apps, the social conventions are different)
  - blub 10y ago
    It is not allowed in the EU to gather data without informing the user and (in some cases) requiring opt-in. I think this is a very sane decision, even if it makes developers uncomfortable, because it is a privacy issue. It is not usual to gather telemetry on the desktop, with perhaps the exception of some AppStore apps. Of course now that Microsoft got greedy and web developers are starting to develop desktop apps, we might see a different trend.
    - matt4077 10y ago
      That depends on the data. I believe Atom uses the analytics privacy feature that deletes the last digits of the IP. That way it doesn't fall under the privacy directive.

kuschku 10y ago

Looking at Electron apps, like Nylas N1, one quickly notices they feel very uncanny, not at all like Desktop apps. You practically have a window frame inside a window frame even! http://i.imgur.com/2C769ex.png http://i.imgur.com/2C769ex.png (Speed differences, the theming (dark theme for the whole UI, except for some electron apps?), etc are also issues.

krisdol 10y ago
Spotify and atom and slack feel like native apps to me.
- markdog12 10y ago
  Atom and Slack don't "feel" normal to me, they feel sluggish. They also take up a lot of resources (CPU, RAM). With what I'm running on a daily basis, I need all the resources I can get. I think lpsz said it best, "It's cool for developers. It's not cool for the users". I'd qualify that with "It's cool for web developers".
  - krisdol 10y ago
    Atom hovers at less than 5% usage between at least 5 separate workers for me. It's no 'ed' in terms of RAM but if it's under a gig it's fine by me. Certainly better than IntelliJ was in that respect. Works pretty perfectly with rust as well. I have both a vim and an atom rust setup and they have near total feature parity.
- intoverflow2 10y ago
  A chat app having to show a loading bar when switching between conversations is in no sense of the phrase "like native". Neither is a text editor that can't show letters as fast as a person types.
  - patrickbolle 10y ago
    You are talking about Atom ? I've never had that problem, weird

rimantas 10y ago

Coming from native iOS development (with extensive and still current experience in web) current web development is an absolute horrible mess.