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Personally I think frameworks like Electron lead to huge bloat in terms of download size, disk space, and system ram. However there is no doubt that it increase

Personally I think frameworks like Electron lead to huge bloat in terms of download size, disk space, and system ram. However there is no doubt that it increases the accessibility of developing applications for multiple platforms. I think the following is a great narrative on why it can matter though: http://blog.chriszacharias.com/page-weight-matters http://blog.chriszacharias.com/page-weight-matters

marcosscriven 10y ago
Does download size necessarily mean more system ram usage? I agree on page weight, but somehow I'm more sympathetic to downloading apps, perhaps because it's just downloading in the background, rather than me waiting to read the content.
- keeperofdakeys 10y ago
  From what I understand, each instance of an electron app essentially needs its own copy of the electron framework to work (which includes a web renderer, and javascript engine). So we're talking at least 50MB per instance, for applications which may have been 10MB if written in a native language. When you start running many applications, it can certainly add up. Users do notice this kind of stuff, they are just too adaptive to bad user experiences. As for downloads, I remember using dialup and only getting one 1MB file per hour. It would take a lot of patience to even download a 10MB app on that. I don't tend to leave my computer on downloading overnight these days though, and I 'only' get 1MB/s (dslreports.com says I'm "faster download than 60% on DSL in australia").
drivebyops 10y ago
I have found these nodejs desktop apps to use less RAM than other more traditional Toolkits like Qt. I can live with more disk space being used if it means better memory usage
- keeperofdakeys 10y ago
  That's good news. I did some searching to find some real comparisons, but most of the links I found were related to memory leaks (nothing from 2016 though, perhaps outdated).
- blub 10y ago
  Extraordinary claims such as these need at least some sort of evidence. It does not make sense intuitively that a browser engine has a lower memory footprint.
  - keeperofdakeys 10y ago
    It could be that it's the other programs that are also bloated.

marcosscriven 10y ago

Does download size necessarily mean more system ram usage? I agree on page weight, but somehow I'm more sympathetic to downloading apps, perhaps because it's just downloading in the background, rather than me waiting to read the content.

keeperofdakeys 10y ago
From what I understand, each instance of an electron app essentially needs its own copy of the electron framework to work (which includes a web renderer, and javascript engine). So we're talking at least 50MB per instance, for applications which may have been 10MB if written in a native language. When you start running many applications, it can certainly add up. Users do notice this kind of stuff, they are just too adaptive to bad user experiences. As for downloads, I remember using dialup and only getting one 1MB file per hour. It would take a lot of patience to even download a 10MB app on that. I don't tend to leave my computer on downloading overnight these days though, and I 'only' get 1MB/s (dslreports.com says I'm "faster download than 60% on DSL in australia").

drivebyops 10y ago

I have found these nodejs desktop apps to use less RAM than other more traditional Toolkits like Qt. I can live with more disk space being used if it means better memory usage

keeperofdakeys 10y ago
That's good news. I did some searching to find some real comparisons, but most of the links I found were related to memory leaks (nothing from 2016 though, perhaps outdated).
blub 10y ago
Extraordinary claims such as these need at least some sort of evidence. It does not make sense intuitively that a browser engine has a lower memory footprint.
- keeperofdakeys 10y ago
  It could be that it's the other programs that are also bloated.