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I use two tools daily that are built on Electron and they are great. Not only that, but it's never obvious they run on Electron. I'm curious, what do you hate s

I use two tools daily that are built on Electron and they are great. Not only that, but it's never obvious they run on Electron. I'm curious, what do you hate so much about it?

Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
How about the fact that your computer now has three enormous copies of chromium on it for no good reason?
- michaelmior 10y ago
  If you have the RAM for it and the software works well, who cares? Plus, it seems potential improvements are coming in this area. https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/673 https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/673
  - danieldk 10y ago
    On the one hand side people complain that Turbo Pascal and WordPerfect (or even UNIX for that matter) worked extremely fast on an 386SX with 4MB RAM and that modern software eats hundreds of megabytes of memory and seems slower, without providing much new functionality. This attitude (replacing a lean and fast terminal, by one rendered using a web browser engine) is exactly why modern machines that are 1000x faster and with 1000x the memory still seem to be slow for basic tasks. Of course, it's a free choice. You can waste resources by replacing small programs by browsers ;). But it's reasonable that many people find it a waste.
- castis 10y ago
  > no good reason. Well thats subjective. I might not be as cool as you but I get my work done using these tools.
  - teamhappy 10y ago
    I think he's saying you only need one version of Chromium on your machine to run all these tools.
- beefman 10y ago
  How many copies of unix (partitions, vms, containers) do you have on your computer?
  - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
    One?
  - danieldk 10y ago
    TinyCore Linux is 12 MB. A fully functional Unix(-like) system, including an X server. So, for one Javascript-written terminal app, you can install a full Linux system with X and a window manager 10 times (Hyperterm.app is 122 MB).
- untog 10y ago
  My Visual Studio Code app is 138MB. On the grand scale of things, I'm not that worried about multiple copies of Chromium.
  - city41 10y ago
    Electron by itself weighs in around 100mb. iTerm2 is a packed to the gills with features terminal that is 13mb.
    - codezero 10y ago
      My iTerm process is using about 170mb of memory, though that's admittedly less than half of what Slack is using. Big picture, with 8gb of ram, this is not a problem.
      - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
        I have 6 terminals open right now and that's my baseline. I often go up to 12-15 terms.
        woah 10y ago
        Presumably, multiple tabs in this browser based terminal would only use one chrome process
        Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
        Talking about seperate windows here.
    - Klathmon 10y ago
      I can honestly say that I have never been inconvenienced even slightly by an application that takes up between 0 and 500mb on disk. If it starts to get into the multi-GB range it can hurt to download, but below that it's all identical to me. If it means that i don't need to run a specific version of a library installed globally on my machine, and i don't need to manage a big chain of dependencies myself, and it runs on multiple platforms, i don't care if it's 1mb or 500mb, and i don't care how many copies of it I'm running. My ssd has 60gb remaining on it after a few years of daily use and i haven't needed to worry about program space yet.
- codezero 10y ago
  On my system, a long running Slack process uses about as much memory as a Finder window.
  - wtetzner 10y ago
    But what about power usage? Battery life is important.
    - codezero 10y ago
      I can't say I've measured it quantitatively, but it doesn't appear to have a huge effect, but I also don't need to be untethered all day long. When I check the battery status on my Mac, only Chrome is listed in the "Apps that use significant energy" list.
  - pablovidal85 10y ago
    On mac, slack uses macgap, not electron.
    - joshmanders 10y ago
      Was this a recent change? Because electron's homepage[0] still shows that Slack was built on it. [0]: http://electron.atom.io/ http://electron.atom.io/
      - pablovidal85 10y ago
        On windows (and I guess on linux) they use electron.
malka 10y ago
Same as java maybe ? Lot of bad apps that make you feel the engine underneath

I use two tools daily that are built on Electron and they are great. Not only that, but it's never obvious they run on Electron. I'm curious, what do you hate so much about it?

Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago

How about the fact that your computer now has three enormous copies of chromium on it for no good reason?

michaelmior 10y ago
If you have the RAM for it and the software works well, who cares? Plus, it seems potential improvements are coming in this area. https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/673 https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/673
- danieldk 10y ago
  On the one hand side people complain that Turbo Pascal and WordPerfect (or even UNIX for that matter) worked extremely fast on an 386SX with 4MB RAM and that modern software eats hundreds of megabytes of memory and seems slower, without providing much new functionality. This attitude (replacing a lean and fast terminal, by one rendered using a web browser engine) is exactly why modern machines that are 1000x faster and with 1000x the memory still seem to be slow for basic tasks. Of course, it's a free choice. You can waste resources by replacing small programs by browsers ;). But it's reasonable that many people find it a waste.
castis 10y ago
> no good reason. Well thats subjective. I might not be as cool as you but I get my work done using these tools.
- teamhappy 10y ago
  I think he's saying you only need one version of Chromium on your machine to run all these tools.
beefman 10y ago
How many copies of unix (partitions, vms, containers) do you have on your computer?
- Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
  One?
- danieldk 10y ago
  TinyCore Linux is 12 MB. A fully functional Unix(-like) system, including an X server. So, for one Javascript-written terminal app, you can install a full Linux system with X and a window manager 10 times (Hyperterm.app is 122 MB).
untog 10y ago
My Visual Studio Code app is 138MB. On the grand scale of things, I'm not that worried about multiple copies of Chromium.
- city41 10y ago
  Electron by itself weighs in around 100mb. iTerm2 is a packed to the gills with features terminal that is 13mb.
  - codezero 10y ago
    My iTerm process is using about 170mb of memory, though that's admittedly less than half of what Slack is using. Big picture, with 8gb of ram, this is not a problem.
    - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
      I have 6 terminals open right now and that's my baseline. I often go up to 12-15 terms.
      - woah 10y ago
        Presumably, multiple tabs in this browser based terminal would only use one chrome process
        Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
        Talking about seperate windows here.
  - Klathmon 10y ago
    I can honestly say that I have never been inconvenienced even slightly by an application that takes up between 0 and 500mb on disk. If it starts to get into the multi-GB range it can hurt to download, but below that it's all identical to me. If it means that i don't need to run a specific version of a library installed globally on my machine, and i don't need to manage a big chain of dependencies myself, and it runs on multiple platforms, i don't care if it's 1mb or 500mb, and i don't care how many copies of it I'm running. My ssd has 60gb remaining on it after a few years of daily use and i haven't needed to worry about program space yet.
codezero 10y ago
On my system, a long running Slack process uses about as much memory as a Finder window.
- wtetzner 10y ago
  But what about power usage? Battery life is important.
  - codezero 10y ago
    I can't say I've measured it quantitatively, but it doesn't appear to have a huge effect, but I also don't need to be untethered all day long. When I check the battery status on my Mac, only Chrome is listed in the "Apps that use significant energy" list.
- pablovidal85 10y ago
  On mac, slack uses macgap, not electron.
  - joshmanders 10y ago
    Was this a recent change? Because electron's homepage[0] still shows that Slack was built on it. [0]: http://electron.atom.io/ http://electron.atom.io/
    - pablovidal85 10y ago
      On windows (and I guess on linux) they use electron.

malka 10y ago

Same as java maybe ? Lot of bad apps that make you feel the engine underneath