4 ms·

A file manager would not be a good use-case for Electron. Especially if you don't intend to run it in the browser (which really would make no sense.) For the v

A file manager would not be a good use-case for Electron. Especially if you don't intend to run it in the browser (which really would make no sense.) For the very reason you outlined - startup times. The average use-cases of file managers are being opened and closed very often. Electron is rather aimed at long-running applications you don't usually restart, like Atom and VSCode. Microsoft could've ported VS to other platforms, yet they chose Electron. I'm sure they spend quite a while analyzing the requirements and looking at alternatives as well before settling down. The end result is very lightweight compared to VS and does almost everything users require. VS still starts a lot slower than VSCode for one.

santaclaus 10y ago
> Microsoft could've ported VS to other platforms Aren't they doing exactly this? [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12948043 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12948043
- jeremiep 10y ago
  > Since this was an accidental post (now removed) in advance of the actual announcement and release, we've buried this story. That would explain why this is the first time I hear about it :)
  - detaro 10y ago
    Except it was announced 2 days later: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12967847 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12967847 It's not really a port though, just another piece of software labelled "Visual Studio something-or-other".
    - santaclaus 10y ago
      Visual Studio Code isn't exactly a port either -- it is kind of interesting that Microsoft now has three entirely separate projects out there with the 'Visual Studio' branding.
mherrmann 10y ago
Maybe I'm an outlier, but I open/close my editors just as often as my file manager. The main benefit of Electron is the community. Everybody knows HTML/CSS/JavaScript, so can write extensions / customisations. If I were Microsoft, that's how I would have justified Electron. Still, I personally much prefer Sublime Text :-D
- jeremiep 10y ago
  My Spacemacs session often grows weeks old :) Emacs also has a client/server architecture so I can spawn the emacs daemon and then connect to it from anywhere. We have a few people in VSCode at work, a few in Sublime and yet more in Atom. They're all very happy with their setup :)
flavoie 10y ago
I just start recently a file manager in Electron just for fun. I decided to use electron for a couple of reason. My everyday work is in Java, JavaScript everyday, I wouldn't use Java in my free time for sure. But I do like JavaScript now with Babel/TypeScript. I did in the past worked with wxWidget and pyGTK but I found that building UI with React is more convenient and flexible. UI performance are on par for this type of application, plus fetching file information from node is also pretty fast. But if I ever encounter performance issue, it's quite easy to redo the bottleneck in c/c++ with node. And pretty soon in the browser with webassembly. Memory consumption is less than my Finder process (with all the opened helpers). But if I compare application like VS, VSCode and Intellij. Electron memory usage should be in between a C++ and Java apps. The challenge would be to make it start/open really fast (now for the prototype it's like 1 second). But I guess it's possible to do the same thing as Nautilus/Windows File Manager/MacOS Finder and have a background process running. Before the line between language and framework were more sharp. But I think with the evolution of the language and framework like electron, the line is getting a bit more blurry. Great apps could be written in electron as they can be written in a native framework. End users will be the real judges.

santaclaus 10y ago

> Microsoft could've ported VS to other platforms Aren't they doing exactly this? [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12948043 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12948043

jeremiep 10y ago
> Since this was an accidental post (now removed) in advance of the actual announcement and release, we've buried this story. That would explain why this is the first time I hear about it :)
- detaro 10y ago
  Except it was announced 2 days later: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12967847 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12967847 It's not really a port though, just another piece of software labelled "Visual Studio something-or-other".
  - santaclaus 10y ago
    Visual Studio Code isn't exactly a port either -- it is kind of interesting that Microsoft now has three entirely separate projects out there with the 'Visual Studio' branding.

mherrmann 10y ago

Maybe I'm an outlier, but I open/close my editors just as often as my file manager. The main benefit of Electron is the community. Everybody knows HTML/CSS/JavaScript, so can write extensions / customisations. If I were Microsoft, that's how I would have justified Electron. Still, I personally much prefer Sublime Text :-D

jeremiep 10y ago
My Spacemacs session often grows weeks old :) Emacs also has a client/server architecture so I can spawn the emacs daemon and then connect to it from anywhere. We have a few people in VSCode at work, a few in Sublime and yet more in Atom. They're all very happy with their setup :)

flavoie 10y ago

I just start recently a file manager in Electron just for fun. I decided to use electron for a couple of reason. My everyday work is in Java, JavaScript everyday, I wouldn't use Java in my free time for sure. But I do like JavaScript now with Babel/TypeScript. I did in the past worked with wxWidget and pyGTK but I found that building UI with React is more convenient and flexible. UI performance are on par for this type of application, plus fetching file information from node is also pretty fast. But if I ever encounter performance issue, it's quite easy to redo the bottleneck in c/c++ with node. And pretty soon in the browser with webassembly. Memory consumption is less than my Finder process (with all the opened helpers). But if I compare application like VS, VSCode and Intellij. Electron memory usage should be in between a C++ and Java apps. The challenge would be to make it start/open really fast (now for the prototype it's like 1 second). But I guess it's possible to do the same thing as Nautilus/Windows File Manager/MacOS Finder and have a background process running. Before the line between language and framework were more sharp. But I think with the evolution of the language and framework like electron, the line is getting a bit more blurry. Great apps could be written in electron as they can be written in a native framework. End users will be the real judges.