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> I struggle to see where you would prefer Qt for frontend code if you don't need a native app. How about actual native UIs instead of ugly, non-intuitive, slo

> I struggle to see where you would prefer Qt for frontend code if you don't need a native app. How about actual native UIs instead of ugly, non-intuitive, slow and massive Electron apps? I say this being a dev who works with both Qt and Electron on a daily basis. Electron has its place - but its place isn't good desktop and mobile apps. Qt is much better suited there. Electron is only well suited if your team is extremely familiar with web dev but nothing else and you have no ability to hire a good desktop team or you need to interact with a web-only frontend library. Just about everything in Qt is preferable - native look and feel, proper layouts, high performance rendering, small distribution size. I struggle to think of any way in which Electron is better except for perhaps library support these days.

sho_hn 10y ago
> Electron has its place Yeah, and it's called Hacker News - beyond that no one really cares, and uses Qt. This might sound like a troll, but the bubble effect on HN really is that strong. The community sometimes has a strong tunnel vision and doesn't realize how it's constrained by what's on the HN front page.
- mumphster 10y ago
  Except for the millions of people using apps such as Slack or Discord or people using the new Keybase desktop offerings, or people using Atom, or VSCode. Electron (sadly imo) is being used in plenty of newly developed cross platform applications, a lot having users that have no clue what hackernews is.
  - sho_hn 10y ago
    Is Electron newsworthy? Sure. At the same time there's vastly more paid Qt devs than Electron devs at this time, and more apps by orders of magnitude, including many with millions of users, and big new ones every week. Along with many application domains Electron isn't even an option in. But you wouldn't know it from HN coverage.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - problems 10y ago
    None of these apps feel quite right though. Even Atom still doesn't do DPI scaling properly. VSCode does, but opening 2 panes sometimes causes it to break. Sample problem (left pane blurry, right pane sharp - view at 1:1 scale on ~100dpi screen to notice it easiest, but it's quite visible to me with scaling even): https://i.imgur.com/Ju0UK2K.png https://i.imgur.com/Ju0UK2K.png
    - zer0t3ch 10y ago
      I've never had any issue with Discord feeling "not quite right".
      - mememachine 10y ago
        You dont know what he means? They dont feel like native, they feel like web apps.
        zer0t3ch 10y ago
        I have noticed that with some Electron apps in the past, but I had actually never noticed that with Discord. I thought it was native for the first 4 months I was using it because it was just done so well, no lag and such. The one thing that usually gives away electron apps is their lack of custom right-click handling, meaning a right-click will give you the generic context menu you would normally see in a browser. Discord seems to handle all right-clicks with their own context menus which is why I never caught onto it at first.
        mememachine 10y ago
        What gives away electron to me is the really giant non-native UI elements. Its like everything is as bloated as the underlying system!
        zer0t3ch 10y ago
        > really giant non-native UI elements You act like this is a problem exclusive to Electron apps. People have been doing shit like that forever.
  - baldfat 10y ago
    I use RStudio on a daily bases and it works amazingly well. VS Code has become my daily driver on Linux and Windows. I think there are plenty of good examples of electron apps and bad electron apps. Qt is great but electron has certainly been getting better and better.
    - santaclaus 10y ago
      Those load times on Electron apps, though... I'm a big fan of VS Code but 30 second reload times when updating extensions are a real PITA.
      - CJefferson 10y ago
        There is I think something up with your computer, or your VS Code. I have a 4 year old mac and VS Code goes from closed to a file opened in about 4 seconds. Still a stupid amount of time for a text editor, but no-where near 30.
      - baldfat 10y ago
        I have a 8 year old Dell running OpenSUSE. I counted 9 seconds to open the app. It was 6 seconds to reload after updating 5 extensions.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
ronjouch 10y ago
> Just about everything in Qt is preferable - native look and feel, proper layouts, high performance rendering, small distribution size. While we're here, honest question: how do Electron-based apps fare in terms of accessibility (e.g. to screen readers like Orca) compared to native-based apps (GTK, Qt, MFC, Cocoa)?
mememachine 10y ago
As a developer I'd also prefer to use QT. I actually enjoy C++ a lot and writing performant, pleasant apps. Slow bulky electron apps are the bane of my existance but maybe they look good to an over-budget project manager.
jd49 10y ago
Qt has more restrictive (or expensive) licensing for proprietary usage. Electron can freely be used in proprietary projects without buying a license.

sho_hn 10y ago

> Electron has its place Yeah, and it's called Hacker News - beyond that no one really cares, and uses Qt. This might sound like a troll, but the bubble effect on HN really is that strong. The community sometimes has a strong tunnel vision and doesn't realize how it's constrained by what's on the HN front page.

mumphster 10y ago
Except for the millions of people using apps such as Slack or Discord or people using the new Keybase desktop offerings, or people using Atom, or VSCode. Electron (sadly imo) is being used in plenty of newly developed cross platform applications, a lot having users that have no clue what hackernews is.
- sho_hn 10y ago
  Is Electron newsworthy? Sure. At the same time there's vastly more paid Qt devs than Electron devs at this time, and more apps by orders of magnitude, including many with millions of users, and big new ones every week. Along with many application domains Electron isn't even an option in. But you wouldn't know it from HN coverage.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- problems 10y ago
  None of these apps feel quite right though. Even Atom still doesn't do DPI scaling properly. VSCode does, but opening 2 panes sometimes causes it to break. Sample problem (left pane blurry, right pane sharp - view at 1:1 scale on ~100dpi screen to notice it easiest, but it's quite visible to me with scaling even): https://i.imgur.com/Ju0UK2K.png https://i.imgur.com/Ju0UK2K.png
  - zer0t3ch 10y ago
    I've never had any issue with Discord feeling "not quite right".
    - mememachine 10y ago
      You dont know what he means? They dont feel like native, they feel like web apps.
      - zer0t3ch 10y ago
        I have noticed that with some Electron apps in the past, but I had actually never noticed that with Discord. I thought it was native for the first 4 months I was using it because it was just done so well, no lag and such. The one thing that usually gives away electron apps is their lack of custom right-click handling, meaning a right-click will give you the generic context menu you would normally see in a browser. Discord seems to handle all right-clicks with their own context menus which is why I never caught onto it at first.
        mememachine 10y ago
        What gives away electron to me is the really giant non-native UI elements. Its like everything is as bloated as the underlying system!
        zer0t3ch 10y ago
        > really giant non-native UI elements You act like this is a problem exclusive to Electron apps. People have been doing shit like that forever.
- baldfat 10y ago
  I use RStudio on a daily bases and it works amazingly well. VS Code has become my daily driver on Linux and Windows. I think there are plenty of good examples of electron apps and bad electron apps. Qt is great but electron has certainly been getting better and better.
  - santaclaus 10y ago
    Those load times on Electron apps, though... I'm a big fan of VS Code but 30 second reload times when updating extensions are a real PITA.
    - CJefferson 10y ago
      There is I think something up with your computer, or your VS Code. I have a 4 year old mac and VS Code goes from closed to a file opened in about 4 seconds. Still a stupid amount of time for a text editor, but no-where near 30.
    - baldfat 10y ago
      I have a 8 year old Dell running OpenSUSE. I counted 9 seconds to open the app. It was 6 seconds to reload after updating 5 extensions.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

ronjouch 10y ago

> Just about everything in Qt is preferable - native look and feel, proper layouts, high performance rendering, small distribution size. While we're here, honest question: how do Electron-based apps fare in terms of accessibility (e.g. to screen readers like Orca) compared to native-based apps (GTK, Qt, MFC, Cocoa)?

mememachine 10y ago

As a developer I'd also prefer to use QT. I actually enjoy C++ a lot and writing performant, pleasant apps. Slow bulky electron apps are the bane of my existance but maybe they look good to an over-budget project manager.

jd49 10y ago

Qt has more restrictive (or expensive) licensing for proprietary usage. Electron can freely be used in proprietary projects without buying a license.