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I don't think that that's always true. I think the gold-standard for this is Slack (at least on OSX). Spotify is nice too. Both seem to combine the very best of

I don't think that that's always true. I think the gold-standard for this is Slack (at least on OSX). Spotify is nice too. Both seem to combine the very best of web dev (nice presentation and service integration) while cancelling out its worst problems (like accidental browser navigation).

josephg 10y ago
Gold standard? Slack is 380 megs in size, and when its open it somehow seems to constantly use about 5% CPU usage (which probably knocks out a few hours of battery life, since the CPU can't properly sleep). Every so often I catch it sitting on 100% cpu usage (this is all while in the background). Restarting slack fixes it. I know that programmer time is more important than CPU time, but its my CPU and my battery. I can only imagine explaining to someone from 15 years ago what software looks like now. "Oh yeah in the future we all use IRC, except its a proprietary IRC implementation and supports animated gifs. The client is 380 megs" "Calm down - I know thats bigger than your hard drive. No its not 3d or anything - it just has nice colors." I don't understand why people hate on apple for not making laptops with 32 gigs of ram, but they have no problem using apps like slack which waste resources like it was water. Thankfully slack seems to be much more lean when run inside a safari browser tab.
- kuschku 10y ago
  > Slack is 380 MB For comparison: The entire Java 8 (Windows, 64-bit, offline) JVM plus all libraries (which, thanks Java 9, will no longer be necessary) is 62MB: http://javadl.oracle.com/webapps/download/AutoDL?BundleId=218833_e9e7ea248e2c4826b92b3f075a80e441 http://javadl.oracle.com/webapps/download/AutoDL?BundleId=21... Why do people complain that Java is sooo wasteful again? You can literally bundle the entire JVM multiple times with every single Java program, and still use 6 times less space! SIX. For comparison, the new Minecraft Launcher uses Electron. The entire JVM + every Minecraft version ever, plus assets, plus all mobile editions uses less space than it. In a usual minecraft installation, the actual game uses on average between 7 and 15% of the required space, the remaining 85 to 93% being used by the launcher (specifically, the bundled Chrome runtime) Where did our society go wrong?
  - viraptor 10y ago
    Another extreme electron example: https://github.com/manosim/gitify/releases https://github.com/manosim/gitify/releases 48.8MB when packed. All it provides is a status bar notification window.
    - kartickv 10y ago
      Great point, but unless a significant fraction of people refuse to install the app because it's too bloated, it doesn't matter at the end of the day — I would still choose Electron over Cocoa.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
  - ashark 10y ago
    Java was and is wasteful. Some of us remember something very similar to this Electron mess happening in the Distant Past when Java fans tried to convince everyone that UI slowness and general system-wide performance issues when Java programs were running were just in our heads, and to just get over it because Java was the Way of the Future™. Of course now computers are so fast that no-one much minds Java anymore. So we had to invent web apps and Electron to make sure desktop computing doesn't actually become pleasant. That'd simply be unacceptable.
    - kuschku 10y ago
      I’m just wondering why the fuck we don’t simply just use Java, and get exactly the same advantages as electron provides, while still getting better performance. An argument can be made that devs might want to not care about memory allocation or anything, but Java does that just as well as JS, with a better build system, better community tools, better speeds, easier UI tools, and better dependency management.
      - ashark 10y ago
eridius 10y ago
Slack is actually a perfect bad example. When they switched to Electron, the app got much shittier (at least on OS X). Many native features, like force-push on words/links, vanished, and there's a bunch of random bugs (including a really annoying one with input and smart replacements where the caret jumps around making you mistype things).
johnflan 10y ago
I would have to disagree, it may be the best of breed but thats not saying much.
dkersten 10y ago
Slack is a severe resource hog and sometimes hangs or just runs slow. When 90% of the time, all I want from slack is basic IRC-like rooms/messages, this is ridiculous (I don't mind it using those resources the other 10% of the time). You might think its not a problem because our machines are so powerful now, but it eats battery and occasionally I need to run a ton of stuff (eg a ton of docker containers) and having a chat application get in the way is rather annoying.

josephg 10y ago

Gold standard? Slack is 380 megs in size, and when its open it somehow seems to constantly use about 5% CPU usage (which probably knocks out a few hours of battery life, since the CPU can't properly sleep). Every so often I catch it sitting on 100% cpu usage (this is all while in the background). Restarting slack fixes it. I know that programmer time is more important than CPU time, but its my CPU and my battery. I can only imagine explaining to someone from 15 years ago what software looks like now. "Oh yeah in the future we all use IRC, except its a proprietary IRC implementation and supports animated gifs. The client is 380 megs" "Calm down - I know thats bigger than your hard drive. No its not 3d or anything - it just has nice colors." I don't understand why people hate on apple for not making laptops with 32 gigs of ram, but they have no problem using apps like slack which waste resources like it was water. Thankfully slack seems to be much more lean when run inside a safari browser tab.

kuschku 10y ago
> Slack is 380 MB For comparison: The entire Java 8 (Windows, 64-bit, offline) JVM plus all libraries (which, thanks Java 9, will no longer be necessary) is 62MB: http://javadl.oracle.com/webapps/download/AutoDL?BundleId=218833_e9e7ea248e2c4826b92b3f075a80e441 http://javadl.oracle.com/webapps/download/AutoDL?BundleId=21... Why do people complain that Java is sooo wasteful again? You can literally bundle the entire JVM multiple times with every single Java program, and still use 6 times less space! SIX. For comparison, the new Minecraft Launcher uses Electron. The entire JVM + every Minecraft version ever, plus assets, plus all mobile editions uses less space than it. In a usual minecraft installation, the actual game uses on average between 7 and 15% of the required space, the remaining 85 to 93% being used by the launcher (specifically, the bundled Chrome runtime) Where did our society go wrong?
- viraptor 10y ago
  Another extreme electron example: https://github.com/manosim/gitify/releases https://github.com/manosim/gitify/releases 48.8MB when packed. All it provides is a status bar notification window.
  - kartickv 10y ago
    Great point, but unless a significant fraction of people refuse to install the app because it's too bloated, it doesn't matter at the end of the day — I would still choose Electron over Cocoa.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- ashark 10y ago
  Java was and is wasteful. Some of us remember something very similar to this Electron mess happening in the Distant Past when Java fans tried to convince everyone that UI slowness and general system-wide performance issues when Java programs were running were just in our heads, and to just get over it because Java was the Way of the Future™. Of course now computers are so fast that no-one much minds Java anymore. So we had to invent web apps and Electron to make sure desktop computing doesn't actually become pleasant. That'd simply be unacceptable.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    I’m just wondering why the fuck we don’t simply just use Java, and get exactly the same advantages as electron provides, while still getting better performance. An argument can be made that devs might want to not care about memory allocation or anything, but Java does that just as well as JS, with a better build system, better community tools, better speeds, easier UI tools, and better dependency management.
    - ashark 10y ago

eridius 10y ago

Slack is actually a perfect bad example. When they switched to Electron, the app got much shittier (at least on OS X). Many native features, like force-push on words/links, vanished, and there's a bunch of random bugs (including a really annoying one with input and smart replacements where the caret jumps around making you mistype things).

johnflan 10y ago

I would have to disagree, it may be the best of breed but thats not saying much.

dkersten 10y ago

Slack is a severe resource hog and sometimes hangs or just runs slow. When 90% of the time, all I want from slack is basic IRC-like rooms/messages, this is ridiculous (I don't mind it using those resources the other 10% of the time). You might think its not a problem because our machines are so powerful now, but it eats battery and occasionally I need to run a ton of stuff (eg a ton of docker containers) and having a chat application get in the way is rather annoying.