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For naysayers, Electron only has to support one browser flavor and one version, which eliminates one of the biggest disadvantages of building Web based apps. Wi

For naysayers, Electron only has to support one browser flavor and one version, which eliminates one of the biggest disadvantages of building Web based apps. With Electron and similarly with nw.js, the performance can be close to par with native apps without the cross compilation issues of native c++ frameworks like Qt. And with Electron, if you want to write some native code in C/C++, you can integrate that also. The only downsides I see is protecting closed source code and the lack of Mobile support, which is not coming any time soon due to Apple blocking Google V8 engine from their platform due to V8's use of JIT compilation.

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m0a0t0 10y ago
"the performance can be close to par with native apps" That has not been my experience with any electron app. They are dog slow across the board
- thomasrognon 10y ago
  Does that include VS Code? VS Code feels very responsive to me. I even replaced notepad++ on my Windows machines with it.
  - thomastjeffery 10y ago
    VScode is the best electron app I have used, but it still feels a little bloated, even on my very high latency display. We're just so spoiled with super responsive GUI toolkits, and that's how it should be, especially in an editor. I'll stick with emacs for now, until I finish writing my own editor.
tomc1985 10y ago
Though at the cost of a ridiculous amount of processing overhead because you've chosen to forsake nearly every native programming feature the OS provides, in favor of an HTML engine
- dchest 10y ago
  Native programming features the OS provides are also not free: it's still similar code drawing things on the screen, making sure they are properly aligned. HTML/CSS is a pretty flexible, and it indeed has some overhead compared to most native UI frameworks, but the "ridiculousness" of this overhead is imaginary.
  - uzoodoo 10y ago
    > but the "ridiculousness" of this overhead is imaginary. A few weeks ago: VS Code uses 13% CPU when idle due to blinking cursor rendering https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13940014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13940014
    - thomasrognon 10y ago
      That was a bug in Chrome (http://crbug.com/361587 http://crbug.com/361587), it's not inherent to the technology. VS Code ended up implementing the logic in JS to work around it.
    - nl 10y ago
      As someone who has been hit by every single one of these bugs[1][2][3] but somehow didn't get the VS Code problem I'm not at all convinced that is somehow inherent in using Electron. I don't think I ever had a "IDE causing high CPU load in" problem in Delphi 2, 3, or 5. I did in Delphi 4, and I have in PowerBuilder, Sybase PowerJ (although there were much worse problems with that!), VB6, Eclipse 2, and I'm sure there are some I've missed. Bugs suck, but they happen. [1] http://ridikulouse.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/visual-studio-high-cpu-usage.html http://ridikulouse.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/visual-studio-hig... [2] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1369487/speeding-up-tomcat-in-debug-mode-with-eclipse-ide/1373547#1373547 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1369487/speeding-up-tomca... [3] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/38601171/intellij-idea-2016-2-high-cpu-usage http://stackoverflow.com/questions/38601171/intellij-idea-20...

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m0a0t0 10y ago

"the performance can be close to par with native apps" That has not been my experience with any electron app. They are dog slow across the board

thomasrognon 10y ago
Does that include VS Code? VS Code feels very responsive to me. I even replaced notepad++ on my Windows machines with it.
- thomastjeffery 10y ago
  VScode is the best electron app I have used, but it still feels a little bloated, even on my very high latency display. We're just so spoiled with super responsive GUI toolkits, and that's how it should be, especially in an editor. I'll stick with emacs for now, until I finish writing my own editor.

tomc1985 10y ago

Though at the cost of a ridiculous amount of processing overhead because you've chosen to forsake nearly every native programming feature the OS provides, in favor of an HTML engine

dchest 10y ago
Native programming features the OS provides are also not free: it's still similar code drawing things on the screen, making sure they are properly aligned. HTML/CSS is a pretty flexible, and it indeed has some overhead compared to most native UI frameworks, but the "ridiculousness" of this overhead is imaginary.
- uzoodoo 10y ago
  > but the "ridiculousness" of this overhead is imaginary. A few weeks ago: VS Code uses 13% CPU when idle due to blinking cursor rendering https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13940014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13940014
  - thomasrognon 10y ago
    That was a bug in Chrome (http://crbug.com/361587 http://crbug.com/361587), it's not inherent to the technology. VS Code ended up implementing the logic in JS to work around it.
  - nl 10y ago
    As someone who has been hit by every single one of these bugs[1][2][3] but somehow didn't get the VS Code problem I'm not at all convinced that is somehow inherent in using Electron. I don't think I ever had a "IDE causing high CPU load in" problem in Delphi 2, 3, or 5. I did in Delphi 4, and I have in PowerBuilder, Sybase PowerJ (although there were much worse problems with that!), VB6, Eclipse 2, and I'm sure there are some I've missed. Bugs suck, but they happen. [1] http://ridikulouse.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/visual-studio-high-cpu-usage.html http://ridikulouse.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/visual-studio-hig... [2] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1369487/speeding-up-tomcat-in-debug-mode-with-eclipse-ide/1373547#1373547 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1369487/speeding-up-tomca... [3] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/38601171/intellij-idea-2016-2-high-cpu-usage http://stackoverflow.com/questions/38601171/intellij-idea-20...