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I've been working on a hobby app for some years that is a modern refresh of an old idea. As the article exhorts (and just for funsies, it's just a hobby) I'm w
by evmar 10y ago
I've been working on a hobby app for some years that is a modern refresh of an old idea. As the article exhorts (and just for funsies, it's just a hobby) I'm writing it using native code and to be conservative on resources.
Every place I need to render text or make a thing respond to a mouse click I need to manually do all my own text layout and event handling and so on. (The app is in a domain where it needs special rendering -- I can't just reuse a system widget or library like Qt for this.)
Meanwhile, people are making apps similar to mine on top of Electron and banging out features way faster than I ever could. If they want some popup to have some bold text, or use the GPU to animate, or properly handle Arabic text layout, they get it all for basically free, they just need to bang out some divs. I am jealous.
- Mithaldu 10y agoWell, the question is: Does your app run always like a daemon or just when you actually need it? It can be fine to prototype in Electron, or to make tools in it. But if you're making a chat program or anything similarly long-lived, it's the worst decision you can make for your user.
- true_religion 10y agoVs code is in electron and fairly long lived.
- ceedan 10y ago"it's the worst decision you can make for your user" - Is it? Because there are a lot of Slack users who don't care at all about your tradeoffs. Most of them don't even notice. We're just the unfortunate ones who do notice.
- supergreg 10y agoIf it can't use Qt then it's also probable it can't use Electron, otherwise, why don't you just use Qt?
- rodgerd 10y agoDid you even bother reading past the first sentence before you recommended Qt?