The weird thing is I'm almost certain you can build the exact same thing with e.g. python+Qt, do literally all the drawing using python code in custom widgets,

The weird thing is I'm almost certain you can build the exact same thing with e.g. python+Qt, do literally all the drawing using python code in custom widgets, and the result would still be nicer to use than the status quo. I'm not advocating switching to the PyQt stack, I just want the electron stack to be saner, in particular 1) Electron is obviously a system library now. Treat it as such. Install ONE copy of electron per version, not ten private copies of electron in npm. It should be simple to integrate with at least Windows and OSX install systems - instead of downloading the full electron module, download an installer that installs the required version system-wide. This can be done as a step during installation like desktop programs have been installing required dependencies since the dawn of time. 2) Find some way to make it slimmer. Maybe not every app needs the entirety of the browser loaded. Maybe we can do lazy loading of certain components? Maybe optimise the most used critical paths, and provide tools to developers (if those don't already exist) to show exactly what is causing all those wakeups? Moving off Electron is not an option any more, it's just such an easy and familiar platform to develop for, it's not going anywhere. Maybe we should accept it as the victor of the cross-platform desktop application toolkit and work to make it better. It's shitty, but it's the right kind of easy, like PHP.