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I can't speak for large companies trying to make the call on Electron versus multiple OS-specific apps, but for indie devs this is absolutely critical. Imagine

I can't speak for large companies trying to make the call on Electron versus multiple OS-specific apps, but for indie devs this is absolutely critical. Imagine being a small shop of 1 person (or even 5) and having to learn desktop programming languages, conventions, and native APIs for the web, Mac, Windows, and Linux. Then on top of that to develop and maintain a product that moves at the pace of customer feedback. That's why Electron is powerful. I could not write and maintain the Hemingway App for Mac and Windows without Electron. My tens of thousands of users would not get to use that software _at all_.

jrowley 10y ago
Off topic but I just checked out your app. Very clever! I'd love to see a world where it is integrated tightly with iOS. Writing concisely is especially useful on mobile. Also I dig the demo. Great example of why developing electron apps can be really beneficial.
brandon272 10y ago
Thanks for your insight. The part that confuses me as a non-native developer is the folks in this thread who seem to be implying that there are only marginal amounts of additional time needed to release cross platform, fully native apps.
- mi100hael 10y ago
  > as a non-native developer I think the implication is as much that developers who label themselves like you have as "non-native" or "JS" or "web" developers don't have the perspective to make an informed decision on the matter. Many of the rest of us know how to build React SPAs (and have been doing it long enough to have used Angular 1, Backbone, Sproutcore, ...) but "JS + Framework of the Week" is just one of the many tools we could turn to when building a UI. Many of us have also used cross-platform native libraries like QT or GTK, or platform-specific toolkits like Cocoa or .NET. Basically, if the only tool you have is a hammer... it might be time to learn to use some new tools.
  - jmagoon 10y ago
    Are you saying that building a web version and two (or five) native versions of an application is equivalent to building a single JS codebase and having it just run? It certainly sounds wonderful to learn new tools, but how does that stack up from the engineering (cost-benefit) side?

jrowley 10y ago

Off topic but I just checked out your app. Very clever! I'd love to see a world where it is integrated tightly with iOS. Writing concisely is especially useful on mobile. Also I dig the demo. Great example of why developing electron apps can be really beneficial.

brandon272 10y ago

Thanks for your insight. The part that confuses me as a non-native developer is the folks in this thread who seem to be implying that there are only marginal amounts of additional time needed to release cross platform, fully native apps.

mi100hael 10y ago
> as a non-native developer I think the implication is as much that developers who label themselves like you have as "non-native" or "JS" or "web" developers don't have the perspective to make an informed decision on the matter. Many of the rest of us know how to build React SPAs (and have been doing it long enough to have used Angular 1, Backbone, Sproutcore, ...) but "JS + Framework of the Week" is just one of the many tools we could turn to when building a UI. Many of us have also used cross-platform native libraries like QT or GTK, or platform-specific toolkits like Cocoa or .NET. Basically, if the only tool you have is a hammer... it might be time to learn to use some new tools.
- jmagoon 10y ago
  Are you saying that building a web version and two (or five) native versions of an application is equivalent to building a single JS codebase and having it just run? It certainly sounds wonderful to learn new tools, but how does that stack up from the engineering (cost-benefit) side?