4 ms·

Isn't that size arbitrary? Downloading and storing a 100mb program takes the same (or less) fraction of your available resources today as downloading and stori

by hashkb 9y ago

Isn't that size arbitrary? Downloading and storing a 100mb program takes the same (or less) fraction of your available resources today as downloading and storing a 1mb program in 1995. Are you short on disk space? Download is too slow? Is this a real problem?

pavlov 9y ago
Download size is relatively harmless; size on disk is an annoyance and a real concern (a lot of laptop users have an SSD in the 128-256 GB range); but memory footprint is the real killer for me. I don't want every little widget to consume hundreds of megs of memory. In 1995 my computer had 8 or 16 MB memory... Having a 1 MB app running in the background would have been huge. I certainly don't want to go back to that era.
- Zak 9y ago
  Memory footprint is my big issue with this too. Related, I've noticed chat for various projects slowly migrating from IRC to Slack and have the same issue there. What could have been another irssi window taking up an insignificant amount of memory is now a 150Mb Chrome tab. To make matters worse, memory growth has stagnated. A Macbook Pro today, to give an example has the same maximum RAM (16Gb) it did in 2010. That's zero memory growth in 7 years for a popular developer machine.
- hashkb 9y ago
  Wouldn't regular Chrome have the same issue? Each tab is a full instance... your argument is against Chrome and web apps, not Electron.
  - rodorgas 9y ago
    Chrome splits itself in various processes and usually each tab has a process. But each process is not a full Chrome instance. There's a huge difference.
  - pavlov 9y ago
    No, it's different. Each Chrome tab is a process, but they share the same dynamic libraries in memory. Each Electron app is both a process and a separate copy of the dynamic libraries. If you run half a dozen Electron apps, those redundant libraries will be taking up roughly a gigabyte already.

by hashkb 9y ago

pavlov 9y ago

Download size is relatively harmless; size on disk is an annoyance and a real concern (a lot of laptop users have an SSD in the 128-256 GB range); but memory footprint is the real killer for me. I don't want every little widget to consume hundreds of megs of memory. In 1995 my computer had 8 or 16 MB memory... Having a 1 MB app running in the background would have been huge. I certainly don't want to go back to that era.

Zak 9y ago
Memory footprint is my big issue with this too. Related, I've noticed chat for various projects slowly migrating from IRC to Slack and have the same issue there. What could have been another irssi window taking up an insignificant amount of memory is now a 150Mb Chrome tab. To make matters worse, memory growth has stagnated. A Macbook Pro today, to give an example has the same maximum RAM (16Gb) it did in 2010. That's zero memory growth in 7 years for a popular developer machine.
hashkb 9y ago
Wouldn't regular Chrome have the same issue? Each tab is a full instance... your argument is against Chrome and web apps, not Electron.
- rodorgas 9y ago
  Chrome splits itself in various processes and usually each tab has a process. But each process is not a full Chrome instance. There's a huge difference.
- pavlov 9y ago
  No, it's different. Each Chrome tab is a process, but they share the same dynamic libraries in memory. Each Electron app is both a process and a separate copy of the dynamic libraries. If you run half a dozen Electron apps, those redundant libraries will be taking up roughly a gigabyte already.