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Electron apps are made for developers, but it's users who they're built for and who have to use it. What I mean is, Electron apps make their life easier for a
by nkkollaw 9y ago
Electron apps are made for developers, but it's users who they're built for and who have to use it.
What I mean is, Electron apps make their life easier for a handful of programmers, to the detriment of thousands or in many cases million of users.
As a freelance developer, I think Electron is great for the little apps I build for clients for internal use. Companies like GitHub, Spotify, etc. have the resources to do much better than that. I have no idea why they settle for lousy performance just to use web technologies.
- SomeStupidPoint 9y agoShort-term thinking: they save money of dev effort and assume their users will just tolerate their worse apps. It's easy to sell yourself on the idea of cutting costs and growth potential to maximize returns now when you're an entrenched market player in a dominant position (as I would argue both GitHub and Spotify are). Heck, it might even work.
- nkkollaw 9y agoSure, I know they're saving money, but unless you _have_ to use something (Spotify, Skype), many people will choose a competitor instead of your app. One such case is Atom—which from what I know is what Electron was created for: many people use Sublime Text instead. Not because of functionality, but just because Atom is super-slow in comparison, and it won't open or let you work productively with files bigger than 2-5MB. I would argue that the money they save by not going native, they lose from people using better software.