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This is an "all my friends voted for..." argument. Electron applications such as Slack, Discord, and VS Code have ballooned in popularity over the last year or

This is an "all my friends voted for..." argument. Electron applications such as Slack, Discord, and VS Code have ballooned in popularity over the last year or two. Hacker News comments are not representative of the whole.

yani 8y ago
It is not about popularity, it is about the resources Electron apps use vs native. The apps that you mentioned do not have good native alternatives. I cannot see anyone preferring a native app over Electron app if both offer the same features.
- Insanity 8y ago
  Do you mean, you cannot see anyone preferring an Electron app over a native app?
  - oldcynic 8y ago
    That's almost never the choice though is it? Who offers an Electron app and a native app? So the choice becomes use an Electron app or something else entirely.
    - Insanity 8y ago
      Electron app versus using their website I guess. In which case I use their website. But I agree, it's almost never a choice, but it's a hypothetical
    - y_molodtsov 8y ago
      The choice is actually more interesting. Although big companies such as Slack potentially have resources to support development for multiple platforms, even they can implement new features faster due to Electron. Think about all those small teams that just wouldn’t be able to port their apps anywhere without it. So in some ways I’d probably prefer a good Electron app.
      - oldcynic 8y ago
        For this, a mail client, I doubt there'd actually be much saving going native - it's going to need browser level HTML either way. So here Electron may have negligible cost. Thunderbird easily goes over 300M when it's been running a while for instance. For other things I'm far less keen as Electron is often a sign of a needless memory hog - 100M pomodoro timers and such like.
        y_molodtsov 8y ago
        Probably. Spark takes up around 200M on my laptop, so it's not that big of a deal.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      Nobody, but many offer an Electron app for things where equally good native apps exist.
      - gmueckl 8y ago
        Not true. Look at the various Skype clients, e.g. for Linux. Memory usage ballooned after they wrote their Electron based client. It uses 4 to 5 times the amount of memory of the old Qt based client and idle CPU usage is through the roof, too. And it can't even handle long conversations smoothly.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    All other things being equal of course not.
    - rootlocus 8y ago
      > All other things being equal All other things will never be equal.
      - coldtea 8y ago
        Absolutely equal no, or else it would be the same app. But that's contrived. My point is that given two apps that both have the features a user considers "must have", few, if any, would pick the Electron one over the native, precisely because of the extra burden in cpu/memory/speed of Electron.
- brandonwamboldt 8y ago
  I prefer VS Code over native alternatives. Don't conflate your anecdotal evidence with facts. Many users don't know much RAM a process consumes or what an Electron app is, they just care about what the app can do, how fast it is, etc.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >I prefer VS Code over native alternatives. That's because, as the parent said, there are no good (e.g. equivalent) native alternatives. If there was a native editor with feature parity with VS Code (including the number of plugins and dedicated MS resources speeding up its development, and free), nobody would be using it.
    - LeoNatan25 8y ago
      BBEdit is excellent. So is Notepad++.
    - croon 8y ago
      > If there was a native editor with feature parity with VS Code (including the number of plugins and dedicated MS resources speeding up its development, and free), nobody would be using it. Is it possible that VS Code (for example) exists (in its feature specific incarnation ) only because Electron is a cost cutter in terms of portable development? In other terms: Maybe the portable native full featured VS Code is the middle of the cheap-fast-good venn diagram.
      - coldtea 8y ago
        >Is it possible that VS Code (for example) exists (in its feature specific incarnation ) only because Electron is a cost cutter in terms of portable development? It could -- though I doubt it. But I was concerned with a more limited question: if there was a good VS Code alternative that's native, would many still prefer an Electron version?
        croon 8y ago
- fenrisbear 8y ago
  An electron-apps can use and call native code. I see Rust getting some attraction being bundled with electron apps. This should be a thing every electron app maker out there. Rust or otherwise.
gsich 8y ago
Slack is probably the best example for a bad Electron application. So slow.
Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
Popular does not mean good. In fact, it often means the opposite.
- be_jenk 8y ago
  Profitable?
IncRnd 8y ago
You discounted an "all my friends voted for..." argument with a different "all my friends voted for..." statement.

yani 8y ago

It is not about popularity, it is about the resources Electron apps use vs native. The apps that you mentioned do not have good native alternatives. I cannot see anyone preferring a native app over Electron app if both offer the same features.

Insanity 8y ago
Do you mean, you cannot see anyone preferring an Electron app over a native app?
- oldcynic 8y ago
  That's almost never the choice though is it? Who offers an Electron app and a native app? So the choice becomes use an Electron app or something else entirely.
  - Insanity 8y ago
    Electron app versus using their website I guess. In which case I use their website. But I agree, it's almost never a choice, but it's a hypothetical
  - y_molodtsov 8y ago
    The choice is actually more interesting. Although big companies such as Slack potentially have resources to support development for multiple platforms, even they can implement new features faster due to Electron. Think about all those small teams that just wouldn’t be able to port their apps anywhere without it. So in some ways I’d probably prefer a good Electron app.
    - oldcynic 8y ago
      For this, a mail client, I doubt there'd actually be much saving going native - it's going to need browser level HTML either way. So here Electron may have negligible cost. Thunderbird easily goes over 300M when it's been running a while for instance. For other things I'm far less keen as Electron is often a sign of a needless memory hog - 100M pomodoro timers and such like.
      - y_molodtsov 8y ago
        Probably. Spark takes up around 200M on my laptop, so it's not that big of a deal.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    Nobody, but many offer an Electron app for things where equally good native apps exist.
    - gmueckl 8y ago
      Not true. Look at the various Skype clients, e.g. for Linux. Memory usage ballooned after they wrote their Electron based client. It uses 4 to 5 times the amount of memory of the old Qt based client and idle CPU usage is through the roof, too. And it can't even handle long conversations smoothly.
- coldtea 8y ago
  All other things being equal of course not.
  - rootlocus 8y ago
    > All other things being equal All other things will never be equal.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      Absolutely equal no, or else it would be the same app. But that's contrived. My point is that given two apps that both have the features a user considers "must have", few, if any, would pick the Electron one over the native, precisely because of the extra burden in cpu/memory/speed of Electron.
brandonwamboldt 8y ago
I prefer VS Code over native alternatives. Don't conflate your anecdotal evidence with facts. Many users don't know much RAM a process consumes or what an Electron app is, they just care about what the app can do, how fast it is, etc.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >I prefer VS Code over native alternatives. That's because, as the parent said, there are no good (e.g. equivalent) native alternatives. If there was a native editor with feature parity with VS Code (including the number of plugins and dedicated MS resources speeding up its development, and free), nobody would be using it.
  - LeoNatan25 8y ago
    BBEdit is excellent. So is Notepad++.
  - croon 8y ago
    > If there was a native editor with feature parity with VS Code (including the number of plugins and dedicated MS resources speeding up its development, and free), nobody would be using it. Is it possible that VS Code (for example) exists (in its feature specific incarnation ) only because Electron is a cost cutter in terms of portable development? In other terms: Maybe the portable native full featured VS Code is the middle of the cheap-fast-good venn diagram.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      >Is it possible that VS Code (for example) exists (in its feature specific incarnation ) only because Electron is a cost cutter in terms of portable development? It could -- though I doubt it. But I was concerned with a more limited question: if there was a good VS Code alternative that's native, would many still prefer an Electron version?
      - croon 8y ago
fenrisbear 8y ago
An electron-apps can use and call native code. I see Rust getting some attraction being bundled with electron apps. This should be a thing every electron app maker out there. Rust or otherwise.

gsich 8y ago

Slack is probably the best example for a bad Electron application. So slow.

Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago

Popular does not mean good. In fact, it often means the opposite.

be_jenk 8y ago
Profitable?

IncRnd 8y ago

You discounted an "all my friends voted for..." argument with a different "all my friends voted for..." statement.