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Maybe you can help me understand the outcry over Electron memory usage, especially on HH. I can't remember the last time I ran out of memory on my laptop or des

Maybe you can help me understand the outcry over Electron memory usage, especially on HH. I can't remember the last time I ran out of memory on my laptop or desktop unintentionally. Seems to me battery life and jank should be main areas of focus. You can have a 2GB if you cut CPU usage and typing latency.

15charlimit 8y ago
Just because you "can" use a bunch of memory without issues now doesn't mean you "should" not make any attempts to cut resource usage whenever possible.
- deagle50 8y ago
  Of course you're right. But why does it seem like memory usage takes precedence over battery life and latency? I may be in the minority, but it seems to me a native app's key advantage over Electron is performance/watt and I don't see how reduced memory usage would help.
khedoros1 8y ago
I've run out of memory a few times this week on my Linux VM at work, and also at home on the beater laptop I use in the living room. Those are both stuck at 4GB of RAM, though. On my laptop with 16GB, it's certainly been at least a few months since I've done anything that made it hit swap.
- deagle50 8y ago
  I said "unintentionally" as a hedge for corner cases like VMs where you are likely aware of the limits. I probably should have been more clear. I also prefer native apps, which is why I still mostly use Sublime over Code despite the latter's advantages. But it's because of speed and battery life, not memory consumption. If we're going to make a case for native apps, lets at least focus on the biggest pain points, as the proliferation of Electron indicates we're not making an impact.
  - khedoros1 8y ago
    Battery life's something that I only rarely have to think about. All of my development has always been somewhere with convenient power. It irks me when the CPU's churning along on a process that should be near-idle, though. > I said "unintentionally" as a hedge for corner cases like VMs where you are likely aware of the limits. I was aware of the limited memory of the VM, but almost everything I run there is a text-mode application, so it usually doesn't matter. Honestly, I thought that Slack would fit easily in the free memory, but I'm logged into 3 teams, so it ate more than I expected. And it's a spinning rust drive; swapping sucks, and it slows down the host OS at the same time. It's an avoidable situation; just run Slack under the host's Windows, instead of in the Linux VM. But it remains the case, in my uses, that memory has caused more issues than CPU, and that CPU has caused more issues than battery drain. I don't know why everyone else focuses on memory so much...I perceive my own issues as kind of a corner case.

15charlimit 8y ago

Just because you "can" use a bunch of memory without issues now doesn't mean you "should" not make any attempts to cut resource usage whenever possible.

deagle50 8y ago
Of course you're right. But why does it seem like memory usage takes precedence over battery life and latency? I may be in the minority, but it seems to me a native app's key advantage over Electron is performance/watt and I don't see how reduced memory usage would help.

khedoros1 8y ago

I've run out of memory a few times this week on my Linux VM at work, and also at home on the beater laptop I use in the living room. Those are both stuck at 4GB of RAM, though. On my laptop with 16GB, it's certainly been at least a few months since I've done anything that made it hit swap.

deagle50 8y ago
I said "unintentionally" as a hedge for corner cases like VMs where you are likely aware of the limits. I probably should have been more clear. I also prefer native apps, which is why I still mostly use Sublime over Code despite the latter's advantages. But it's because of speed and battery life, not memory consumption. If we're going to make a case for native apps, lets at least focus on the biggest pain points, as the proliferation of Electron indicates we're not making an impact.
- khedoros1 8y ago
  Battery life's something that I only rarely have to think about. All of my development has always been somewhere with convenient power. It irks me when the CPU's churning along on a process that should be near-idle, though. > I said "unintentionally" as a hedge for corner cases like VMs where you are likely aware of the limits. I was aware of the limited memory of the VM, but almost everything I run there is a text-mode application, so it usually doesn't matter. Honestly, I thought that Slack would fit easily in the free memory, but I'm logged into 3 teams, so it ate more than I expected. And it's a spinning rust drive; swapping sucks, and it slows down the host OS at the same time. It's an avoidable situation; just run Slack under the host's Windows, instead of in the Linux VM. But it remains the case, in my uses, that memory has caused more issues than CPU, and that CPU has caused more issues than battery drain. I don't know why everyone else focuses on memory so much...I perceive my own issues as kind of a corner case.