3 ms·

I don’t have a good answer to the framework question, but I do have an opinion about cross-platform. Why make cross-platform a priority over efficiency and use

by ms013 8y ago

I don’t have a good answer to the framework question, but I do have an opinion about cross-platform. Why make cross-platform a priority over efficiency and user experience? I bounce between Mac and Windows daily, and my least favorite apps are those that try to run on both. They are often resource hogs and provide a UI experience that feels worse than native apps. Electron apps have the least bad UI experience, but are resource hogs. One app I use for work, Mendeley, uses Qt for its UI I believe, and it’s garbage on both platforms- so I use the web interface instead. Give me a good native app instead of a suboptimal cross platform one. I often think the issue isn’t cross platform though: it’s that there is a cohort of developers who know a toolchain (JS+web), and use frameworks that let them live in that instead of investing the time and effort to learn how to write an app well using a toolchain not built for those focused on web/browser models of programming.

lucideer 8y ago
Since we're on the topic of music players, I'll comment here that the lack of foobar2000 on Linux is frustrating. I don't have the wherewithal to contribute to a port, the maintainer doesn't seem interested, and things like quodlibet and deadbeef just don't hold a candle. That said, if foobar2000 had been made cross-platform initially, it may never have been very good. Who can say.
iaml 8y ago
Electron does not magically make your app work like shit - if you treat it like any other framework and actually invest resources into architecture and optimization it (surprise!) results in a good software, eg: vs code. Problem is it also allows to disregard all that and quickly prototype a solution that works good enough for some, and forget about all the optimization. That's real problem, but it's not tied in any way to electron. Same people would go and make a shitty app in qt if there was no electron, or just wouldn't make anything.

by ms013 8y ago

lucideer 8y ago

Since we're on the topic of music players, I'll comment here that the lack of foobar2000 on Linux is frustrating. I don't have the wherewithal to contribute to a port, the maintainer doesn't seem interested, and things like quodlibet and deadbeef just don't hold a candle. That said, if foobar2000 had been made cross-platform initially, it may never have been very good. Who can say.

iaml 8y ago

Electron does not magically make your app work like shit - if you treat it like any other framework and actually invest resources into architecture and optimization it (surprise!) results in a good software, eg: vs code. Problem is it also allows to disregard all that and quickly prototype a solution that works good enough for some, and forget about all the optimization. That's real problem, but it's not tied in any way to electron. Same people would go and make a shitty app in qt if there was no electron, or just wouldn't make anything.