4 ms·

This is the crux of the anti-Electron folks that I've never understood tbh. All things being equal, I'm sure companies would love to develop their apps using n

This is the crux of the anti-Electron folks that I've never understood tbh. All things being equal, I'm sure companies would love to develop their apps using native tooling and have them simple, beautiful, accessible etc. Doing this 3 times for 3 times the cost, as opposed to once some sacrifices is the obvious reason for this widespread adoption.

deleted 8y ago
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chipotle_coyote 8y ago
Well, the anti-Electron argument is that you're not necessarily doing it "three times for three times the cost." If you designed your app with the intention of being cross-platform to start with, you're writing it to have some kind of platform abstraction layer. The bulk of most applications isn't going to change. That's undoubtedly still more expensive than doing everything Electron, sure. But it's going to produce a nicer application: lower resources, faster performance, working better with platform-specific features (e.g., macOS's Services menu). Maybe that's not worth it for all applications, but if Electron-style frameworks that lock their applications to the lowest common denominators become the norm, the overall quality of software drops.
- purephase 8y ago
  When I say three times the cost, I primarily mean for the web, mobile and desktop. Not for the varying OS distributions. Electron provides a means to handle all of those environments with some admitted drawbacks on desktop. I'm not a proponent of Electron, just stating (IMO) the likely reason for it's adoption.
solarkraft 8y ago
I'm fully in support of cross platform frameworks, I just hate the Electron approach of taking the worst parts of a browser and putting it all into a gigantic, ran gobbling monstrosity. There are good "non-native" frameworks - Qt comes to my mind first, but Flutter and the now seemingly revived WPF are also good contenders. Those are pretty great. You can also do Electron well (VsCode), but almost no devs do it, which makes me question whether doing it well might require just as much effort as using something else.
- justinmchase 8y ago
  Whats an example of a non-good electron app?
  - CyberDildonics 8y ago
    Atom, the ethereum wallet (worst software I've ever used) and many many more
pjmlp 8y ago
I can do that only once with Qt, and have perfectly simple, beautiful, accessible apps.
seanwilson 8y ago
> Doing this 3 times for 3 times the cost, as opposed to once some sacrifices is the obvious reason for this widespread adoption. Are there any stats that back this up? It wouldn't surprise me if it was more than 3 times the cost given you'll likely have a larger team to coordinate.
CyberDildonics 8y ago
I have no idea how this whole idea of doing something 3 times gained any momentum. Do people not realize that you can use cross platform C++ libraries and essentially get the same program to compile on three different platforms, then just write it once? It really isn't that difficult. Use Qt, or Juce, or FLTK, the standard library and a couple of cross platform libraries for things like networking and you are in the clear. The idea that anyone is actually maintaining three separate versions of a program is completely detached from reality.

deleted 8y ago

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chipotle_coyote 8y ago

Well, the anti-Electron argument is that you're not necessarily doing it "three times for three times the cost." If you designed your app with the intention of being cross-platform to start with, you're writing it to have some kind of platform abstraction layer. The bulk of most applications isn't going to change. That's undoubtedly still more expensive than doing everything Electron, sure. But it's going to produce a nicer application: lower resources, faster performance, working better with platform-specific features (e.g., macOS's Services menu). Maybe that's not worth it for all applications, but if Electron-style frameworks that lock their applications to the lowest common denominators become the norm, the overall quality of software drops.

purephase 8y ago
When I say three times the cost, I primarily mean for the web, mobile and desktop. Not for the varying OS distributions. Electron provides a means to handle all of those environments with some admitted drawbacks on desktop. I'm not a proponent of Electron, just stating (IMO) the likely reason for it's adoption.

solarkraft 8y ago

I'm fully in support of cross platform frameworks, I just hate the Electron approach of taking the worst parts of a browser and putting it all into a gigantic, ran gobbling monstrosity. There are good "non-native" frameworks - Qt comes to my mind first, but Flutter and the now seemingly revived WPF are also good contenders. Those are pretty great. You can also do Electron well (VsCode), but almost no devs do it, which makes me question whether doing it well might require just as much effort as using something else.

justinmchase 8y ago
Whats an example of a non-good electron app?
- CyberDildonics 8y ago
  Atom, the ethereum wallet (worst software I've ever used) and many many more

pjmlp 8y ago

I can do that only once with Qt, and have perfectly simple, beautiful, accessible apps.

seanwilson 8y ago

> Doing this 3 times for 3 times the cost, as opposed to once some sacrifices is the obvious reason for this widespread adoption. Are there any stats that back this up? It wouldn't surprise me if it was more than 3 times the cost given you'll likely have a larger team to coordinate.

CyberDildonics 8y ago

I have no idea how this whole idea of doing something 3 times gained any momentum. Do people not realize that you can use cross platform C++ libraries and essentially get the same program to compile on three different platforms, then just write it once? It really isn't that difficult. Use Qt, or Juce, or FLTK, the standard library and a couple of cross platform libraries for things like networking and you are in the clear. The idea that anyone is actually maintaining three separate versions of a program is completely detached from reality.