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>On an unrelated note, highly polarized opinions about languages and frameworks are characteristic of people who lack real-world programming experience and are

>On an unrelated note, highly polarized opinions about languages and frameworks are characteristic of people who lack real-world programming experience and are more interested in building an identity than creating computer programs. How incredibly arrogant. It can't be that people have legitimate grievances with elecron, like not wanting to use a program based on an incredibly bloated and poorly designed platform, oh no, they just "lack real world experience" and are "more interested in identity" (whatever that means). High-and-mighty types like this are exactly why working in IT or contributing to FLOSS is so draining at times.

sschueller 8y ago
I agree, turns me off. What a blinded way to move through life.
vorpalhex 8y ago
The author doesn't claim you can't have grievances, but to simply stand by and claim you'll never ever use electron isn't airing a balanced grievance as much as it's a polarized opinion. There's a time and place for all technologies.
- loeg 8y ago
  Characterizing all grievances against Electron as a religious dispute not based in fact is a sweeping, broad characterization of a group of people, and substantially inaccurate. That's what people object to about the README statement. > What if I am religiously opposed to using Electron for any and all purposes? > Then you are not the target audience of this program. See mps-youtube (link above) for a similar program that will not taint your machine with a library you happen to dislike. > On an unrelated note, highly polarized opinions about languages and frameworks are characteristic of people who lack real-world programming experience and are more interested in building an identity than creating computer programs. The phrasing of the question is unnecessarily offensive, but whatever. The Q and A stands alone just fine. They really didn't need that second paragraph jab at Electron-dislikers to make their opinion of such people clear.
ivanfon 8y ago
Putting this in your readme is a great way to keep me far away from your project.
FieryTransition 8y ago
It's quite arrogant, not very inviting and might "push" developers away from actually trying the software. Even though it's just his opinion it shouldn't really be included in the readme.
sonaltr 8y ago
While I get why people are annoyed by that message, I get and understand it. It's super annoying when you are trying to create a desktop app and you get issues (multiple of them) essentially going "Why are you using Electron? it eats up my RAM, please use X framework and you should be fine" This would be fine if: 1. You attached that with a PR for said framework or 2. You searched before and read this being answered earlier From a maintainer's point of view - this is super annoying. I'm sure the author built this to satisfy his itch first and open sourced it because it might help others (either to directly use the product or to learn from the code). It's super annoying when you have people who think they know better come and tell you to use X because they have a problem with Electron (not necessarily your app in particular but Electron in general). I say this as it appears the author might be using arch linux and as a linux user, I always appreciate an electron app vs no app (obviously a native app is better but that's generally never the option - it's generally electron or nothing). I'm sure it could have been worded nicely but eitherway it got the effect the author wanted - it drives away people who'd be annoyed by Electron in the first place.
- deleted 8y ago
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- asdkhadsj 8y ago
  Yea, usually devs make tradeoffs for reasons. Sure, maybe a dev didn't know that Electron was so memory heavy/etc, but often it's a well known fact. They had their reasons for choosing it, you're free to use something else or implement an alternative for them to maybe fork/etc. Why should someone use a language/framework/etc they dislike just to make something in their spare time and FOSS? Don't get me wrong, I think Electron is a problem - but I don't blame people for choosing it. Often our FOSS development aspirations are limited by time, energy and shockingly enjoyment. I can choose to use what I want, and you can choose to not use it. Disclaimer: I've never used Electron, but I'm shocked it's not blatantly obvious why people would choose it.
- MattyRad 8y ago
  Agreed. If that polarizing note were omitted, there would be dozens of comments here, on github, and elsewhere saying "oh, great another electron app, NEXT", which is equally bad IMO. Other comments here (and probably GP) dismissed the software, due to the note, before even checking its utility. This is good, because the polarizing note deters people who value tone and identity more than utility, preventing these arguments down the chain. Basically it's leveraging outrage against people quickly susceptible to outrage, so I would say it serves its purpose effectively!
Blaiz0r 8y ago
It's also incredibly tiring writing programs using Electron and having half the comments you receive saying how you should have used a real programming language. I think other programmers don't understand that many people get into front end web development because it uses other skills that writing C++ doesn't require. Learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript doesn't mean you can pick up a systems level programming language and start writing desktop programs. Not everyone is capable or has time to learn other programming languages, and not everyone should try either. Electron empowered Web Developers to be able to create cross platform desktop apps in a familiar environment. It's not about quick or cheap, it's about using what you know to explore your ideas.
- habitue 8y ago
  I mean, additionally, the web is a really good multi-OS platform. It's write once run anywhere. No other platform/GUI library is getting anywhere near as much attention, so it makes sense to piggyback off web technologies. I've written my fair share of low level systems languages but if I needed to write a cross-platform GUI app I would write it in electron no questions asked.
  - pathartl 8y ago
    I find it almost comical these days because if this were an app that was a docker container / self hostable, people wouldn't bat an eye or would applaud it for supporting multiple platforms. However, if you wrap it in Electron for ease-of-use + some desktop integration, you get torn a new one. Sure there's cross-platform UI applications out there like VLC, but like you said web technologies are maintaining attention right now and DO provide a lot of benefits. I, like you, would not be embarrassed in the slightest to release something in Electron. I know about its bloat. I'm also aware that it means I can create a good looking application without spending a ton of time trying to figure out how to implement it.
  - Insanity 8y ago
    Java swing! But having worked with that for a decade - I have to agree with you. If you work for customers (as opposed to in-house software), it makes much more sense to use the web technologies for that. We use Go for the backend though, so you can use a "real language" on the backend. I do have some hopes for Go on the frontend as well with webassembly. :)
otikik 8y ago
Yep, that and some paragraph above that was enough for me to close the tab.
- geofft 8y ago
  So it served its purpose.
  - loeg 8y ago
    If you read TFA, there was this answer directly preceding it: > Then you are not the target audience of this program. See mps-youtube (link above) for a similar program that will not taint your machine with a library you happen to dislike. Which would be fine. It even goes the extra step to recommend an alternative, which is unnecessarily gracious.
tomp 8y ago
> High-and-mighty types like this are exactly why working in IT or contributing to FLOSS is so draining at times. Interesting, that's exactly what I'd say about your comment... The way I interpret the author's point is, with a lot of real-world programming/engineering experience also comes the appreciation of tradeoffs and priorities. Like, people don't use Electron because it's well-designed or efficient, but because it allows you to quickly and easily create new software that mostly works mostly everywhere. If you can come up with a better alternative, or substantially improve Electron, you should definitely do it!
- patates 8y ago
  I agree, there is a loud minority who religiously criticize Electron while most desktop apps get written in it. The same was also true for Java applets. Electron made many trade-offs indeed but writing "this is electron based so I'll not use it" and "great idea but unfortunately built with Electron, so I closed the tab" kind of comments on every bloody HN thread is extremely tiring.
  - tomp 8y ago
    Don't get me wrong, I don't think the criticism is without merit... Like, I still don't run the standalone Slack app (on my desktop) and only run the browser version, because, like, why would I run two browsers?! (I'd make an exception for a really useful app like I make an exception for Java with IntelliJ's IDEs). But on the other hand, I also understand the author's point of view, and I definitely wouldn't berate him for it.
  - lupire 8y ago
    Electron is like Flash of yore -- it's a giant "hack me" sign on your computer.
    - floatboth 8y ago
      Electron is an implementation detail of native apps you install on your PC. Flash was a browser plugin allowed to run by default. How are they even REMOTELY similar?!
AllegedAlec 8y ago
> High-and-mighty types like this are exactly why working in IT or contributing to FLOSS is so draining at times. To be fair: the high-and-mighty types that create issues saying that using Language/Framework/Architecture X is bad and that you should use Y is another reason why working in IT or contributing to FLOSS is so draining at times.
castis 8y ago
I always assumed the use of electron stemmed from that same lack of real-world experience and a willingness to build an app at any cost despite not fully understanding the implications of the work being done. The attitude this person portrays seems to fit in line with that. Defending your position with arrogance and irritation shows everyone a great deal about you. I'll go ahead and lump myself in with the rest of the group that remains thoroughly unimpressed.
- mothsonasloth 8y ago
  A lot of devs these days are laissez-faire with performance concerns. When your dev machine has 16gb RAM and at least a quad core processor, you're not exactly going to be benchmarking how well you manage memory space or complexity of execution.
  - loeg 8y ago
    And webdevs develop against local giganet or similar — a lot of devs simply don't see the poor experience their app creates on users with fewer resources or with more than one application running at a time.
- baldfat 8y ago
  BUT Electron make creating easy for many people and there are some great, yes I said GREAT Electron apps: Visual Studio Code is amazing. I started using VIM on my Amiga 500. I use VS Code 90% of the time now. RStudio is and was life changing for programming R I use Discord everyday and use it as a real time Reddit for many non-gaming communities.
- turtlebits 8y ago
  People use electron because it has a lower time barrier to entry and it works and looks the way you want it to across all platforms. Time saving is a huge factor in why apps are developed. There is always a balance between performance/resource usage and development time.
  - 8y ago
j1elo 8y ago
On the other hand, maybe so much peer rejection means something... just like when we say that if some problem happens constantly for years to people it must mean the process should be blamed and not the people, if there are so, so, so many complaints it must mean something about them is probably true... The fact is that Electron is a good platform for ONE application. Once everybody jumps in and makes their application with Electron, and all applications running in your machine are electron, then you as an user have a big problem, basically no battery life. I wrote an incomplete PopcornTime clone with QML, I've also practiced by cloning the UI of some known apps such as Slack and Spotify, it was very pleasant and immensely saner in terms of resource usage of the machine. But alas, yes, you need to know C++, and that means you need to know about memory managenent and fine details of how things are done under the hood (although maybe that one is not a bad thing at all...)
- beaconstudios 8y ago
  > On the other hand, maybe so much peer rejection means something... Only if the conclusion was arrived at independently and wasn't a product of groupthink. Software development is extremely prone to groupthink and exaggerated dogmatic thinking (blind hatred for PHP (and Javascript up until SPAs became a thing), religious wars over linux/mac, your text editor of choice, language of choice, OOP vs FP and so on). Often an idea catches on and suddenly a large percentage of vocal developers are all echoing the same sentiment. Electron is a memory hog and a weird platform given it ships with so much overhead, sure. But it's fast to develop on, and with modern machines you can run multiple electron apps at the same time. There's just no viable alternative - building a cross platform desktop app without it requires going back in time 20 years and having to learn a bunch of complicated nonsense about memory management and object lifecycles (and I'm saying this as someone who knows said nonsense fairly well) just to draw some buttons on a screen. And all that effort for 1/10th of the UI flexibility that HTML/CSS/JS affords you. In other words, electron is OK because the alternatives suck. That doesn't mean it's good but it's the best of a terrible bunch.
  - j1elo 8y ago
    I agree. Also I wish QML+Python shared some of the hype
taude 8y ago
I'm not sure why there's so much Electron hate? Big and bloated, sure-ish? But my 2014 MacBook AIR with 8 GB Ram that I didn't pay much for seems to run several Electron apps just fine? And I don't care. Sure, sometimes I shut down WhatsApp and Slack when I'm going mobile to make sure I maximize my battery life. But I do the same thing with Chrome. Electron does allow people to build projects quickly using simpler HTML/CSS/JavaScript technologies than prior-era desktop applications, and you get cross-platform for almost nothing.
- deleted 8y ago
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- drb91 8y ago
  Building quickly is rarely a good sign about the quality of the thing that is built. I think a better pitch for electron is simply consistency across platforms, albeit the lowest common denominator sort: slack is pretty terrible on all platforms, but equally so.
  - taude 8y ago
    What specifically is terrible about slack across the platforms? I actually like it and I like having it run as a separate app so I can quickly hot-tab swap to it. It's also better than all the other legacy Group chat apps it's replaced like Jabber (which is native as far as I can tell), MS Messenger, etc...
    - deleted 8y ago
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    - drb91 8y ago
      Compared to what? Compared to no chat app, slack is amazing. Compared to any commodity chat app, it’s a commodity chat app. The main pitch is that you can just throw money at it and not maintain it. Could have been gchat if google had any clue how people work outside google. Instead they’re trying to write my emails for me.
- 8y ago
drb91 8y ago
While I won’t agree with “lack of real world experience”, I have noticed that many engineers tend to invest a lot of emotion in language choice when it rarely belongs there.
- CarriersSuck 8y ago
  That's fair, but the argument about Electron is how wasteful it is. Devs should just know better than to be that blatantly wasteful of resources. I know, we live in a world of abundance, but that just isn't any excuse.
PascLeRasc 8y ago
It's a classic No-True-Scotsman fallacy. I have no feelings on Electron one way or the other, but I've met far too many people who insist that Windows is the only OS for "getting work done" and Linux should just be a hobby.
snorremd 8y ago
Considering all the Electron criticism that permeates every single "show hn" thread about apps written with Electron I have to symphatize with the author's remark. There are legitimate technical grievances with Electron, but how many time must those be expressed? If we data mined every Hacker News comment for negative comments about Electron would it be considered big data? I just don't think the persistent Electron criticism for each and every Electron app is very productive. As other commenters have expressed. If someone could provide an example of an alternative to Electron that provided the same affordances (multi-platform, open source, permissive license, proper web view support), then by all means. Not everyone is Spotify and can invest the technical know how to make things with Chromium Embedded Framework. To this day the Linux client for Spotify is not an officially supported client. It is something the Spotify developers maintain of their own volition. And QT, a popular window toolkit, is quite expensive unless you release your software under GPL (at which point you can use QT for free under the GPL license). Also, a single maintainer does not have time to work on three or more window toolkits for their app (Windows Forms, Cocoa, and GTK).
- zeveb 8y ago
  > There are legitimate technical grievances with Electron, but how many time must those be expressed? Every time until it's no longer used. JavaScript delenda est: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11447851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11447851 > And QT, a popular window toolkit, is quite expensive unless you release your software under GPL 'Doc, it hurts unless I do this.' Then do that! Don't be a software hoarder. > Also, a single maintainer does not have time to work on three or more window toolkits for their app (Windows Forms, Cocoa, and GTK). As I mentioned elsethread, X11 & POSIX are supported on Windows, macOS, Linux & the BSDs. Just write against that, and you're done.
  - the_trapper 8y ago
    I'll take an Electron app on Windows any day over one that has to utilize an X11/POSIX layer to run. In fact I'm not aware of any widely utilized software on Windows that relies on the stack you're advocating for.
devwastaken 8y ago
There are legitimate grievances, none of them justified enough to be highly polarized about it as you're being here, which is what the comment you're referencing is talking about. What's arrogant is ignoring that it's 2019, hardware can easily do multiple electron clients, and frequently do. Nobody has made better, and in the real world you use what's best designed to complete your goal.
33degrees 8y ago
There is a difference between legitimate grievances and highly polarized opinions. One can find Electron bloated and inefficient but acknowledge that there are advantages to the platform, and respect that for some people the tradeoffs are worthwhile.
- loeg 8y ago
  > One can find Electron bloated and inefficient but acknowledge that there are advantages to the platform, and respect that for some people the tradeoffs are worthwhile. Totally agree. The problem is the biting Q&A is misconstruing such moderate opinions as religious zealotry and then mocking the people who hold them.
czardoz 8y ago
> How incredibly arrogant. It's not. People who have grievances about specific platforms and frameworks should complain (or, in the case of Electron, submit patches) to the actual project than whine about it on the issue tracker of every project that uses it.
- loeg 8y ago
  I understand the line of reasoning, but in the case of Electron in particular, it really cannot be improved. The model is: run an entire web application, per app. That's incredibly expensive, and there's no way to scale that back in a way that is still Electron.
arendtio 8y ago
I don't like such statements either. Choosing the web as an application platform is legitimate from my perspective, but instead of building electron apps, it is better to build progressive web apps (PWA). However, there are some use-cases when some specific technology for building it as a PWA is unavailable and therefore, building it with Electron might be the best alternative. But as a result, the author shouldn't just state that you are the problem ('... not the target audience'), but instead, state his reasons for choosing that technology (e.g. why he is using Electron instead of building a PWA).
turtlebits 8y ago
The same goes for your comment - you obviously have unsubstantiated gripes against electron. If it was that bad, some of the largest companies wouldn't use it and come up with a better solution (Microsoft, Slack, Discord)
- CarriersSuck 8y ago
  Not true. Those companies are focusing more on developer productivity than they are on the end user. Picking Electron is ALL about developers. Nothing more or less.

sschueller 8y ago

I agree, turns me off. What a blinded way to move through life.

vorpalhex 8y ago

The author doesn't claim you can't have grievances, but to simply stand by and claim you'll never ever use electron isn't airing a balanced grievance as much as it's a polarized opinion. There's a time and place for all technologies.

loeg 8y ago
Characterizing all grievances against Electron as a religious dispute not based in fact is a sweeping, broad characterization of a group of people, and substantially inaccurate. That's what people object to about the README statement. > What if I am religiously opposed to using Electron for any and all purposes? > Then you are not the target audience of this program. See mps-youtube (link above) for a similar program that will not taint your machine with a library you happen to dislike. > On an unrelated note, highly polarized opinions about languages and frameworks are characteristic of people who lack real-world programming experience and are more interested in building an identity than creating computer programs. The phrasing of the question is unnecessarily offensive, but whatever. The Q and A stands alone just fine. They really didn't need that second paragraph jab at Electron-dislikers to make their opinion of such people clear.

ivanfon 8y ago

Putting this in your readme is a great way to keep me far away from your project.

FieryTransition 8y ago

It's quite arrogant, not very inviting and might "push" developers away from actually trying the software. Even though it's just his opinion it shouldn't really be included in the readme.

sonaltr 8y ago

While I get why people are annoyed by that message, I get and understand it. It's super annoying when you are trying to create a desktop app and you get issues (multiple of them) essentially going "Why are you using Electron? it eats up my RAM, please use X framework and you should be fine" This would be fine if: 1. You attached that with a PR for said framework or 2. You searched before and read this being answered earlier From a maintainer's point of view - this is super annoying. I'm sure the author built this to satisfy his itch first and open sourced it because it might help others (either to directly use the product or to learn from the code). It's super annoying when you have people who think they know better come and tell you to use X because they have a problem with Electron (not necessarily your app in particular but Electron in general). I say this as it appears the author might be using arch linux and as a linux user, I always appreciate an electron app vs no app (obviously a native app is better but that's generally never the option - it's generally electron or nothing). I'm sure it could have been worded nicely but eitherway it got the effect the author wanted - it drives away people who'd be annoyed by Electron in the first place.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
asdkhadsj 8y ago
Yea, usually devs make tradeoffs for reasons. Sure, maybe a dev didn't know that Electron was so memory heavy/etc, but often it's a well known fact. They had their reasons for choosing it, you're free to use something else or implement an alternative for them to maybe fork/etc. Why should someone use a language/framework/etc they dislike just to make something in their spare time and FOSS? Don't get me wrong, I think Electron is a problem - but I don't blame people for choosing it. Often our FOSS development aspirations are limited by time, energy and shockingly enjoyment. I can choose to use what I want, and you can choose to not use it. Disclaimer: I've never used Electron, but I'm shocked it's not blatantly obvious why people would choose it.
MattyRad 8y ago
Agreed. If that polarizing note were omitted, there would be dozens of comments here, on github, and elsewhere saying "oh, great another electron app, NEXT", which is equally bad IMO. Other comments here (and probably GP) dismissed the software, due to the note, before even checking its utility. This is good, because the polarizing note deters people who value tone and identity more than utility, preventing these arguments down the chain. Basically it's leveraging outrage against people quickly susceptible to outrage, so I would say it serves its purpose effectively!

Blaiz0r 8y ago

It's also incredibly tiring writing programs using Electron and having half the comments you receive saying how you should have used a real programming language. I think other programmers don't understand that many people get into front end web development because it uses other skills that writing C++ doesn't require. Learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript doesn't mean you can pick up a systems level programming language and start writing desktop programs. Not everyone is capable or has time to learn other programming languages, and not everyone should try either. Electron empowered Web Developers to be able to create cross platform desktop apps in a familiar environment. It's not about quick or cheap, it's about using what you know to explore your ideas.

habitue 8y ago
I mean, additionally, the web is a really good multi-OS platform. It's write once run anywhere. No other platform/GUI library is getting anywhere near as much attention, so it makes sense to piggyback off web technologies. I've written my fair share of low level systems languages but if I needed to write a cross-platform GUI app I would write it in electron no questions asked.
- pathartl 8y ago
  I find it almost comical these days because if this were an app that was a docker container / self hostable, people wouldn't bat an eye or would applaud it for supporting multiple platforms. However, if you wrap it in Electron for ease-of-use + some desktop integration, you get torn a new one. Sure there's cross-platform UI applications out there like VLC, but like you said web technologies are maintaining attention right now and DO provide a lot of benefits. I, like you, would not be embarrassed in the slightest to release something in Electron. I know about its bloat. I'm also aware that it means I can create a good looking application without spending a ton of time trying to figure out how to implement it.
- Insanity 8y ago
  Java swing! But having worked with that for a decade - I have to agree with you. If you work for customers (as opposed to in-house software), it makes much more sense to use the web technologies for that. We use Go for the backend though, so you can use a "real language" on the backend. I do have some hopes for Go on the frontend as well with webassembly. :)

otikik 8y ago

Yep, that and some paragraph above that was enough for me to close the tab.

geofft 8y ago
So it served its purpose.
- loeg 8y ago
  If you read TFA, there was this answer directly preceding it: > Then you are not the target audience of this program. See mps-youtube (link above) for a similar program that will not taint your machine with a library you happen to dislike. Which would be fine. It even goes the extra step to recommend an alternative, which is unnecessarily gracious.

tomp 8y ago

> High-and-mighty types like this are exactly why working in IT or contributing to FLOSS is so draining at times. Interesting, that's exactly what I'd say about your comment... The way I interpret the author's point is, with a lot of real-world programming/engineering experience also comes the appreciation of tradeoffs and priorities. Like, people don't use Electron because it's well-designed or efficient, but because it allows you to quickly and easily create new software that mostly works mostly everywhere. If you can come up with a better alternative, or substantially improve Electron, you should definitely do it!

patates 8y ago
I agree, there is a loud minority who religiously criticize Electron while most desktop apps get written in it. The same was also true for Java applets. Electron made many trade-offs indeed but writing "this is electron based so I'll not use it" and "great idea but unfortunately built with Electron, so I closed the tab" kind of comments on every bloody HN thread is extremely tiring.
- tomp 8y ago
  Don't get me wrong, I don't think the criticism is without merit... Like, I still don't run the standalone Slack app (on my desktop) and only run the browser version, because, like, why would I run two browsers?! (I'd make an exception for a really useful app like I make an exception for Java with IntelliJ's IDEs). But on the other hand, I also understand the author's point of view, and I definitely wouldn't berate him for it.
- lupire 8y ago
  Electron is like Flash of yore -- it's a giant "hack me" sign on your computer.
  - floatboth 8y ago
    Electron is an implementation detail of native apps you install on your PC. Flash was a browser plugin allowed to run by default. How are they even REMOTELY similar?!

AllegedAlec 8y ago

> High-and-mighty types like this are exactly why working in IT or contributing to FLOSS is so draining at times. To be fair: the high-and-mighty types that create issues saying that using Language/Framework/Architecture X is bad and that you should use Y is another reason why working in IT or contributing to FLOSS is so draining at times.

castis 8y ago

I always assumed the use of electron stemmed from that same lack of real-world experience and a willingness to build an app at any cost despite not fully understanding the implications of the work being done. The attitude this person portrays seems to fit in line with that. Defending your position with arrogance and irritation shows everyone a great deal about you. I'll go ahead and lump myself in with the rest of the group that remains thoroughly unimpressed.

mothsonasloth 8y ago
A lot of devs these days are laissez-faire with performance concerns. When your dev machine has 16gb RAM and at least a quad core processor, you're not exactly going to be benchmarking how well you manage memory space or complexity of execution.
- loeg 8y ago
  And webdevs develop against local giganet or similar — a lot of devs simply don't see the poor experience their app creates on users with fewer resources or with more than one application running at a time.
baldfat 8y ago
BUT Electron make creating easy for many people and there are some great, yes I said GREAT Electron apps: Visual Studio Code is amazing. I started using VIM on my Amiga 500. I use VS Code 90% of the time now. RStudio is and was life changing for programming R I use Discord everyday and use it as a real time Reddit for many non-gaming communities.
turtlebits 8y ago
People use electron because it has a lower time barrier to entry and it works and looks the way you want it to across all platforms. Time saving is a huge factor in why apps are developed. There is always a balance between performance/resource usage and development time.
- 8y ago

j1elo 8y ago

On the other hand, maybe so much peer rejection means something... just like when we say that if some problem happens constantly for years to people it must mean the process should be blamed and not the people, if there are so, so, so many complaints it must mean something about them is probably true... The fact is that Electron is a good platform for ONE application. Once everybody jumps in and makes their application with Electron, and all applications running in your machine are electron, then you as an user have a big problem, basically no battery life. I wrote an incomplete PopcornTime clone with QML, I've also practiced by cloning the UI of some known apps such as Slack and Spotify, it was very pleasant and immensely saner in terms of resource usage of the machine. But alas, yes, you need to know C++, and that means you need to know about memory managenent and fine details of how things are done under the hood (although maybe that one is not a bad thing at all...)

beaconstudios 8y ago
> On the other hand, maybe so much peer rejection means something... Only if the conclusion was arrived at independently and wasn't a product of groupthink. Software development is extremely prone to groupthink and exaggerated dogmatic thinking (blind hatred for PHP (and Javascript up until SPAs became a thing), religious wars over linux/mac, your text editor of choice, language of choice, OOP vs FP and so on). Often an idea catches on and suddenly a large percentage of vocal developers are all echoing the same sentiment. Electron is a memory hog and a weird platform given it ships with so much overhead, sure. But it's fast to develop on, and with modern machines you can run multiple electron apps at the same time. There's just no viable alternative - building a cross platform desktop app without it requires going back in time 20 years and having to learn a bunch of complicated nonsense about memory management and object lifecycles (and I'm saying this as someone who knows said nonsense fairly well) just to draw some buttons on a screen. And all that effort for 1/10th of the UI flexibility that HTML/CSS/JS affords you. In other words, electron is OK because the alternatives suck. That doesn't mean it's good but it's the best of a terrible bunch.
- j1elo 8y ago
  I agree. Also I wish QML+Python shared some of the hype

taude 8y ago

I'm not sure why there's so much Electron hate? Big and bloated, sure-ish? But my 2014 MacBook AIR with 8 GB Ram that I didn't pay much for seems to run several Electron apps just fine? And I don't care. Sure, sometimes I shut down WhatsApp and Slack when I'm going mobile to make sure I maximize my battery life. But I do the same thing with Chrome. Electron does allow people to build projects quickly using simpler HTML/CSS/JavaScript technologies than prior-era desktop applications, and you get cross-platform for almost nothing.

deleted 8y ago
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drb91 8y ago
Building quickly is rarely a good sign about the quality of the thing that is built. I think a better pitch for electron is simply consistency across platforms, albeit the lowest common denominator sort: slack is pretty terrible on all platforms, but equally so.
- taude 8y ago
  What specifically is terrible about slack across the platforms? I actually like it and I like having it run as a separate app so I can quickly hot-tab swap to it. It's also better than all the other legacy Group chat apps it's replaced like Jabber (which is native as far as I can tell), MS Messenger, etc...
  - deleted 8y ago
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  - drb91 8y ago
    Compared to what? Compared to no chat app, slack is amazing. Compared to any commodity chat app, it’s a commodity chat app. The main pitch is that you can just throw money at it and not maintain it. Could have been gchat if google had any clue how people work outside google. Instead they’re trying to write my emails for me.
8y ago

drb91 8y ago

While I won’t agree with “lack of real world experience”, I have noticed that many engineers tend to invest a lot of emotion in language choice when it rarely belongs there.

CarriersSuck 8y ago
That's fair, but the argument about Electron is how wasteful it is. Devs should just know better than to be that blatantly wasteful of resources. I know, we live in a world of abundance, but that just isn't any excuse.

PascLeRasc 8y ago

It's a classic No-True-Scotsman fallacy. I have no feelings on Electron one way or the other, but I've met far too many people who insist that Windows is the only OS for "getting work done" and Linux should just be a hobby.

snorremd 8y ago

Considering all the Electron criticism that permeates every single "show hn" thread about apps written with Electron I have to symphatize with the author's remark. There are legitimate technical grievances with Electron, but how many time must those be expressed? If we data mined every Hacker News comment for negative comments about Electron would it be considered big data? I just don't think the persistent Electron criticism for each and every Electron app is very productive. As other commenters have expressed. If someone could provide an example of an alternative to Electron that provided the same affordances (multi-platform, open source, permissive license, proper web view support), then by all means. Not everyone is Spotify and can invest the technical know how to make things with Chromium Embedded Framework. To this day the Linux client for Spotify is not an officially supported client. It is something the Spotify developers maintain of their own volition. And QT, a popular window toolkit, is quite expensive unless you release your software under GPL (at which point you can use QT for free under the GPL license). Also, a single maintainer does not have time to work on three or more window toolkits for their app (Windows Forms, Cocoa, and GTK).

zeveb 8y ago
> There are legitimate technical grievances with Electron, but how many time must those be expressed? Every time until it's no longer used. JavaScript delenda est: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11447851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11447851 > And QT, a popular window toolkit, is quite expensive unless you release your software under GPL 'Doc, it hurts unless I do this.' Then do that! Don't be a software hoarder. > Also, a single maintainer does not have time to work on three or more window toolkits for their app (Windows Forms, Cocoa, and GTK). As I mentioned elsethread, X11 & POSIX are supported on Windows, macOS, Linux & the BSDs. Just write against that, and you're done.
- the_trapper 8y ago
  I'll take an Electron app on Windows any day over one that has to utilize an X11/POSIX layer to run. In fact I'm not aware of any widely utilized software on Windows that relies on the stack you're advocating for.

devwastaken 8y ago

There are legitimate grievances, none of them justified enough to be highly polarized about it as you're being here, which is what the comment you're referencing is talking about. What's arrogant is ignoring that it's 2019, hardware can easily do multiple electron clients, and frequently do. Nobody has made better, and in the real world you use what's best designed to complete your goal.

33degrees 8y ago

There is a difference between legitimate grievances and highly polarized opinions. One can find Electron bloated and inefficient but acknowledge that there are advantages to the platform, and respect that for some people the tradeoffs are worthwhile.

loeg 8y ago
> One can find Electron bloated and inefficient but acknowledge that there are advantages to the platform, and respect that for some people the tradeoffs are worthwhile. Totally agree. The problem is the biting Q&A is misconstruing such moderate opinions as religious zealotry and then mocking the people who hold them.

czardoz 8y ago

> How incredibly arrogant. It's not. People who have grievances about specific platforms and frameworks should complain (or, in the case of Electron, submit patches) to the actual project than whine about it on the issue tracker of every project that uses it.

loeg 8y ago
I understand the line of reasoning, but in the case of Electron in particular, it really cannot be improved. The model is: run an entire web application, per app. That's incredibly expensive, and there's no way to scale that back in a way that is still Electron.

arendtio 8y ago

I don't like such statements either. Choosing the web as an application platform is legitimate from my perspective, but instead of building electron apps, it is better to build progressive web apps (PWA). However, there are some use-cases when some specific technology for building it as a PWA is unavailable and therefore, building it with Electron might be the best alternative. But as a result, the author shouldn't just state that you are the problem ('... not the target audience'), but instead, state his reasons for choosing that technology (e.g. why he is using Electron instead of building a PWA).

turtlebits 8y ago

The same goes for your comment - you obviously have unsubstantiated gripes against electron. If it was that bad, some of the largest companies wouldn't use it and come up with a better solution (Microsoft, Slack, Discord)

CarriersSuck 8y ago
Not true. Those companies are focusing more on developer productivity than they are on the end user. Picking Electron is ALL about developers. Nothing more or less.