5 ms·

I guess the question becomes: what is the native ecosystem missing that means devs are choosing to deliver memory/CPU hungry apps, rather than small efficient o

I guess the question becomes: what is the native ecosystem missing that means devs are choosing to deliver memory/CPU hungry apps, rather than small efficient ones?

thdrdt 6y ago
(Easy) Cross platform publishing.
quantummkv 6y ago
HTML, CSS and Javascript. Most of these electron apps are basically wrappers around actual websites to give a place in the dock and show notifications and access the filesystem.
- gindely 6y ago
  But that isn't what's missing. It's a restatement of the problem. DOM based apps are much more resource intensive than native. What is missing from native that makes business choose DOM? If there was some modern tool like WxWidgets that supported modern apis like DOM, Android and UWP, would we see more use of native? Electron would therefore become pointless.
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    Qt Quick takes plenty of ideas from the web playbook. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QML
  - fragmede 6y ago
    That is what's missing, albiet tersely stated. The hypothetical business has two choices. Choose Electron, or choose some other toolkit that has native, cross-platform support (like Qt). It's far easier for the business, and the developers there, to take their existing website HTML, CSS, and Javascript; and simply wrap it in Electron (which costs $0), and call it a day. Every other choice is (perceived as being) more expensive. Qt is a modern toolkit with native-cross platform support, but costs money for commercial use, and businesses and software developers don't want to spend the money on it.
aalbacetef 6y ago
as someone who has done both desktop apps and electron apps, it is much faster to write some html/css and wrap it in electron than to do the same in qt/gtk/etc... Not to mention, the HTML/CSS combo is possibly the best we've come up with for designing user interfaces.

I guess the question becomes: what is the native ecosystem missing that means devs are choosing to deliver memory/CPU hungry apps, rather than small efficient ones?

thdrdt 6y ago

(Easy) Cross platform publishing.

quantummkv 6y ago

HTML, CSS and Javascript. Most of these electron apps are basically wrappers around actual websites to give a place in the dock and show notifications and access the filesystem.

gindely 6y ago
But that isn't what's missing. It's a restatement of the problem. DOM based apps are much more resource intensive than native. What is missing from native that makes business choose DOM? If there was some modern tool like WxWidgets that supported modern apis like DOM, Android and UWP, would we see more use of native? Electron would therefore become pointless.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  Qt Quick takes plenty of ideas from the web playbook. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QML
- fragmede 6y ago
  That is what's missing, albiet tersely stated. The hypothetical business has two choices. Choose Electron, or choose some other toolkit that has native, cross-platform support (like Qt). It's far easier for the business, and the developers there, to take their existing website HTML, CSS, and Javascript; and simply wrap it in Electron (which costs $0), and call it a day. Every other choice is (perceived as being) more expensive. Qt is a modern toolkit with native-cross platform support, but costs money for commercial use, and businesses and software developers don't want to spend the money on it.

aalbacetef 6y ago

as someone who has done both desktop apps and electron apps, it is much faster to write some html/css and wrap it in electron than to do the same in qt/gtk/etc... Not to mention, the HTML/CSS combo is possibly the best we've come up with for designing user interfaces.