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> [...] or else you'll end up shipping an Electron app like Discord does. And get to dominate their market niche? People got to realize while native apps are

by tpush 6y ago

> [...] or else you'll end up shipping an Electron app like Discord does. And get to dominate their market niche? People got to realize while native apps are nice and all, there is absolutely zero evidence that going native vs cross-platform improves any metric a business actually cares about. Users are flocking to cross-platform apps in droves! Vocal message board users screaming their preference for native apps are not in any way a significant share of the actual market for these applications.

yellowapple 6y ago
> Users are flocking to cross-platform apps in droves! I seriously doubt the use of Electron is what's driving that. And it's also worth remembering that "cross-platform" ≠ "bundle an entire web browser in the app". Qt exists, as one of many examples of application frameworks/toolkits that are simultaneously cross-platform and native.
- tpush 6y ago
  > I seriously doubt the use of Electron is what's driving that. It is indirectly driving that. Using Electron instead of other cross-platform frameworks like Qt allows one to work faster since you can apply webdev knowledge, and that directly leads to features that users actually care about being delivered faster.
  - yellowapple 6y ago
    Okay, and what good are those features if users are afraid to run the app lest it eat all their RAM for breakfast? Like, if you just need to spit out a prototype to hit the ground running fast, then fine, but long-term there are pretty clear benefits to using the right tool for the job. The "work faster" argument is pretty dubious on its own anyway; yeah, maybe web devs ain't particularly productive with Qt or similar frameworks, but desktop devs absolutely can (and arguably should) be productive with such a framework.
    - tpush 6y ago
      > Okay, and what good are those features if users are afraid to run the app lest it eat all their RAM for breakfast? There is no evidence to believe that users are concerned about RAM usage to any level that would move them over to competing apps. > The "work faster" argument is pretty dubious on its own anyway; yeah, maybe web devs ain't particularly productive with Qt or similar frameworks, but desktop devs absolutely can (and arguably should) be productive with such a framework. There are orders of magnitude more web devs than devs who are even just familiar with desktop GUI toolkits. Even if you can find people who are just as productive with (for example) Qt, they'd be (way) more expensive than the average web dev. And, again, now you have less budget to spend on things that actually gets you users.

by tpush 6y ago

yellowapple 6y ago

> Users are flocking to cross-platform apps in droves! I seriously doubt the use of Electron is what's driving that. And it's also worth remembering that "cross-platform" ≠ "bundle an entire web browser in the app". Qt exists, as one of many examples of application frameworks/toolkits that are simultaneously cross-platform and native.

tpush 6y ago
> I seriously doubt the use of Electron is what's driving that. It is indirectly driving that. Using Electron instead of other cross-platform frameworks like Qt allows one to work faster since you can apply webdev knowledge, and that directly leads to features that users actually care about being delivered faster.
- yellowapple 6y ago
  Okay, and what good are those features if users are afraid to run the app lest it eat all their RAM for breakfast? Like, if you just need to spit out a prototype to hit the ground running fast, then fine, but long-term there are pretty clear benefits to using the right tool for the job. The "work faster" argument is pretty dubious on its own anyway; yeah, maybe web devs ain't particularly productive with Qt or similar frameworks, but desktop devs absolutely can (and arguably should) be productive with such a framework.
  - tpush 6y ago
    > Okay, and what good are those features if users are afraid to run the app lest it eat all their RAM for breakfast? There is no evidence to believe that users are concerned about RAM usage to any level that would move them over to competing apps. > The "work faster" argument is pretty dubious on its own anyway; yeah, maybe web devs ain't particularly productive with Qt or similar frameworks, but desktop devs absolutely can (and arguably should) be productive with such a framework. There are orders of magnitude more web devs than devs who are even just familiar with desktop GUI toolkits. Even if you can find people who are just as productive with (for example) Qt, they'd be (way) more expensive than the average web dev. And, again, now you have less budget to spend on things that actually gets you users.