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That's fine for someone who already keeps current with front-end stuff, but someone who is a desktop app developer is more likely to just go native than try to

That's fine for someone who already keeps current with front-end stuff, but someone who is a desktop app developer is more likely to just go native than try to make a desktop app that tracks 3+ browser engines of wildly varying versions (luckily 7 is out of support now, but it still might be desired to support for some desktop apps in which case now you have IE to deal with). Electron gives the promise of total code re-use across platforms which is what makes web technologies more suitable for desktop apps.

briandear 6y ago
> Electron gives the promise of total code re-use across platforms which is what makes web technologies more suitable for desktop apps. I am not sure what the point is of Electron: a shitty-resource hungry app that literally is a wrapped web-app. Instead of writing platform specific apps that leverage the power and capabilities of those platforms, we get a jack of all trades and master of none. Electron is a business decision, not an enlightened technical one. What value does electron add to the user? I would argue none. That Slack can’t find the resources to write actual Swift for a Mac App is just amazing to me. Instead we are essentially interacting with a lowest-common-denominator web app. Is a chat app that hard to write natively? We’d get better performance, a smaller footprint, and a more polished, platform-specific product.
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  > I am not sure what the point is of Electron: a shitty-resource hungry app that literally is a wrapped web-app The point is that its effectively a web app. > What value does electron add to the user? They have a desktop app faster than if it was being built natively.
  - simonh 6y ago
    Or at all, how many Electron apps would bother with native Linux clients for example. Some maybe but certainly not all and probably not most either.
    - krzyk 6y ago
      Electron app is not a native Linux client, it is just a browser app. If you ran that app in a tab it gives you much better performance and less memory used.
      - morpheuskafka 6y ago
        That all depends on how the app is written. The idea of Electron is to bring the web app frontend experience to apps which are fundamentally not able to run in a browser, such as VS Code, Etcher, etc. Writing to raw device files, listening to ports, using the full CPU resources and timers not available in the browser, using more memory, etc. If you just package an existing website into an Electron app that is a waste of time and user resources. Electron is intended to combine a web-based presentation/UI layer with a Node.js layer that supports access to native resources, unlimited storage, persistence outside the browser, etc. If you are not making meaningful use of these capabilities a PWA would be sufficient. Overall, I do prefer native apps, although there are examples out there such as VS Code that have achieved UI excellence without it. Although, I really only like that on macOS... on Windows I prefer the older Windows Forms style rather than the new Modern UI, and on Linux there is a bit of style mismash between Qt and GTK apps already.
- encom 6y ago
  Electron exists because there's a horde of developers whose only tool is a JavaScript hammer, so every problem looks like a nail. That's how you end up rewriting `dd` for Chrome[π]. π: https://www.balena.io/etcher/ https://www.balena.io/etcher/
  - dmitrybrant 6y ago
    My god... a 200+ MB install footprint, 200+ MB of RAM usage, requires a beefy GPU just to render its window. How did we get here?
    - brodock 6y ago
      I think we got there also by desperation of lacking good cross-platform GUI toolkits. The current state is, you either use something that looks like Windows 95 in all platforms, or web app. What the web made possible is to anyone to create a decent custom UI with little effort. I still remember how messed up was to create a custom component for Java Swing, which I believe is still one of the easiest to do. How would you do that for QT? GTK? WxWidgets? etc
      - dleslie 6y ago
        I'll take Win95 in a heartbeat; consistent, accessible, responsive and clear. Vastly superior to the majority of web interfaces.
        kilburn 6y ago
        Also totally inflexible, you better have the right-sized screen/resolution: too small and you can't see that "ok" button; too large and you'll have a ridiculously small and crammed winform to fill/see your information.
        pjmlp 6y ago
        Most cross platform toolkits support layout managers, since Motif days. Actually even WinForms supports them, even though too many are happily doing fixed canvas positioning without using them.
- cjohansson 6y ago
  Electron should be banned for the environments sake if the other reasons doesn't persuade, it's inefficient computation to energy ratio using Electron apps, when there is a lot of users like with VSCode or Slack it probably affects the global climate in a negative way
  - doctorbuttes 6y ago
    Let's ban anything not written in assembly.
    - yuanchenxi95 6y ago
      Second that
  - ajxs 6y ago
    I see a lot of people in the tech industry deeply concerned with human impact on the environment and our diminishing prospects of repairing it without drastically altering our lifestyles. At the same time the general consensus in the tech industry towards the steady increase in power requirements for everyday computing seems to be indifference. These two viewpoints cannot be reconciled. Every month when this Electron discussion comes up there are so many who dismiss the egregious resource usage outright on the basis that it's trivial for modern computers. I'm one of those people who use Thinkpads in 2021 for my personal computing and have no problems with it. I will never buy a Mac, and I don't want to unnecessarily spend hundreds of dollars on a modern system when refurbished ones from a decade ago work so well. I avoid Electron apps on the basis that they flatten my battery quickly. I switched from using vscode to vim on my x200 and my battery life tripled, I'm not even exaggerating here either.
    - slaymaker1907 6y ago
      No, they are completely reconcilable. The amount of power it takes to run a powerful consumer CPU is trivial compared to the amount of power used in many other common applications like heating, vehicles, etc. This effect is particularly pronounced when you consider that laptops use way less energy than desktops (on average) and mobile computing as a whole is displacing desktops outside of niches like PC gaming. The environmental issue doesn't make sense IMO, but increasing hardware requirements does have real impact on accessibility.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  > Instead of writing platform specific apps You've answered your own question as to why people write then. > What value does electron add to the user? It adds a lot of value to Linux and to a lesser extent Mac users: before a electron a lot of apps didn't have a version for these platform at all.
  - JoshTriplett 6y ago
    For an app with no source available publicly, I would much rather have a web app in a sandbox than a "native" app (whether native or electron-style) that I would have to trust.
  - krzyk 6y ago
    > It adds a lot of value to Linux and to a lesser extent Mac users: before a electron a lot of apps didn't have a version for these platform at all. I prefer web versions of those apps on Linux than electron. Sorry, I want to run just one browser and it is not Chrome based one. And for sure Electron apps don't allow that ease of cross platform development as one thinks, I would argue that it is on the same level as a native app with good abstraction library (see Telegram client source on github). It is more that they don't want to hire desktop developers (or just ones that want to learn something else than JS).
  - wutbrodo 6y ago
    > It adds a lot of value to Linux and to a lesser extent Mac users: before a electron a lot of apps didn't have a version for these platform at all What value does _this_ add over a web app? I've been an exclusive Linux user since college so I'm aware of the disadvantages of app/service unavailability (I remember the dark days of running Netflix in a windows VM that I barely had enough RAM to run...). But what's the advantage of using the Slack app over a browser tab? This is a sincere question, since enough people reference the benefit of faux-native wrapped webapps that I assume there's some value. I seem to be the only one in my company who doesn't use Slack's app, and I'm always shocked when I see a colleague's computer freeze and have them say "ugh it's almost definitely the Slack app". I work in autonomous vehicle engineering, so these are _monster_ machines I'm talking about, capable of running the entire car's stack locally. The only advantage I can think of are desktop notifications, but 1) I'm pretty sure browsers support those and 2) is that really worth using an app that's amateurish enough that it freezes your computer regularly?
- krzyk 6y ago
  > What value does electron add to the user? I would argue none. That Slack can’t find the resources to write actual Swift for a Mac App is just amazing to me. Instead we are essentially interacting with a lowest-common-denominator web app. Is a chat app that hard to write natively? We’d get better performance, a smaller footprint, and a more polished, platform-specific product. Exactly, one can look at Telegram app, it is clean, polished and open source client written as a native app that works across many platforms (and one of few that has Linux client).
- cdmoyer 6y ago
  Honestly, this site is the only place I really hear about the supposed horror of electron. The resource issue doesn't seem to effect me or people in the 7 slacks I'm in all day. My 6 year old MacBook runs slack, Xcode, android studio, safari, chrome, messages, vs code, vim, iterm2, preview, battle.net and hearthstone all the time without issue, really. I think for the average user, they'd rather have more features across platforms more quickly than a smaller resident memory footprint and install size.
  - wutbrodo 6y ago
    For a counter-anecdote, I've seen the Slack app freeze up colleagues' workstations many times, and these are monster machines designed to run an autonomous vehicle stack on raw sensor data.

briandear 6y ago

> Electron gives the promise of total code re-use across platforms which is what makes web technologies more suitable for desktop apps. I am not sure what the point is of Electron: a shitty-resource hungry app that literally is a wrapped web-app. Instead of writing platform specific apps that leverage the power and capabilities of those platforms, we get a jack of all trades and master of none. Electron is a business decision, not an enlightened technical one. What value does electron add to the user? I would argue none. That Slack can’t find the resources to write actual Swift for a Mac App is just amazing to me. Instead we are essentially interacting with a lowest-common-denominator web app. Is a chat app that hard to write natively? We’d get better performance, a smaller footprint, and a more polished, platform-specific product.

ZephyrBlu 6y ago
> I am not sure what the point is of Electron: a shitty-resource hungry app that literally is a wrapped web-app The point is that its effectively a web app. > What value does electron add to the user? They have a desktop app faster than if it was being built natively.
- simonh 6y ago
  Or at all, how many Electron apps would bother with native Linux clients for example. Some maybe but certainly not all and probably not most either.
  - krzyk 6y ago
    Electron app is not a native Linux client, it is just a browser app. If you ran that app in a tab it gives you much better performance and less memory used.
    - morpheuskafka 6y ago
      That all depends on how the app is written. The idea of Electron is to bring the web app frontend experience to apps which are fundamentally not able to run in a browser, such as VS Code, Etcher, etc. Writing to raw device files, listening to ports, using the full CPU resources and timers not available in the browser, using more memory, etc. If you just package an existing website into an Electron app that is a waste of time and user resources. Electron is intended to combine a web-based presentation/UI layer with a Node.js layer that supports access to native resources, unlimited storage, persistence outside the browser, etc. If you are not making meaningful use of these capabilities a PWA would be sufficient. Overall, I do prefer native apps, although there are examples out there such as VS Code that have achieved UI excellence without it. Although, I really only like that on macOS... on Windows I prefer the older Windows Forms style rather than the new Modern UI, and on Linux there is a bit of style mismash between Qt and GTK apps already.
encom 6y ago
Electron exists because there's a horde of developers whose only tool is a JavaScript hammer, so every problem looks like a nail. That's how you end up rewriting `dd` for Chrome[π]. π: https://www.balena.io/etcher/ https://www.balena.io/etcher/
- dmitrybrant 6y ago
  My god... a 200+ MB install footprint, 200+ MB of RAM usage, requires a beefy GPU just to render its window. How did we get here?
  - brodock 6y ago
    I think we got there also by desperation of lacking good cross-platform GUI toolkits. The current state is, you either use something that looks like Windows 95 in all platforms, or web app. What the web made possible is to anyone to create a decent custom UI with little effort. I still remember how messed up was to create a custom component for Java Swing, which I believe is still one of the easiest to do. How would you do that for QT? GTK? WxWidgets? etc
    - dleslie 6y ago
      I'll take Win95 in a heartbeat; consistent, accessible, responsive and clear. Vastly superior to the majority of web interfaces.
      - kilburn 6y ago
        Also totally inflexible, you better have the right-sized screen/resolution: too small and you can't see that "ok" button; too large and you'll have a ridiculously small and crammed winform to fill/see your information.
        pjmlp 6y ago
        Most cross platform toolkits support layout managers, since Motif days. Actually even WinForms supports them, even though too many are happily doing fixed canvas positioning without using them.
cjohansson 6y ago
Electron should be banned for the environments sake if the other reasons doesn't persuade, it's inefficient computation to energy ratio using Electron apps, when there is a lot of users like with VSCode or Slack it probably affects the global climate in a negative way
- doctorbuttes 6y ago
  Let's ban anything not written in assembly.
  - yuanchenxi95 6y ago
    Second that
- ajxs 6y ago
  I see a lot of people in the tech industry deeply concerned with human impact on the environment and our diminishing prospects of repairing it without drastically altering our lifestyles. At the same time the general consensus in the tech industry towards the steady increase in power requirements for everyday computing seems to be indifference. These two viewpoints cannot be reconciled. Every month when this Electron discussion comes up there are so many who dismiss the egregious resource usage outright on the basis that it's trivial for modern computers. I'm one of those people who use Thinkpads in 2021 for my personal computing and have no problems with it. I will never buy a Mac, and I don't want to unnecessarily spend hundreds of dollars on a modern system when refurbished ones from a decade ago work so well. I avoid Electron apps on the basis that they flatten my battery quickly. I switched from using vscode to vim on my x200 and my battery life tripled, I'm not even exaggerating here either.
  - slaymaker1907 6y ago
    No, they are completely reconcilable. The amount of power it takes to run a powerful consumer CPU is trivial compared to the amount of power used in many other common applications like heating, vehicles, etc. This effect is particularly pronounced when you consider that laptops use way less energy than desktops (on average) and mobile computing as a whole is displacing desktops outside of niches like PC gaming. The environmental issue doesn't make sense IMO, but increasing hardware requirements does have real impact on accessibility.
nicoburns 6y ago
> Instead of writing platform specific apps You've answered your own question as to why people write then. > What value does electron add to the user? It adds a lot of value to Linux and to a lesser extent Mac users: before a electron a lot of apps didn't have a version for these platform at all.
- JoshTriplett 6y ago
  For an app with no source available publicly, I would much rather have a web app in a sandbox than a "native" app (whether native or electron-style) that I would have to trust.
- krzyk 6y ago
  > It adds a lot of value to Linux and to a lesser extent Mac users: before a electron a lot of apps didn't have a version for these platform at all. I prefer web versions of those apps on Linux than electron. Sorry, I want to run just one browser and it is not Chrome based one. And for sure Electron apps don't allow that ease of cross platform development as one thinks, I would argue that it is on the same level as a native app with good abstraction library (see Telegram client source on github). It is more that they don't want to hire desktop developers (or just ones that want to learn something else than JS).
- wutbrodo 6y ago
  > It adds a lot of value to Linux and to a lesser extent Mac users: before a electron a lot of apps didn't have a version for these platform at all What value does _this_ add over a web app? I've been an exclusive Linux user since college so I'm aware of the disadvantages of app/service unavailability (I remember the dark days of running Netflix in a windows VM that I barely had enough RAM to run...). But what's the advantage of using the Slack app over a browser tab? This is a sincere question, since enough people reference the benefit of faux-native wrapped webapps that I assume there's some value. I seem to be the only one in my company who doesn't use Slack's app, and I'm always shocked when I see a colleague's computer freeze and have them say "ugh it's almost definitely the Slack app". I work in autonomous vehicle engineering, so these are _monster_ machines I'm talking about, capable of running the entire car's stack locally. The only advantage I can think of are desktop notifications, but 1) I'm pretty sure browsers support those and 2) is that really worth using an app that's amateurish enough that it freezes your computer regularly?
krzyk 6y ago
> What value does electron add to the user? I would argue none. That Slack can’t find the resources to write actual Swift for a Mac App is just amazing to me. Instead we are essentially interacting with a lowest-common-denominator web app. Is a chat app that hard to write natively? We’d get better performance, a smaller footprint, and a more polished, platform-specific product. Exactly, one can look at Telegram app, it is clean, polished and open source client written as a native app that works across many platforms (and one of few that has Linux client).
cdmoyer 6y ago
Honestly, this site is the only place I really hear about the supposed horror of electron. The resource issue doesn't seem to effect me or people in the 7 slacks I'm in all day. My 6 year old MacBook runs slack, Xcode, android studio, safari, chrome, messages, vs code, vim, iterm2, preview, battle.net and hearthstone all the time without issue, really. I think for the average user, they'd rather have more features across platforms more quickly than a smaller resident memory footprint and install size.
- wutbrodo 6y ago
  For a counter-anecdote, I've seen the Slack app freeze up colleagues' workstations many times, and these are monster machines designed to run an autonomous vehicle stack on raw sensor data.