4 ms·

Here's an idea: Rather than complaining about the Electron apps, write better cross-platform apps that don't use Electron. I know it's fashionable to dog on E

Here's an idea: Rather than complaining about the Electron apps, write better cross-platform apps that don't use Electron. I know it's fashionable to dog on Electron, but if it didn't fill a legitimate need, people wouldn't use it. It's easy to compare an Electron app, that actually exists, with some imaginary native app that doesn't. It's not so easy to find the budget and personnel to actually build dedicated apps for minority platforms. The choice generally isn't between "bloated Electron app" and "sleek native app". It's between "bloated Electron app" and "no app at all".

ASalazarMX 6y ago
In the case of eBook readers, there's plenty of native software that fills that role in every platform, there's hardly a need for a cross-platform Electron ePUB reader. I suspect Electron frequently fills a need for the developers, instead of their users. It's easy to deploy, cross-platform and stable, I give you that, but the users pay for it with RAM, disk, CPU and energy. A single user might not mean much, but multiply that by the millions of Electron programs installed, that's the scale of lost resources that pay for the advantages of Electron.
- Turing_Machine 6y ago
  > here's hardly a need for a cross-platform Electron ePUB reader. If there's "no need" for them, why are people using them? How come you get to decide what other people "need"? > I suspect Electron frequently fills a need for the developers, instead of their users. It fills the need of the users to have actual apps they can install and run, rather than imaginary ones. > that's the scale of lost resources that pay for the advantages of Electron. People don't hand-write programs in assembly language any more, either, even though that means that you can no longer write a word processor that runs in 12K of RAM.
  - ASalazarMX 6y ago
    I see we can't meet in the middle on this issue. I'm not saying all Electron programs are bad. VSCode, for example, is surprisingly good for many use cases, and being an IDE with many features, its resource usage is pretty justified. I'm also not buying that people need software that only exists as Electron programs. Check the categories in https://www.electronjs.org/apps https://www.electronjs.org/apps, there's even taskbar notifications and app launchers, do those merit running a dedicated browser? It's not that users need "non-imaginary" software and Electron fills that need, it's that most users don't know about native and web frameworks, and they will install software as long as their computer can run it, even if better alternatives exist right now.
- rualca 6y ago
  > In the case of eBook readers, there's plenty of native software that fills that role in every platform, there's hardly a need for a cross-platform Electron ePUB reader. I see this sort of assertion pop up often, but it never is accompanied by specific verifiable examples of what those options are. Can you point out a single example of said native software that fills that role in every platform? A single one.
  - ASalazarMX 5y ago
    I think you misunderstood my response. it's not that the same software works as an eBook reader on every platform, but that nearly every platform has native and high-quality eBook readers. Try and run your Electron application in a Symbian phone or an iPad, for example.
BlueTemplar 6y ago
What's wrong with Qt (and such) ?? (For instance : VLC, Spyder...)
- rijoja 6y ago
  Well developers that can use those are probably more expensive for one.
  - BlueTemplar 6y ago
    Are they ? http://www.pyqtgraph.org/ http://www.pyqtgraph.org/
    - rijoja 6y ago
      I'd bet that there are more people who knows and if you follow the law of supply and demand I think you can figure out the rest. What is python qt support like for android and so forth by the way?
      - BlueTemplar 6y ago
        Looks like it was added with Qt5 (which itself uses Python 3 rather than Qt4's Python 2).
- rualca 6y ago
  > What's wrong with Qt (and such) ?? Compared with simple html+javascript running on a webview, Qt is relatively hard to maintain and develop, relies on source code generations and processors to work, prototyping tools are subpar and undermaintained, has no support for centralized theming, it's basic support for component-specific theming is already CSS shoved in a convoluted way, its model/view take is absurd and very poorly engineered, and yeah there's the fact that it forces you to write frontend code in C++. But wait, it's not even C++ because it requires code to be preprocessed to generate boilerplate code. And let's not pretend that Qt's widgets successor is already a markup+javascript combo that takes the bad parts of javascript and bundles it with the bad parts of a custom markup language.

ASalazarMX 6y ago

In the case of eBook readers, there's plenty of native software that fills that role in every platform, there's hardly a need for a cross-platform Electron ePUB reader. I suspect Electron frequently fills a need for the developers, instead of their users. It's easy to deploy, cross-platform and stable, I give you that, but the users pay for it with RAM, disk, CPU and energy. A single user might not mean much, but multiply that by the millions of Electron programs installed, that's the scale of lost resources that pay for the advantages of Electron.

Turing_Machine 6y ago
> here's hardly a need for a cross-platform Electron ePUB reader. If there's "no need" for them, why are people using them? How come you get to decide what other people "need"? > I suspect Electron frequently fills a need for the developers, instead of their users. It fills the need of the users to have actual apps they can install and run, rather than imaginary ones. > that's the scale of lost resources that pay for the advantages of Electron. People don't hand-write programs in assembly language any more, either, even though that means that you can no longer write a word processor that runs in 12K of RAM.
- ASalazarMX 6y ago
  I see we can't meet in the middle on this issue. I'm not saying all Electron programs are bad. VSCode, for example, is surprisingly good for many use cases, and being an IDE with many features, its resource usage is pretty justified. I'm also not buying that people need software that only exists as Electron programs. Check the categories in https://www.electronjs.org/apps https://www.electronjs.org/apps, there's even taskbar notifications and app launchers, do those merit running a dedicated browser? It's not that users need "non-imaginary" software and Electron fills that need, it's that most users don't know about native and web frameworks, and they will install software as long as their computer can run it, even if better alternatives exist right now.
rualca 6y ago
> In the case of eBook readers, there's plenty of native software that fills that role in every platform, there's hardly a need for a cross-platform Electron ePUB reader. I see this sort of assertion pop up often, but it never is accompanied by specific verifiable examples of what those options are. Can you point out a single example of said native software that fills that role in every platform? A single one.
- ASalazarMX 5y ago
  I think you misunderstood my response. it's not that the same software works as an eBook reader on every platform, but that nearly every platform has native and high-quality eBook readers. Try and run your Electron application in a Symbian phone or an iPad, for example.

BlueTemplar 6y ago

What's wrong with Qt (and such) ?? (For instance : VLC, Spyder...)

rijoja 6y ago
Well developers that can use those are probably more expensive for one.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
  Are they ? http://www.pyqtgraph.org/ http://www.pyqtgraph.org/
  - rijoja 6y ago
    I'd bet that there are more people who knows and if you follow the law of supply and demand I think you can figure out the rest. What is python qt support like for android and so forth by the way?
    - BlueTemplar 6y ago
      Looks like it was added with Qt5 (which itself uses Python 3 rather than Qt4's Python 2).
rualca 6y ago
> What's wrong with Qt (and such) ?? Compared with simple html+javascript running on a webview, Qt is relatively hard to maintain and develop, relies on source code generations and processors to work, prototyping tools are subpar and undermaintained, has no support for centralized theming, it's basic support for component-specific theming is already CSS shoved in a convoluted way, its model/view take is absurd and very poorly engineered, and yeah there's the fact that it forces you to write frontend code in C++. But wait, it's not even C++ because it requires code to be preprocessed to generate boilerplate code. And let's not pretend that Qt's widgets successor is already a markup+javascript combo that takes the bad parts of javascript and bundles it with the bad parts of a custom markup language.