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I'm just surprised people call Electron apps "native" now.

hn8788 5y ago
I think it's just marketing. The devs where I work started promoting everything that isn't a web page as "native", and web pages that don't have external dependencies as "static", even though they are still dynamic apps loaded with javascript.
fastball 5y ago
The issue is that we call pure web apps "apps" too now, so it can be hard to differentiate. We just released desktop clients (electron) for our platform, and native was a term I didn't want to use but it is quite helpful to distinguish the two.
- pseudalopex 5y ago
  You just called them desktop apps. Or you can call them Windows, macOS, and Linux apps.
  - fastball 5y ago
    Yep, that's what we did. But then let's say you have mobile apps as well, built with Cordova. What collective term would you use for your Desktop and Mobile apps? It is certainly a bit verbose to specify every platform so I don't think that is a viable option.
015a 5y ago
"Native" doesn't mean anything. Everything is native; I mean, at some point, its making syscalls and running bytecode on the processor, its not running in a Virtual Machine, that seems pretty "native". Or, nothing is native; it runs through an interpreter, or fifty thousand layers of UI library abstraction, or whatever. Websites definitely aren't native, right, electron... isn't... Windows WPF apps, classic native, jeeze they're horrible to use though, but UWP, also native, but, I can write them in HTML and JS? Weird. There's no logically correct definition of "native" which is also useful. Its just a buzzword that a few otherwise smart people use to mean "its fast". Every single stack out there can be engineered to be slow; some stacks cannot ever be engineered to be fast; Electron is not one of them.
- pseudalopex 5y ago
  What is a fast Electron app? Visual Studio Code is praised the most by far. And even it's slow compared to alternatives like Sublime Text. Native is short for native code or native UI depending on context. Native code means AOT compiled. Native UI means it uses one of the platform's conventional UI frameworks. You can have native UI without native code. Classic Windows apps are great compared to most alternatives.

I think it's just marketing. The devs where I work started promoting everything that isn't a web page as "native", and web pages that don't have external dependencies as "static", even though they are still dynamic apps loaded with javascript.

fastball 5y ago

The issue is that we call pure web apps "apps" too now, so it can be hard to differentiate. We just released desktop clients (electron) for our platform, and native was a term I didn't want to use but it is quite helpful to distinguish the two.

pseudalopex 5y ago
You just called them desktop apps. Or you can call them Windows, macOS, and Linux apps.
- fastball 5y ago
  Yep, that's what we did. But then let's say you have mobile apps as well, built with Cordova. What collective term would you use for your Desktop and Mobile apps? It is certainly a bit verbose to specify every platform so I don't think that is a viable option.

015a 5y ago

"Native" doesn't mean anything. Everything is native; I mean, at some point, its making syscalls and running bytecode on the processor, its not running in a Virtual Machine, that seems pretty "native". Or, nothing is native; it runs through an interpreter, or fifty thousand layers of UI library abstraction, or whatever. Websites definitely aren't native, right, electron... isn't... Windows WPF apps, classic native, jeeze they're horrible to use though, but UWP, also native, but, I can write them in HTML and JS? Weird. There's no logically correct definition of "native" which is also useful. Its just a buzzword that a few otherwise smart people use to mean "its fast". Every single stack out there can be engineered to be slow; some stacks cannot ever be engineered to be fast; Electron is not one of them.

pseudalopex 5y ago
What is a fast Electron app? Visual Studio Code is praised the most by far. And even it's slow compared to alternatives like Sublime Text. Native is short for native code or native UI depending on context. Native code means AOT compiled. Native UI means it uses one of the platform's conventional UI frameworks. You can have native UI without native code. Classic Windows apps are great compared to most alternatives.