10 ms·

Drop Electron.... for Edge Webview2. I mean, okay sure, half the memory is an improvement. But what is going on in the chat industry that everyone's converged

Drop Electron.... for Edge Webview2. I mean, okay sure, half the memory is an improvement. But what is going on in the chat industry that everyone's converged on Electron? You'd think Microsoft of all companies would be able to figure out how to build native apps. If I want a chat service with native apps, it seems like my only option is IRC.

MattGaiser 5y ago
Native anything is a lot of work for not a lot of gain as most users of Teams are forced to have it.
- Hamuko 5y ago
  Why bother integrating it into the operating system itself then? That's also a lot of work for something that people are forced to install anyways.
  - wongarsu 5y ago
    Or you can just pitch proper integration as a Windows 11 feature, to give companies another incentive to upgrade
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    Is it all that integrated besides being pre-downloaded?
- Bancakes 5y ago
  These are trillion dollar companies, I'm sure they can afford to lead the software industry for the greater good.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    I don't think RAM conservation is high on anyone's list of initiatives to improve the world. The resource consumption of Electron is mostly of interest to computer scientists who like to see how small and efficient they can make something. But in this case, it does not really matter.
    - hulitu 5y ago
      > The resource consumption of Electron is mostly of interest to computer scientists who like to see how small and efficient they can make something. But in this case, it does not really matter. It matters to sysadmins. Some people need to also work on the computer and when Teams uses all memory they will close it.
    - ratww 5y ago
      No. It also matters to the users of the laptop and to the people who have to buy it, as using too much RAM can lead to slowness due to swapping and can make older laptops unusable. It's basically having a third-party forcing programmed obsolescence at your device.
  - Mary-Jane 5y ago
    What 'greater good' can possibly be achieved by having to literally write the same app 5 different times?
    - Bancakes 5y ago
      Going through the sunk cost of making 5 different GUI's and maybe wrapping some syscalls/API for the same 90% core app, resulting in minimal resource usage. It's the correct computerscientific approach and companies like Microsoft can (and should) commit to it. Breaking changes nowadays are too few and far between.
    - hulitu 5y ago
      You have work to do. And you get paid. No work - you're fired.
    - ratww 5y ago
      They could at least be trying to use the native multi-platform technologies they have bought/developed, like Xamarin or MAUI.
therobot24 5y ago
>> half the memory is an improvement would call it more than just an "improvement", only using 1/2 memory is pretty freakin great when you're already known for hogging mem
- edflsafoiewq 5y ago
  Easiest way to get these big percent improvements? Make sure your starting point is ridiculously wasteful.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
viraptor 5y ago
There's also Ripcord https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ which is tiny, native, and works with slack. Going with electron is a simple way to get quick results so companies like it.
- richardstephens 5y ago
  I had not seen this, I'm definitely going to try it out. How often do changes made by Slack break it?
  - smcnally 5y ago
    Core text chat function has been solid for me the last 2+ years on Ripcord on macos and ubuntu. Image handling, search, notifications, e.g., have varied for Slack and Discord channels.
- kilburn 5y ago
  It looked interesting to me, but their disnhonesty just threw me back: > Not a subscription—never expires > Includes 1 year of free version upgrades Are you telling me that a third-party slack client will keep working forever without updates? The "not a subscription" message here is effectively moot: this thing will stop working and you will need to pay for "another year of version upgrades".
  - viraptor 5y ago
    Those are the two common models of proprietary software distribution - subscriptions or one-off payments. Did you actually expect lifetime updates for $20 - i.e. the benefits of subscriptions for the price of one-off purchase? It's not promising you to work forever without updates, but also it doesn't force you to pay if you're happy and everything still works.
    - kilburn 5y ago
      The big difference here is that nobody should expect this app to continue working without updates. Contrast this with something like sublime text: years from now you can still expect it to work normally. What I expect is that if your app will not continue working for a long time then you should not make "lifetime license" one of your selling points unless you are prepared to offer lifetime upgrades too.
sdwvit 5y ago
They have to support 5 platforms. Porting Electron app is just as easy as checking if chromium supports the platform.
tyingq 5y ago
My guess is that because they also have to maintain a web version of Teams, it cuts down the amount of work significantly.
chrisseaton 5y ago
> If I want a chat service with native apps But why? 'Native' is a tool, not a goal, surely? What's the underlying goal you want to achieve, and do you really need native to achieve that?
- Hamuko 5y ago
  >What's the underlying goal you want to achieve Performance, small bundle sizes and native UI widgets. And judging by all of the Electron apps failing in these departments, I guess you really do need native apps.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    > small bundle sizes Space are not precious anymore. Nor is bandwidth.
    - Hamuko 5y ago
      Says who? A Surface Laptop 4 comes with a 256 GB SSD. And the Surface Pro 7 comes with a 128 GB SSD.
    - betaby 5y ago
      Both are very expensive on mobile.
    - criddell 5y ago
      Something that's a resource hog will likely consume a lot of battery as well. That's a big deal for something you want running all the time.
    - toast0 5y ago
      BestBuy sells some Windows laptops with 64 GB eMMC. Space is precious on those. Chrome devices often ship with 16 GB; if Microsoft could make Windows viable at that size, they could push the absolute low end prices down a smidge and keep more users. I get 60 Mbps down and an upgrade would be $50k. Bandwidth is relatively precious to me.
eloff 5y ago
Native apps means essentially building at least 5 distinct apps: windows, mac, iOS, linux, android. What a mess to work with and maintain. We already have cross-platfrom UI engines called browsers and they're very advanced and reasonably pleasant to work with these days. If you bundle the browser (electron) then you don't have to worry about differences between browsers. So electron makes plenty of sense to developers, even although it's an egregious resource hog.
- dreyfan 5y ago
  Microsoft is a $2T company, I feel like they could afford to do it right.
  - hughrr 5y ago
    Apparently they favour fucking it up several times.
  - onion2k 5y ago
    The market cap doesn't tell you anything about the available resources a company has. For example... Gamestop's market cap did this recently - https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GME/gamestop/market-cap https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GME/gamestop/marke... - the company doesn't suddenly have more money to spend on projects.
    - eloff 5y ago
      Not a great example since they sold over a billion worth of stock. They do actually have more money now. Microsoft generates more money than they know what to do with so they return large amounts in dividends and probably stock buybacks (I haven't checked for MSFT specifically, but it's all the rage these days.) That's essentially the opposite of what GME did.
      - robjan 5y ago
        MSFT dividend yield is nothing to write home about. Less than 1% per year at the moment.
nlitened 5y ago
If I understand correctly, Telegram has native apps on all platforms, and they are super fast and slick.
- richardstephens 5y ago
  Telegram's mac app is pretty good at least, but I don't think it's a serious contender for any 100+ seat company.
  - drclau 5y ago
    I think GP's point was that it's doable (ie. providing native apps for all platforms), not that Telegram is a good replacement for Teams scenarios.
- samat 5y ago
  They are the one example of messaging done right on the client side. And it maddens me that their whole team, including ops and backend is like 50 people. At the same time, they used some pretty unconventional ways to find brilliant people. For example, for iOS and Mac and android apps, they simply held a contest for the best open source app fitting succinct and reasonable requirements. The winner got sizable prize and place on the dev team. Then they released that app as a Telegram X and then gradually sunset the older app. Pretty neat on multiple fronts.
  - voidfunc 5y ago
    Yep Telegram the app is perhaps one of the best pieces of software I have used. It really shows what a good team can pull off.
  - ratww 5y ago
    > And it maddens me that their whole team, including ops and backend is like 50 people. But that's how they get so much accomplished. Fred Brooks was correct in 1975 and is still right in 2021. Throwing headcount at a problem only delays it.

MattGaiser 5y ago

Native anything is a lot of work for not a lot of gain as most users of Teams are forced to have it.

Hamuko 5y ago
Why bother integrating it into the operating system itself then? That's also a lot of work for something that people are forced to install anyways.
- wongarsu 5y ago
  Or you can just pitch proper integration as a Windows 11 feature, to give companies another incentive to upgrade
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Is it all that integrated besides being pre-downloaded?
Bancakes 5y ago
These are trillion dollar companies, I'm sure they can afford to lead the software industry for the greater good.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  I don't think RAM conservation is high on anyone's list of initiatives to improve the world. The resource consumption of Electron is mostly of interest to computer scientists who like to see how small and efficient they can make something. But in this case, it does not really matter.
  - hulitu 5y ago
    > The resource consumption of Electron is mostly of interest to computer scientists who like to see how small and efficient they can make something. But in this case, it does not really matter. It matters to sysadmins. Some people need to also work on the computer and when Teams uses all memory they will close it.
  - ratww 5y ago
    No. It also matters to the users of the laptop and to the people who have to buy it, as using too much RAM can lead to slowness due to swapping and can make older laptops unusable. It's basically having a third-party forcing programmed obsolescence at your device.
- Mary-Jane 5y ago
  What 'greater good' can possibly be achieved by having to literally write the same app 5 different times?
  - Bancakes 5y ago
    Going through the sunk cost of making 5 different GUI's and maybe wrapping some syscalls/API for the same 90% core app, resulting in minimal resource usage. It's the correct computerscientific approach and companies like Microsoft can (and should) commit to it. Breaking changes nowadays are too few and far between.
  - hulitu 5y ago
    You have work to do. And you get paid. No work - you're fired.
  - ratww 5y ago
    They could at least be trying to use the native multi-platform technologies they have bought/developed, like Xamarin or MAUI.

therobot24 5y ago

>> half the memory is an improvement would call it more than just an "improvement", only using 1/2 memory is pretty freakin great when you're already known for hogging mem

edflsafoiewq 5y ago
Easiest way to get these big percent improvements? Make sure your starting point is ridiculously wasteful.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

viraptor 5y ago

There's also Ripcord https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ which is tiny, native, and works with slack. Going with electron is a simple way to get quick results so companies like it.

richardstephens 5y ago
I had not seen this, I'm definitely going to try it out. How often do changes made by Slack break it?
- smcnally 5y ago
  Core text chat function has been solid for me the last 2+ years on Ripcord on macos and ubuntu. Image handling, search, notifications, e.g., have varied for Slack and Discord channels.
kilburn 5y ago
It looked interesting to me, but their disnhonesty just threw me back: > Not a subscription—never expires > Includes 1 year of free version upgrades Are you telling me that a third-party slack client will keep working forever without updates? The "not a subscription" message here is effectively moot: this thing will stop working and you will need to pay for "another year of version upgrades".
- viraptor 5y ago
  Those are the two common models of proprietary software distribution - subscriptions or one-off payments. Did you actually expect lifetime updates for $20 - i.e. the benefits of subscriptions for the price of one-off purchase? It's not promising you to work forever without updates, but also it doesn't force you to pay if you're happy and everything still works.
  - kilburn 5y ago
    The big difference here is that nobody should expect this app to continue working without updates. Contrast this with something like sublime text: years from now you can still expect it to work normally. What I expect is that if your app will not continue working for a long time then you should not make "lifetime license" one of your selling points unless you are prepared to offer lifetime upgrades too.

sdwvit 5y ago

They have to support 5 platforms. Porting Electron app is just as easy as checking if chromium supports the platform.

tyingq 5y ago

My guess is that because they also have to maintain a web version of Teams, it cuts down the amount of work significantly.

chrisseaton 5y ago

> If I want a chat service with native apps But why? 'Native' is a tool, not a goal, surely? What's the underlying goal you want to achieve, and do you really need native to achieve that?

Hamuko 5y ago
>What's the underlying goal you want to achieve Performance, small bundle sizes and native UI widgets. And judging by all of the Electron apps failing in these departments, I guess you really do need native apps.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  > small bundle sizes Space are not precious anymore. Nor is bandwidth.
  - Hamuko 5y ago
    Says who? A Surface Laptop 4 comes with a 256 GB SSD. And the Surface Pro 7 comes with a 128 GB SSD.
  - betaby 5y ago
    Both are very expensive on mobile.
  - criddell 5y ago
    Something that's a resource hog will likely consume a lot of battery as well. That's a big deal for something you want running all the time.
  - toast0 5y ago
    BestBuy sells some Windows laptops with 64 GB eMMC. Space is precious on those. Chrome devices often ship with 16 GB; if Microsoft could make Windows viable at that size, they could push the absolute low end prices down a smidge and keep more users. I get 60 Mbps down and an upgrade would be $50k. Bandwidth is relatively precious to me.

eloff 5y ago

Native apps means essentially building at least 5 distinct apps: windows, mac, iOS, linux, android. What a mess to work with and maintain. We already have cross-platfrom UI engines called browsers and they're very advanced and reasonably pleasant to work with these days. If you bundle the browser (electron) then you don't have to worry about differences between browsers. So electron makes plenty of sense to developers, even although it's an egregious resource hog.

dreyfan 5y ago
Microsoft is a $2T company, I feel like they could afford to do it right.
- hughrr 5y ago
  Apparently they favour fucking it up several times.
- onion2k 5y ago
  The market cap doesn't tell you anything about the available resources a company has. For example... Gamestop's market cap did this recently - https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GME/gamestop/market-cap https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GME/gamestop/marke... - the company doesn't suddenly have more money to spend on projects.
  - eloff 5y ago
    Not a great example since they sold over a billion worth of stock. They do actually have more money now. Microsoft generates more money than they know what to do with so they return large amounts in dividends and probably stock buybacks (I haven't checked for MSFT specifically, but it's all the rage these days.) That's essentially the opposite of what GME did.
    - robjan 5y ago
      MSFT dividend yield is nothing to write home about. Less than 1% per year at the moment.

nlitened 5y ago

If I understand correctly, Telegram has native apps on all platforms, and they are super fast and slick.

richardstephens 5y ago
Telegram's mac app is pretty good at least, but I don't think it's a serious contender for any 100+ seat company.
- drclau 5y ago
  I think GP's point was that it's doable (ie. providing native apps for all platforms), not that Telegram is a good replacement for Teams scenarios.
samat 5y ago
They are the one example of messaging done right on the client side. And it maddens me that their whole team, including ops and backend is like 50 people. At the same time, they used some pretty unconventional ways to find brilliant people. For example, for iOS and Mac and android apps, they simply held a contest for the best open source app fitting succinct and reasonable requirements. The winner got sizable prize and place on the dev team. Then they released that app as a Telegram X and then gradually sunset the older app. Pretty neat on multiple fronts.
- voidfunc 5y ago
  Yep Telegram the app is perhaps one of the best pieces of software I have used. It really shows what a good team can pull off.
- ratww 5y ago
  > And it maddens me that their whole team, including ops and backend is like 50 people. But that's how they get so much accomplished. Fred Brooks was correct in 1975 and is still right in 2021. Throwing headcount at a problem only delays it.