5 ms·

1Password developed a SwiftUI version in parallel to Electron and chose Electron

12 points by tomduncalf 5y ago

finiteseries 5y ago
Not surprised in the least, SwiftUI is unfortunately nowhere near production ready on macOS, and arguably iOS depending on the use case. Electron is essentially the only reasonable way to develop non trivial macOS applications at the moment. It’s also v debatable whether the UX is much worse with electron as well, are text only List components still failing to scroll at 60fps? Can I rotate the utterly bog standard example Landmarks app’s detail scene without breaking the NavigationView? And at least in ~2017-2018, the vast, vast majority of competent AppKit developers appeared to either be in China, or Cupertino, unlike UIKit.
- Nicksil 5y ago
  >Electron is essentially the only reasonable way to develop non trivial macOS applications at the moment. How do you even come close to this conclusion? What are your criteria for reasonableness?
  - finiteseries 5y ago
    Hiring for AppKit x readiness of SwiftUI
Tainnor 5y ago
There's a very vocal subset of (mostly Apple) users that demand native apps for everything. Meanwhile I suspect that for most people, this matters very little. Yes, if performance is too bad, it might be an issue, but VSCode, for example, is extremely popular. There are certainly issues with Electron bundling an entire browser runtime, and JavaScript is not really a language I like doing development in. On the other hand, I find it absurd how many developers seem to think that it's totally normal that you have to have 3 or 4 different code bases if you want to write an application that runs on every major platform (including Windows). I'm also amazed that even small startups immediately go down the "multiple apps" road instead of iterating first on a cross-platform solution (and then maybe later switching if there really are prohibitive issues). That makes me think that maybe part of the reason is that app developers don't want to see themselves become obsolete.
- fomine3 5y ago
  I thought that why 1Password still popular (or say why they can charge more $ from Apple users) is because they optimized for Apple. It's weird choice. Don't forget that they can stick to UIKit.
  - Tainnor 5y ago
    I think 1password is popular because many companies use it. That's certainly the reason why I use it at work; for my private stuff, I use bitwarden which is open source.
    - rovr138 5y ago
      That’s a weird conclusion. Could it be that it’s popular with individuals at your job and that’s why they recommended it?
      - Tainnor 5y ago
        Maybe? But then it could also be a typical cycle of "early adopters nudging companies into using a product and the product subsequently catering more to corporate than to end-users' needs". I doesn't matter why companies bet on 1password, the moment a significant amount of them do, they're going to be much more important customers than individual users and their needs are going to be prioritised.
    - sleepybrett 5y ago
      At every company i've been at that has adopted 1password it's because many engineers used it personally. Up until a version or two ago it wasn't really optimized for teams to use. Needless to say I won't be recommending it anymore.

12 points by tomduncalf 5y ago

Not surprised in the least, SwiftUI is unfortunately nowhere near production ready on macOS, and arguably iOS depending on the use case. Electron is essentially the only reasonable way to develop non trivial macOS applications at the moment. It’s also v debatable whether the UX is much worse with electron as well, are text only List components still failing to scroll at 60fps? Can I rotate the utterly bog standard example Landmarks app’s detail scene without breaking the NavigationView? And at least in ~2017-2018, the vast, vast majority of competent AppKit developers appeared to either be in China, or Cupertino, unlike UIKit.

Nicksil 5y ago
>Electron is essentially the only reasonable way to develop non trivial macOS applications at the moment. How do you even come close to this conclusion? What are your criteria for reasonableness?
- finiteseries 5y ago
  Hiring for AppKit x readiness of SwiftUI

Tainnor 5y ago

There's a very vocal subset of (mostly Apple) users that demand native apps for everything. Meanwhile I suspect that for most people, this matters very little. Yes, if performance is too bad, it might be an issue, but VSCode, for example, is extremely popular. There are certainly issues with Electron bundling an entire browser runtime, and JavaScript is not really a language I like doing development in. On the other hand, I find it absurd how many developers seem to think that it's totally normal that you have to have 3 or 4 different code bases if you want to write an application that runs on every major platform (including Windows). I'm also amazed that even small startups immediately go down the "multiple apps" road instead of iterating first on a cross-platform solution (and then maybe later switching if there really are prohibitive issues). That makes me think that maybe part of the reason is that app developers don't want to see themselves become obsolete.

fomine3 5y ago
I thought that why 1Password still popular (or say why they can charge more $ from Apple users) is because they optimized for Apple. It's weird choice. Don't forget that they can stick to UIKit.
- Tainnor 5y ago
  I think 1password is popular because many companies use it. That's certainly the reason why I use it at work; for my private stuff, I use bitwarden which is open source.
  - rovr138 5y ago
    That’s a weird conclusion. Could it be that it’s popular with individuals at your job and that’s why they recommended it?
    - Tainnor 5y ago
      Maybe? But then it could also be a typical cycle of "early adopters nudging companies into using a product and the product subsequently catering more to corporate than to end-users' needs". I doesn't matter why companies bet on 1password, the moment a significant amount of them do, they're going to be much more important customers than individual users and their needs are going to be prioritised.
  - sleepybrett 5y ago
    At every company i've been at that has adopted 1password it's because many engineers used it personally. Up until a version or two ago it wasn't really optimized for teams to use. Needless to say I won't be recommending it anymore.