4 ms·

You can build snappy UIs with Electron. It’s easy to conflate organizational bloat’s consequences with something intrinsic to Electron. Edit: Upset downvoters

You can build snappy UIs with Electron. It’s easy to conflate organizational bloat’s consequences with something intrinsic to Electron. Edit: Upset downvoters care to elaborate? Or just huffing into the void?

cjblomqvist 5y ago
Up-voted for the same reason as the edit - I'd love to hear some fact based arguments why this comment should be down voted (why it's not possible to build performant applications with Electron)
- slumpt_ 5y ago
  It’s certainly an easy fall-person for their performance issues, but it seems just as reasonable to blame an ever-expanding feature set, including advertisements and all of the analytics to go with, along with a great deal of just… age? Spotify isn’t a young company anymore, and they’ve been maintaining their shop for long enough that the kitchen sink is undoubtedly strapped to their app by now.
  - rzzzt 5y ago
    Can it send e-mails?
- zwaps 5y ago
  Op did not provide a single example of an Electron app that competes with native performance. When pushed, they became indignant and said that they have personally worked on several snappy Electron apps, which, however are secret. Also, there are apparently no other examples of Electron apps readily at hand. So we end up where we were, with VsCode as singular example, and in turn, with the distinctive suspicion that the inability of anyone to point to even one decently performing Electron app may just simply be because Electron is not very good. The downvotes then probably arise from the fact that this argument has been replayed on HN hundreds of times.
  - slumpt_ 5y ago
    It’s nothing to do with Electron specifically and everything to do with the web as a platform and the requisite work to make performant apps.
mythz 5y ago
Maybe try elaborating yourself? The constant criticism of Electron Apps is that they're bloated and slow, you're claiming otherwise but missed the part providing any presumption of evidence to the contrary. I've yet to experience any Electron App that's close to the snappiness and UX of the original native Spotify client, I'd like to hear about good examples of Electron Apps comparable to it.
- slumpt_ 5y ago
  The web is filled with bloated and slow web applications. This is nothing new. Electron is taking the fall for existing on a popular platform that lots of fast moving companies are using and unfortunately gumming up with feature creep and poor architectural design. I don’t care to share details of my past employers but I have absolutely worked on web apps that ran 60 Hz on mobile and looked beautiful to boot. It was a team of senior devs though, and it was a small shop. We didn’t suffer from the same organizational issues at the time but as we grew, sure enough - the web application slowed as the need to move quickly and cut corners arose. The point is that the web offers you a vast array of performance footguns that anyone on a tight schedule is going to wind up firing off at one time or another. Electron isn’t to blame. It’s architecture and code practices. But the web is easy to hate, and by association Electron is going to take a ton of flack.
  - ducktective 5y ago
    It doesn't matter if that rotating loading indicator icon is rendered at 120hz or how fancy the boot animation is presenting latest commodities of the company shop... When I open a software, I did so for a purpose, and I expect to actually do the thing as fast as possible and be done with UI...that's the reason why TUI apps are popular with power-users
    - slumpt_ 5y ago
      That’s not what I mean when I say 60 Hz. I’m referring to performance navigating about the app. There was a small startup latency to populate the store but it was smooth sailing after that. Even that you could probably optimize out today with a talented team given all the new PWA tech. I will say though that I’ve yet to work anywhere else that held themselves to a comparable performance standard.
ducktective 5y ago
Didn't downvote, but can you name a couple of Electron apps that are sna...,hell,.. not sluggish? People usually point to VSCode...If that is the epitome of a responsive, lag-free software then I claim Electron defenders haven't seen snappy application. Do people even remember Winamp?
- iCarrot 5y ago
  Aside from the initial load that all Electron apps suffer from, Insomnia feels pretty snappy to me. Granted, I only have a few dozens of API that load 20KB of JSON max. https://insomnia.rest/ https://insomnia.rest/
  - vladvasiliu 5y ago
    I love Insomnia and usually recommend it to others. But I remember a few months ago I was developing a basic API and testing it through Insomnia. At first, I almost had a heart attack seeing the time it took to answer, between clicking "send" and getting a response back. All this running on localhost, on an old but fairly powerful box (i7-3930k, 64 GB ram). My first reaction was I must have had some sleep() lying around. Then I looked at the details, and the actual time taken handling the call, etc, as reported by Insomnia was a few ms, all the rest was... I don't know what. But I do agree than other than that, when interacting with the app itself (switch requests, type, etc) it feels snappy enough. I usually use it alongside IntelliJ, which while fairly fast, isn't terminal-level instantaneous.
- kristiandupont 5y ago
  In my experience, my VSCode setup responds just as fast as my fully extended VIM does.
  - jamil7 5y ago
    Somethings wrong with your vim setup then.
  - inter_netuser 5y ago
    Are you remoting into your vim on a satellite link or some really far away box somewhere? I see no other rational explanation here

cjblomqvist 5y ago

Up-voted for the same reason as the edit - I'd love to hear some fact based arguments why this comment should be down voted (why it's not possible to build performant applications with Electron)

slumpt_ 5y ago
It’s certainly an easy fall-person for their performance issues, but it seems just as reasonable to blame an ever-expanding feature set, including advertisements and all of the analytics to go with, along with a great deal of just… age? Spotify isn’t a young company anymore, and they’ve been maintaining their shop for long enough that the kitchen sink is undoubtedly strapped to their app by now.
- rzzzt 5y ago
  Can it send e-mails?
zwaps 5y ago
Op did not provide a single example of an Electron app that competes with native performance. When pushed, they became indignant and said that they have personally worked on several snappy Electron apps, which, however are secret. Also, there are apparently no other examples of Electron apps readily at hand. So we end up where we were, with VsCode as singular example, and in turn, with the distinctive suspicion that the inability of anyone to point to even one decently performing Electron app may just simply be because Electron is not very good. The downvotes then probably arise from the fact that this argument has been replayed on HN hundreds of times.
- slumpt_ 5y ago
  It’s nothing to do with Electron specifically and everything to do with the web as a platform and the requisite work to make performant apps.

mythz 5y ago

Maybe try elaborating yourself? The constant criticism of Electron Apps is that they're bloated and slow, you're claiming otherwise but missed the part providing any presumption of evidence to the contrary. I've yet to experience any Electron App that's close to the snappiness and UX of the original native Spotify client, I'd like to hear about good examples of Electron Apps comparable to it.

slumpt_ 5y ago
The web is filled with bloated and slow web applications. This is nothing new. Electron is taking the fall for existing on a popular platform that lots of fast moving companies are using and unfortunately gumming up with feature creep and poor architectural design. I don’t care to share details of my past employers but I have absolutely worked on web apps that ran 60 Hz on mobile and looked beautiful to boot. It was a team of senior devs though, and it was a small shop. We didn’t suffer from the same organizational issues at the time but as we grew, sure enough - the web application slowed as the need to move quickly and cut corners arose. The point is that the web offers you a vast array of performance footguns that anyone on a tight schedule is going to wind up firing off at one time or another. Electron isn’t to blame. It’s architecture and code practices. But the web is easy to hate, and by association Electron is going to take a ton of flack.
- ducktective 5y ago
  It doesn't matter if that rotating loading indicator icon is rendered at 120hz or how fancy the boot animation is presenting latest commodities of the company shop... When I open a software, I did so for a purpose, and I expect to actually do the thing as fast as possible and be done with UI...that's the reason why TUI apps are popular with power-users
  - slumpt_ 5y ago
    That’s not what I mean when I say 60 Hz. I’m referring to performance navigating about the app. There was a small startup latency to populate the store but it was smooth sailing after that. Even that you could probably optimize out today with a talented team given all the new PWA tech. I will say though that I’ve yet to work anywhere else that held themselves to a comparable performance standard.

ducktective 5y ago

Didn't downvote, but can you name a couple of Electron apps that are sna...,hell,.. not sluggish? People usually point to VSCode...If that is the epitome of a responsive, lag-free software then I claim Electron defenders haven't seen snappy application. Do people even remember Winamp?

iCarrot 5y ago
Aside from the initial load that all Electron apps suffer from, Insomnia feels pretty snappy to me. Granted, I only have a few dozens of API that load 20KB of JSON max. https://insomnia.rest/ https://insomnia.rest/
- vladvasiliu 5y ago
  I love Insomnia and usually recommend it to others. But I remember a few months ago I was developing a basic API and testing it through Insomnia. At first, I almost had a heart attack seeing the time it took to answer, between clicking "send" and getting a response back. All this running on localhost, on an old but fairly powerful box (i7-3930k, 64 GB ram). My first reaction was I must have had some sleep() lying around. Then I looked at the details, and the actual time taken handling the call, etc, as reported by Insomnia was a few ms, all the rest was... I don't know what. But I do agree than other than that, when interacting with the app itself (switch requests, type, etc) it feels snappy enough. I usually use it alongside IntelliJ, which while fairly fast, isn't terminal-level instantaneous.
kristiandupont 5y ago
In my experience, my VSCode setup responds just as fast as my fully extended VIM does.
- jamil7 5y ago
  Somethings wrong with your vim setup then.
- inter_netuser 5y ago
  Are you remoting into your vim on a satellite link or some really far away box somewhere? I see no other rational explanation here