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> If that Electron app is valuable to you and you have enough memory, why worry about it? What if I don't? Why should everyone use 16GB of RAM for tasks that c

> If that Electron app is valuable to you and you have enough memory, why worry about it? What if I don't? Why should everyone use 16GB of RAM for tasks that can be achieved with 4 natively? >That is huge. That means I can only place 2500 copies of that app on my 1 TB hard drive. The shame! Yeah, hard drives are large enough to not care about this. A lot of budget devices ship without mechanical drives and with 128 or 256GB SSDs nowadays. More RAM and more storage might sound like "just a couple of bucks" to people in first-world countries but they are still fairly expensive elsewhere, where people also don't earn as much. This article feels motivated by part "just buy more stuff, you poors", and part "stop attacking Electron devs because I am one and it makes me feel bad."

foresto 5y ago
To put this another way: I have an Electron-based chat client that consumes 265 MB of disk when installed, plus about 180 MB of data, most of which looks like it comes from Electron rather than chat-related stuff. A native client for the same chat service consumes about 10 MB installed, plus about 15 MB of data. That's a 10x-25x explosion in SSD wear with every app update, which happens frequently. There is also an explosion in ongoing wear every minute that I leave it running. I haven't measured the latter, but judging by how often Electron writes cache and web session data, it is surely significant. Electron is incredibly wasteful. If a web interface is absolutely necessary, please just serve it on localhost and let me use my existing browser.
- carlhjerpe 5y ago
  > Electron is incredibly wasteful. If a web interface is absolutely necessary, please just serve it on localhost and let me use my existing browser. I know of a couple that does something like this. FSBox for programming SFPs install a driver and a runnable tray software, you configure it through your web browser. SolarWinds backup, installs a tray but opens a web browser to 127.0.0.1:5000 Syncthing runs a local webserver too As you're saying, I wish more would support this way, I don't want someone's outdated browser when it can be a tab in my Firefox
tcmart14 5y ago
Or how many kids are using some of the newer netbooks that maybe only have 32 GB or 64 GB eMMC. And that is becoming more and more common. Going into Walmart last, I think most of the computers in the electronics section had these smaller eMMC drives.

foresto 5y ago

To put this another way: I have an Electron-based chat client that consumes 265 MB of disk when installed, plus about 180 MB of data, most of which looks like it comes from Electron rather than chat-related stuff. A native client for the same chat service consumes about 10 MB installed, plus about 15 MB of data. That's a 10x-25x explosion in SSD wear with every app update, which happens frequently. There is also an explosion in ongoing wear every minute that I leave it running. I haven't measured the latter, but judging by how often Electron writes cache and web session data, it is surely significant. Electron is incredibly wasteful. If a web interface is absolutely necessary, please just serve it on localhost and let me use my existing browser.

carlhjerpe 5y ago
> Electron is incredibly wasteful. If a web interface is absolutely necessary, please just serve it on localhost and let me use my existing browser. I know of a couple that does something like this. FSBox for programming SFPs install a driver and a runnable tray software, you configure it through your web browser. SolarWinds backup, installs a tray but opens a web browser to 127.0.0.1:5000 Syncthing runs a local webserver too As you're saying, I wish more would support this way, I don't want someone's outdated browser when it can be a tab in my Firefox

tcmart14 5y ago

Or how many kids are using some of the newer netbooks that maybe only have 32 GB or 64 GB eMMC. And that is becoming more and more common. Going into Walmart last, I think most of the computers in the electronics section had these smaller eMMC drives.