5 ms·

Electron isn't Cancer but it is a Symptom of a Disease

37 points by linguae 5y ago

jeswin 5y ago
"Cancer", "Symptom of a disease" - from the headline one can assume that there wouldn't be any original content in TFA. Add: I find this level of click-baiting unfit for HN's audience.
- doteka 5y ago
  It’s a low effort article rehashing old and tired arguments. Exactly as one would expect from the title indeed.
MattGaiser 5y ago
> are genuinely better than native applications because they prioritize other things than responsiveness, performance, resource utilization, and unsurprising behavior. Depends on how you define unsurprising behaviour. I use both Mac and PC for various purposes. It is very nice to have the same user interface across both. I was developing a Word Add-In at one point and a major annoyance was relearning how Word worked on Mac.
- sofixa 5y ago
  Absolutely this. I switch between Android, Linux and Windows daily, and UX consistency is more important than "nativeness". It seems to me that the only people that really make a fuss about this are Apple-only folks ( macOS+iOS).
ondrek 5y ago
Yes, Electron has a huge amount of problems (bundle size, speed, feeling, native APIs..) but all are solvable. With a right approach, some Webassembly improvements and Webkit iterations all could vanish. On the end of the day, Slack and Visual Code Studio are great apps from the user perspective while features, design and business model play much important roles in choosing the software compared to the underline tech stack.
- cosmotic 5y ago
  Some users may think Slack and VS Code are great apps. I sure don't.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
    It's not great, but every irc client I used is dramatically worse. Vs code is a good editor. Not exceptional, but good. I'd also argue that the need to feel "integrated in the o. s." is actually relevant only for a small subset of apps, anything that's used full screen doesn't need any of that and it's better served by creating its own "mini universe"
deepsun 5y ago
Why don't they write in JavaFX? Those are faster than JavaScript, cross-platform from the roots, but if you want even faster startup, it's compillable with GraalVM. I've heard it does mobile as well with Gluon, but haven't tried.
- cosmotic 5y ago
  Or Swing! Swing could look native without much effort.
anothernewdude 5y ago
They're easy to shit out and allows developers to punish their userbase for coming up with insane requirements.

37 points by linguae 5y ago

"Cancer", "Symptom of a disease" - from the headline one can assume that there wouldn't be any original content in TFA. Add: I find this level of click-baiting unfit for HN's audience.

doteka 5y ago
It’s a low effort article rehashing old and tired arguments. Exactly as one would expect from the title indeed.

MattGaiser 5y ago

> are genuinely better than native applications because they prioritize other things than responsiveness, performance, resource utilization, and unsurprising behavior. Depends on how you define unsurprising behaviour. I use both Mac and PC for various purposes. It is very nice to have the same user interface across both. I was developing a Word Add-In at one point and a major annoyance was relearning how Word worked on Mac.

sofixa 5y ago
Absolutely this. I switch between Android, Linux and Windows daily, and UX consistency is more important than "nativeness". It seems to me that the only people that really make a fuss about this are Apple-only folks ( macOS+iOS).

ondrek 5y ago

Yes, Electron has a huge amount of problems (bundle size, speed, feeling, native APIs..) but all are solvable. With a right approach, some Webassembly improvements and Webkit iterations all could vanish. On the end of the day, Slack and Visual Code Studio are great apps from the user perspective while features, design and business model play much important roles in choosing the software compared to the underline tech stack.

cosmotic 5y ago
Some users may think Slack and VS Code are great apps. I sure don't.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
  It's not great, but every irc client I used is dramatically worse. Vs code is a good editor. Not exceptional, but good. I'd also argue that the need to feel "integrated in the o. s." is actually relevant only for a small subset of apps, anything that's used full screen doesn't need any of that and it's better served by creating its own "mini universe"

deepsun 5y ago

Why don't they write in JavaFX? Those are faster than JavaScript, cross-platform from the roots, but if you want even faster startup, it's compillable with GraalVM. I've heard it does mobile as well with Gluon, but haven't tried.

cosmotic 5y ago
Or Swing! Swing could look native without much effort.

anothernewdude 5y ago

They're easy to shit out and allows developers to punish their userbase for coming up with insane requirements.