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The problem is that Electron applications don't just eat lots of RAM and CPU - they also have significantly larger installer sizes - usually in the hundreds of
by fouric 5y ago
The problem is that Electron applications don't just eat lots of RAM and CPU - they also have significantly larger installer sizes - usually in the hundreds of megabytes, it seems. (Balena's seems to be 140 MB, compared with 12MB-1MB for alternatives[1])
For small, one-off utilities, you might not care about CPU or memory usage - but you might want to minimize the installer/binary size because you're using it for such a short period of time or a specific task.
For instance, the Windirstat installer is 630 Kb, which is appropriate, because I use it fairly rarely. Want to guess how large the smallest Electron application would be?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28905752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28905752
- marcodiego 5y ago140 MB is not much when storage has been in the multi hundred GB for more than a decade. These days, a 1TB ssd is affordable.
- ale42 5y agoThere are comments elsewhere in the thread about this, but storage is not the only thing in play here: bandwidth (even in modern countries some rural places have very slow connections), energy use (it takes proportionally more electricity to transfer 140 MB vs. 1 MB, and running an UI that basically needs a web browser in the background is also a waste of electricity). Moreover in some countries a 1 TB SSD is not exactly affordable. And also in western economies, it might not be affordable for some people.