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I believe this community fully understands everything in your post, and believes Electron is a bad decision anyways. Why? Because when we're talking about these

I believe this community fully understands everything in your post, and believes Electron is a bad decision anyways. Why? Because when we're talking about these things, we're *users*. As a user, I don't care how easy it was for a developer to write the software. I care that it respects common UI conventions. I care that it's secure. I care that it doesn't use unnecessary resources. I care that it integrates well with the rest of my operating system. I care that it supports i18n and accessibility controls. Electron is approachable because it eschews all of these things in favor of convenience to the developer, but these things are important to the user, and the user is who we should care about. We write software to serve users. We need to be asking ourselves if the benefit of the barrier to entry on producing applications be so low as to give up all the benefits of more traditional ways of application development (I'd argue no) and whether it's worth trying to bridge the approachability divide with easier APIs for developers and making the development experience as user friendly as possible (I'd argue yes).

friedman23 5y ago
> As a user, I don't care how easy it was for a developer to write the software Most users only care about features which is directly connected to speed of software development. You are speaking for all users but I'm certain that things you are saying are not true for example, users don't care if an app uses "unnecessary resources" unless it's fast enough. Users definitely do not care about UI conventions, most probably don't even know there are conventions. As for security, if you are using anything written in C or C++ you already lost there.
- JCWasmx86 5y ago
  I think it is already about such basic, intuitive things like the order of buttons, is it [OK][Cancel] or [Cancel][OK]? Will pressing Alt+F4 close the entire window? (See MS Teams, if you open the settings dialog and and to close it). You can find probably dozens of such examples
- dumpsterdiver 5y ago
  > Most users only care about features which is directly connected to speed of software development. Considering that the average user refuses to wait longer than 2 seconds for a webpage to load, it's clear that people do care about more than just features. To dismiss that reality seems like a very "let them eat cake" attitude to take. Users care very much when an application makes their computer run sluggishly, and despite your disbelief, users actually do notice when an application looks different from their other applications, and they may or may not care about that. You say that users don't even know that there are UI conventions, but let me ask you this: if you created an application on a mac and moved the three buttons to close/minimize/maximize the application window from the upper left to the lower right, what percentage of users do you think would notice that UI convention change? I'm willing to bet about 100% of them. UI conventions are more than just a pretty facade, they provide hints about functionality using symbols and patterns that we've grown accustomed to, and don't even think about consciously. As for security, it's never a good look to point out how bad one thing is to justify another thing being bad also. Just because we've already lost doesn't mean we should give up.
asoneth 5y ago
> As a user, I don't care how easy it was for a developer to write the software. Users care transitively since there is a correlation between the amount of effort it takes to write a piece of software and the price required to sustain the development of said software. In my experience, many users care more about price than consistency or speed. In cases where users are willing to pay more (such as with some professional software) you'll often find a lot more native applications.
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
> I care that it doesn't use unnecessary resources. I have never heard a non nerd say anything like that.
- jmfldn 5y ago
  Funnily enough programmers care about resource usage yes. Why would the user care, it's not their job? You're glad that the person who engineers your car cares about resource usage I'm sure!
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
    > You're glad that the person who engineers your car cares about resource usage I'm sure! Is that necessarily true? Fuel economy is only where it is because of government regulation.
    - jmfldn 5y ago
      I think it's partly true at least yep. At least in the mind of any engineer worth their salt. Any problem is solved with tradeoffs though, eg. no regulatatory compulsion to achieve some mandated benchmark might lead to less of a focus on optimising something to cut costs. It's not a really a zero sum thing and is very context dependent I'd imagine.
- pgcj_poster 5y ago
  People who aren't "nerds" don't know whether an application is using unnecessary resources. They just think their computer is slow and they need a new one.
- mcphage 5y ago
  You’ve never heard a non-nerd complain that their computer is sluggish or unresponsive? Or that they can’t figure out how to do something because the way they’ve always done it no longer works on some new app?
caconym_ 5y ago
As a user I care about having the features I want, working the way they're supposed to. And, as someone who uses all of Windows, macOS, and Linux in a typical day, I want these features to work consistently across platforms. There is really nothing worse than a "cross platform" application that fucks you when you try to move back and forth, and the Electron applications I've used consistently do better at this than anything else. If Electron itself is the reason these teams are able to focus on features and let compatibility "just work" for the most part, that is IMO a huge point in its favor. More broadly, I think the popularity of Electron apps is evidence that users are actually very happy with them. There's an argument to be made that modern software is in general bad for users, but plenty of Electron applications (e.g. vscode, Obsidian) are IMO relatively unimpeachable in terms of offering real useful functionality with a minimum of dark patterns and/or other sketchy practices.
- pseudalopex 5y ago
  Using all of Windows, macOS, and Linux in a typical day makes you an extreme outlier. Widely used doesn't mean popular. Teams for example. Many widely used Electron apps are chosen by employers. Or are free and have network effects. Or became dominant as native apps and have a moat. Arq went back to native because users hated the Electron version. Slack users who see Ripcord say the company should hire the developer. I almost never hear anything positive about the Spotify app. Do you claim Electron apps have fewer sketchy practices?
  - caconym_ 5y ago
    > Using all of Windows, macOS, and Linux in a typical day makes you an extreme outlier. Sure? I just wanted to make note of something I think is great and underrated about Electron. The outlier-y nature of that something is exactly why my next paragraph starts with "More broadly,". > Widely used doesn't mean popular. Teams for example. Many widely used Electron apps are chosen by employers. Or are free and have network effects. Or became dominant as native apps and have a moat. > Arq went back to native because users hated the Electron version. Slack users who see Ripcord say the company should hire the developer. I almost never hear anything positive about the Spotify app. VS Code and Discord are the big ones that come to mind as both widely used and widely preferred by their users. I don't think the fact that it's possible to build shitty applications in Electron is very interesting, since that's true of every other UI framework. Neither does the fact that some people actively dislike e.g. VS Code contradict the fact that a great many people like it very much and independently choose to use it. > Do you claim Electron apps have fewer sketchy practices? I'm not sure where you think I claimed this, but since you asked: I think sketchy practices are common throughout the consumer software industry, and I don't think there's anything about Electron that forces developers using it to implement sketchy practices. If they do, that's on them. And since Electron is so common in consumer software these days, I'd caution you to remember that correlation does not imply causation.
deleted 5y ago
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friedman23 5y ago

> As a user, I don't care how easy it was for a developer to write the software Most users only care about features which is directly connected to speed of software development. You are speaking for all users but I'm certain that things you are saying are not true for example, users don't care if an app uses "unnecessary resources" unless it's fast enough. Users definitely do not care about UI conventions, most probably don't even know there are conventions. As for security, if you are using anything written in C or C++ you already lost there.

JCWasmx86 5y ago
I think it is already about such basic, intuitive things like the order of buttons, is it [OK][Cancel] or [Cancel][OK]? Will pressing Alt+F4 close the entire window? (See MS Teams, if you open the settings dialog and and to close it). You can find probably dozens of such examples
dumpsterdiver 5y ago
> Most users only care about features which is directly connected to speed of software development. Considering that the average user refuses to wait longer than 2 seconds for a webpage to load, it's clear that people do care about more than just features. To dismiss that reality seems like a very "let them eat cake" attitude to take. Users care very much when an application makes their computer run sluggishly, and despite your disbelief, users actually do notice when an application looks different from their other applications, and they may or may not care about that. You say that users don't even know that there are UI conventions, but let me ask you this: if you created an application on a mac and moved the three buttons to close/minimize/maximize the application window from the upper left to the lower right, what percentage of users do you think would notice that UI convention change? I'm willing to bet about 100% of them. UI conventions are more than just a pretty facade, they provide hints about functionality using symbols and patterns that we've grown accustomed to, and don't even think about consciously. As for security, it's never a good look to point out how bad one thing is to justify another thing being bad also. Just because we've already lost doesn't mean we should give up.

asoneth 5y ago

> As a user, I don't care how easy it was for a developer to write the software. Users care transitively since there is a correlation between the amount of effort it takes to write a piece of software and the price required to sustain the development of said software. In my experience, many users care more about price than consistency or speed. In cases where users are willing to pay more (such as with some professional software) you'll often find a lot more native applications.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

> I care that it doesn't use unnecessary resources. I have never heard a non nerd say anything like that.

jmfldn 5y ago
Funnily enough programmers care about resource usage yes. Why would the user care, it's not their job? You're glad that the person who engineers your car cares about resource usage I'm sure!
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  > You're glad that the person who engineers your car cares about resource usage I'm sure! Is that necessarily true? Fuel economy is only where it is because of government regulation.
  - jmfldn 5y ago
    I think it's partly true at least yep. At least in the mind of any engineer worth their salt. Any problem is solved with tradeoffs though, eg. no regulatatory compulsion to achieve some mandated benchmark might lead to less of a focus on optimising something to cut costs. It's not a really a zero sum thing and is very context dependent I'd imagine.
pgcj_poster 5y ago
People who aren't "nerds" don't know whether an application is using unnecessary resources. They just think their computer is slow and they need a new one.
mcphage 5y ago
You’ve never heard a non-nerd complain that their computer is sluggish or unresponsive? Or that they can’t figure out how to do something because the way they’ve always done it no longer works on some new app?

caconym_ 5y ago

As a user I care about having the features I want, working the way they're supposed to. And, as someone who uses all of Windows, macOS, and Linux in a typical day, I want these features to work consistently across platforms. There is really nothing worse than a "cross platform" application that fucks you when you try to move back and forth, and the Electron applications I've used consistently do better at this than anything else. If Electron itself is the reason these teams are able to focus on features and let compatibility "just work" for the most part, that is IMO a huge point in its favor. More broadly, I think the popularity of Electron apps is evidence that users are actually very happy with them. There's an argument to be made that modern software is in general bad for users, but plenty of Electron applications (e.g. vscode, Obsidian) are IMO relatively unimpeachable in terms of offering real useful functionality with a minimum of dark patterns and/or other sketchy practices.

pseudalopex 5y ago
Using all of Windows, macOS, and Linux in a typical day makes you an extreme outlier. Widely used doesn't mean popular. Teams for example. Many widely used Electron apps are chosen by employers. Or are free and have network effects. Or became dominant as native apps and have a moat. Arq went back to native because users hated the Electron version. Slack users who see Ripcord say the company should hire the developer. I almost never hear anything positive about the Spotify app. Do you claim Electron apps have fewer sketchy practices?
- caconym_ 5y ago
  > Using all of Windows, macOS, and Linux in a typical day makes you an extreme outlier. Sure? I just wanted to make note of something I think is great and underrated about Electron. The outlier-y nature of that something is exactly why my next paragraph starts with "More broadly,". > Widely used doesn't mean popular. Teams for example. Many widely used Electron apps are chosen by employers. Or are free and have network effects. Or became dominant as native apps and have a moat. > Arq went back to native because users hated the Electron version. Slack users who see Ripcord say the company should hire the developer. I almost never hear anything positive about the Spotify app. VS Code and Discord are the big ones that come to mind as both widely used and widely preferred by their users. I don't think the fact that it's possible to build shitty applications in Electron is very interesting, since that's true of every other UI framework. Neither does the fact that some people actively dislike e.g. VS Code contradict the fact that a great many people like it very much and independently choose to use it. > Do you claim Electron apps have fewer sketchy practices? I'm not sure where you think I claimed this, but since you asked: I think sketchy practices are common throughout the consumer software industry, and I don't think there's anything about Electron that forces developers using it to implement sketchy practices. If they do, that's on them. And since Electron is so common in consumer software these days, I'd caution you to remember that correlation does not imply causation.

deleted 5y ago

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