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Aside from the improvements to project timelines, Electron and similar products are popular because they improve the developer experience, and in 2022 the devel

by sbarre 5y ago

Aside from the improvements to project timelines, Electron and similar products are popular because they improve the developer experience, and in 2022 the developer experience is what matters the most to many software companies (yes, in many cases ahead of the customer experience). DX directly drives engagement and retention, and good developers are hard to find (and keep!). And like it or not, there are more and more developers entering the industry with web-only training, so we have products that reflect the stack and tooling those developers are most proficient with.

formerly_proven 5y ago
JS DX always seemed really quite bad whenever I looked. A constantly shifting landscape of frameworks and packages where nothing will stand for long before being eroded away.
- yayr 5y ago
  let's see - language: ES / Typescript are quite established - CSS: also quite established - Frameworks: there is still a lot of innovation here, but also React / Vue / Angular are quite established. on that latter part I prefer the innovation. Let's just imagine for a while what UI would look like if we only had Swing (Java) or QT (C++)
  - blub 5y ago
    At least for Qt, the answer's quite simple: you'd have KDE and the associated apps. As for the stability of the front-end ecosystem, it doesn't exist. The many articles that were posted on HN over the years complaining about the endless quagmire of front-end frameworks, libraries and technologies explain this better than I could.
  - jcelerier 5y ago
    > Let's just imagine for a while what UI would look like if we only had Swing (Java) or QT (C++) yes, Telegram looks so bad right ?
    - yayr 5y ago
      if you like the pricing and licensing, functionally QT may be for you. The web frameworks mentioned on the other hand are free to use for everybody and anything.
      - jcelerier 5y ago
        Qt is LGPL. You know what else requires you to respect the LGPL ? Electron becauses it is built mainly on LGPL components (Blink, FFMPEG to name the biggest ones). If you are ok with the license of Electron you are ok with the license of Qt.
        yayr 5y ago
        Electron is MIT licensed. Not LGPL. https://github.com/electron/electron/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/electron/electron/blob/main/LICENSE So everyone can use it without the need to expose his IP.
        jcelerier 5y ago
        The MIT license only covers what Electron adds to Blink (the rendering engine, which is under LGPL). It does not replace all the licenses of the various components used as part of Electron for which you still have to comply. See for instance one of the most core Blink data structures: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/blink/+/refs/heads/main/Source/core/html/HTMLElement.h https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/blink/+/refs/head... That is the exact same license than Qt, you do not need to expose your IP when using it (Tesla used LGPL Qt for their car dashboards and you don't see that IP floating around on the internet)
  - int_19h 5y ago
    > Let's just imagine for a while what UI would look like if we only had Swing (Java) or QT (C++) I can easily imagine that, because that's more or less what we had before Electron. And it was much better, because apps (mostly) looked consistent across the OS, rather than each and every one coming up with its own custom UI theme.
Chris2048 5y ago
> Electron and similar products are popular because they improve the developer experience > more and more developers entering the industry with web-only training aren't these very different things? Is Electron popular because web-skill are so common, or because the dev experience is better - I sceptical of the latter, as I find JS very dependant on framework/ecosystems for compatibility.
- sbarre 5y ago
  Sorry if I implied those were tightly coupled. I do think they are related but more loosely than perhaps I meant, and not exclusively. Electron improves DX for all the usually stated reasons (build once for many platforms, etc) but I do think there is a connection to the fact that a lot of developers out there are learning web tooling, and if a company wants to put out a desktop app in 2022, it's an easier (and therefore better for DX) path to use something like Electron or Tauri - where devs can use the skills they already have - than try to either upskill or hire a team that can build native apps on all your desired platforms.
vp8989 5y ago
It's not just the developer experience, in fact that is probably lower on the priority than you would think. The entire business IME struggles to reason about a product, in the details, that is logically 1 product but physically N products by virtue of all the different target platforms and codebases required.
gitgrump 5y ago
> ... and in 2022 the developer experience is what matters the most to many software companies... This is what happens when you keep lowering the bar, and more and more developers can do less and less.
- berkes 5y ago
  No, this is what happens when supply and demand are way out of balance. There simply aren't enough developers over the entire range, and certainly not enough with decades of experience, for all the work that can be done. Renting additional servers, etc is cheap and easy compared to hiring additional developers. So we all optimize for that.
worik 5y ago
> in 2022 the developer experience is what matters the most to many software companies (yes, in many cases ahead of the customer experience). Not working on iOS

by sbarre 5y ago

formerly_proven 5y ago

JS DX always seemed really quite bad whenever I looked. A constantly shifting landscape of frameworks and packages where nothing will stand for long before being eroded away.

yayr 5y ago
let's see - language: ES / Typescript are quite established - CSS: also quite established - Frameworks: there is still a lot of innovation here, but also React / Vue / Angular are quite established. on that latter part I prefer the innovation. Let's just imagine for a while what UI would look like if we only had Swing (Java) or QT (C++)
- blub 5y ago
  At least for Qt, the answer's quite simple: you'd have KDE and the associated apps. As for the stability of the front-end ecosystem, it doesn't exist. The many articles that were posted on HN over the years complaining about the endless quagmire of front-end frameworks, libraries and technologies explain this better than I could.
- jcelerier 5y ago
  > Let's just imagine for a while what UI would look like if we only had Swing (Java) or QT (C++) yes, Telegram looks so bad right ?
  - yayr 5y ago
    if you like the pricing and licensing, functionally QT may be for you. The web frameworks mentioned on the other hand are free to use for everybody and anything.
    - jcelerier 5y ago
      Qt is LGPL. You know what else requires you to respect the LGPL ? Electron becauses it is built mainly on LGPL components (Blink, FFMPEG to name the biggest ones). If you are ok with the license of Electron you are ok with the license of Qt.
      - yayr 5y ago
        Electron is MIT licensed. Not LGPL. https://github.com/electron/electron/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/electron/electron/blob/main/LICENSE So everyone can use it without the need to expose his IP.
        jcelerier 5y ago
        The MIT license only covers what Electron adds to Blink (the rendering engine, which is under LGPL). It does not replace all the licenses of the various components used as part of Electron for which you still have to comply. See for instance one of the most core Blink data structures: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/blink/+/refs/heads/main/Source/core/html/HTMLElement.h https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/blink/+/refs/head... That is the exact same license than Qt, you do not need to expose your IP when using it (Tesla used LGPL Qt for their car dashboards and you don't see that IP floating around on the internet)
- int_19h 5y ago
  > Let's just imagine for a while what UI would look like if we only had Swing (Java) or QT (C++) I can easily imagine that, because that's more or less what we had before Electron. And it was much better, because apps (mostly) looked consistent across the OS, rather than each and every one coming up with its own custom UI theme.

Chris2048 5y ago

> Electron and similar products are popular because they improve the developer experience > more and more developers entering the industry with web-only training aren't these very different things? Is Electron popular because web-skill are so common, or because the dev experience is better - I sceptical of the latter, as I find JS very dependant on framework/ecosystems for compatibility.

sbarre 5y ago
Sorry if I implied those were tightly coupled. I do think they are related but more loosely than perhaps I meant, and not exclusively. Electron improves DX for all the usually stated reasons (build once for many platforms, etc) but I do think there is a connection to the fact that a lot of developers out there are learning web tooling, and if a company wants to put out a desktop app in 2022, it's an easier (and therefore better for DX) path to use something like Electron or Tauri - where devs can use the skills they already have - than try to either upskill or hire a team that can build native apps on all your desired platforms.

vp8989 5y ago

It's not just the developer experience, in fact that is probably lower on the priority than you would think. The entire business IME struggles to reason about a product, in the details, that is logically 1 product but physically N products by virtue of all the different target platforms and codebases required.

gitgrump 5y ago

> ... and in 2022 the developer experience is what matters the most to many software companies... This is what happens when you keep lowering the bar, and more and more developers can do less and less.

berkes 5y ago
No, this is what happens when supply and demand are way out of balance. There simply aren't enough developers over the entire range, and certainly not enough with decades of experience, for all the work that can be done. Renting additional servers, etc is cheap and easy compared to hiring additional developers. So we all optimize for that.

worik 5y ago

> in 2022 the developer experience is what matters the most to many software companies (yes, in many cases ahead of the customer experience). Not working on iOS