5 ms·

> Building cross-platform GUIs, with Electron How about no. I so want this abomination of a technology uninvented.

by grishka 5y ago

shrimp_emoji 5y ago
But it's the only reason Discord, Slack, VS Code, and other apps exist on operating systems other than Windows/MacOS.
- grishka 5y ago
  Tbh the world would've been better off if these apps didn't exist. Especially VS Code.
  - adwn 5y ago
    > Tbh the world would've been better off if these apps didn't exist. Especially VS Code. You're confusing "I personally don't like X" with "the world is better off without X".
  - shrimp_emoji 5y ago
    >Especially VS Code. Why? :c The next best thing is Atom. And, tragically, Atom is way worse. (Believe me, I wanted it to win the hackable-lite-IDE war, but... it didn't.) I don't like Microsoft, but VS Code won. Although, technically, I use "Code - OSS", which is the no-proprietary-code version.
    - grishka 5y ago
      Atom is also Electron-based. Why Electron text editors at all? I personally use Sublime and vim and don't even consider the electron ones.
      - shrimp_emoji 5y ago
        If Sublime is as good, then you got me. :p (I can't say; I still need to try it.) I love Kate, although it's less configurable/powerful than Code/Atom, but it's Linux-only. As to vim, I use it for quick things, but I'm not hardcore enough to feel comfortable with editing in a terminal and having to re-memorize how to highlight and copy-paste text.
- dysoco 5y ago
  Those are built by large teams with a lot of backing, and still suffer from many issues (mainly performance; Slack crawls very badly, VSCode and Discord not so much); I think it's gotten easier but still wouldn't call it "easy".
  - grishka 5y ago
    Yeah. Slack and Discord sure have enough resources to build three dedicated native apps for macOS, Windows, and Linux. Slack has been through several full rewrites yet still works terrible. At this point it must be nothing but stubbornness. It's definitely not an informed engineering decision.
    - dmitriid 5y ago
      > Slack and Discord sure have enough resources to build three dedicated native apps for macOS, Windows, and Linux. Those "insanely complex apps" are... nothing but virtual lists with text and some images. You know that even first-year comp-sci students are given harder tasks?
    - paulgb 5y ago
      > It's definitely not an informed engineering decision. I think it's more likely that they are evaluating the engineering decision by different criteria than you do. The people in most organizations that make the Slack buying decision probably don't know what Electron is. And frankly, Electron Slack works just fine on any modern Windows/Mac business laptop I've used it on.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  The reason being those are proprietary tools.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
I really don’t care at all about the resource usage or speed of Electron apps in 2022. Any semi-modern PC has no problem running Electron apps. Download sizes aren’t an issue with modern internet speeds. It doesn’t make sense to try to optimize for people with the slowest systems when everything is only getting faster.
- grishka 5y ago
  A fast CPU and plentiful RAM isn't a license to not optimize your code. A fast internet connection isn't a license to not optimize your binary size.
- sharikous 5y ago
  Even in the sort of modern systems available to wealthy developers try to run more than two Electron apps at a time and tell me if you don't feel the slugginess
  - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    > try to run more than two Electron apps at a time and tell me if you don't feel the slugginess I run more than two Electron apps at a time and everything is fine. Unless you’re running ancient hardware with 4GB of RAM and trying to load up many intensive applications (Electron or otherwise) it’s not a problem. If anything gets “sluggish” then you’re probably swapping, but it’s difficult to actually reach that point with just two Electron apps.
    - anthk 5y ago
- tomjen3 5y ago
  I keep hearing that argument, but I also dropped Evernote for Apple notes because Evernote was too slow, even on my M1 mac. So there is definitely such a thing as optimizing your programs.
adwn 5y ago
Then create an open source cross-platform GUI framework/toolkit that's technologically superior to Electron and also at least as easy and convenient to use and deploy, and people will dump Electron in droves. I mean, please do! I would be delighted about an efficient, cross-platform, cross-language, convenient GUI toolkit. But I'm not holding my breath, and I'm tired of people complaining about Electron without offering an alternative that's superior along all relevant axes.
- grishka 5y ago
  Cross-platform GUIs shouldn't exist. That's it. They always inevitably are worse then native ones.
  - adwn 5y ago
    You're falling for the "perfect is the enemy of good" fallacy.
    - grishka 5y ago
      I'm just not a fan of half-measures. Especially ones that stick in people's minds as an acceptable way of doing things as opposed to rapid prototyping kind of deal.
  - stargrazer 5y ago
    It is as thought browser/javascript is the only thing out there now. Or at least appears to be implied in the comments. Just wanted to state that in other worlds, like C++, there exist tools like wxWidgets which provide cross platform GUI.
    - grishka 5y ago
      I know, of course. But at least on macOS, I can usually instantly tell when something is using a cross-platform UI library. Even if controls look native, they're usually laid out wrong and don't follow platform's conventions. There are examples of the opposite, of course. IntelliJ IDEs, despite using modified Swing GUI, feel native-ish to me because Jetbrains put in enough effort to replicate macOS native behaviors.
dang 5y ago
Please don't take HN threads on repetitive flamewar tangents. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
indymike 5y ago
> I so want this abomination of a technology uninvented. Good enough beats perfect almost every time. The real fail is that the major desktop OSes have spent the last 20 years jockeying for a monopoly on how software is made on and distributed their platforms. Apple and MS (and even the Linux desktops to a lesser degree) want me to have to build and maintain completely separate apps for their platforms to unlock all of the capability in their GUI. You know what I want as a user? I want to be able to buy Affinity Designer and run in on whatever device I have. I don't want to care about Mac, Windows, Linux Chromebook or whatever. I would love to have some real Adobe apps on Linux. As a software developer, it's about time that we stop having the native vs. whatever universal GUI layer debate, too. I've never seen a single ticket for an Electron app where the user was reporting that my app wasn't MacOS-y or Windows-y enough. I have seen plenty of tickets with native apps where something isn't right with the clipboard, print menu or or some component wouldn't correctly embed on a paste.
- grishka 5y ago
  Almost everyone is making native mobile apps — two copies of the same thing, for Android and iOS — but for desktop, it's suddenly something infeasible? Why so? It has always been other way around in my mind — my phone is an auxiliary limited communication device that's awkward to type on. Yet for almost every IT company with a mainstream product, phones are first-class, and computers are an afterthought. How so?
  - indymike 5y ago
    More users.

> Building cross-platform GUIs, with Electron How about no. I so want this abomination of a technology uninvented.

shrimp_emoji 5y ago

But it's the only reason Discord, Slack, VS Code, and other apps exist on operating systems other than Windows/MacOS.

grishka 5y ago
Tbh the world would've been better off if these apps didn't exist. Especially VS Code.
- adwn 5y ago
  > Tbh the world would've been better off if these apps didn't exist. Especially VS Code. You're confusing "I personally don't like X" with "the world is better off without X".
- shrimp_emoji 5y ago
  >Especially VS Code. Why? :c The next best thing is Atom. And, tragically, Atom is way worse. (Believe me, I wanted it to win the hackable-lite-IDE war, but... it didn't.) I don't like Microsoft, but VS Code won. Although, technically, I use "Code - OSS", which is the no-proprietary-code version.
  - grishka 5y ago
    Atom is also Electron-based. Why Electron text editors at all? I personally use Sublime and vim and don't even consider the electron ones.
    - shrimp_emoji 5y ago
      If Sublime is as good, then you got me. :p (I can't say; I still need to try it.) I love Kate, although it's less configurable/powerful than Code/Atom, but it's Linux-only. As to vim, I use it for quick things, but I'm not hardcore enough to feel comfortable with editing in a terminal and having to re-memorize how to highlight and copy-paste text.
dysoco 5y ago
Those are built by large teams with a lot of backing, and still suffer from many issues (mainly performance; Slack crawls very badly, VSCode and Discord not so much); I think it's gotten easier but still wouldn't call it "easy".
- grishka 5y ago
  Yeah. Slack and Discord sure have enough resources to build three dedicated native apps for macOS, Windows, and Linux. Slack has been through several full rewrites yet still works terrible. At this point it must be nothing but stubbornness. It's definitely not an informed engineering decision.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    > Slack and Discord sure have enough resources to build three dedicated native apps for macOS, Windows, and Linux. Those "insanely complex apps" are... nothing but virtual lists with text and some images. You know that even first-year comp-sci students are given harder tasks?
  - paulgb 5y ago
    > It's definitely not an informed engineering decision. I think it's more likely that they are evaluating the engineering decision by different criteria than you do. The people in most organizations that make the Slack buying decision probably don't know what Electron is. And frankly, Electron Slack works just fine on any modern Windows/Mac business laptop I've used it on.
rightbyte 5y ago
The reason being those are proprietary tools.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

I really don’t care at all about the resource usage or speed of Electron apps in 2022. Any semi-modern PC has no problem running Electron apps. Download sizes aren’t an issue with modern internet speeds. It doesn’t make sense to try to optimize for people with the slowest systems when everything is only getting faster.

grishka 5y ago
A fast CPU and plentiful RAM isn't a license to not optimize your code. A fast internet connection isn't a license to not optimize your binary size.
sharikous 5y ago
Even in the sort of modern systems available to wealthy developers try to run more than two Electron apps at a time and tell me if you don't feel the slugginess
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > try to run more than two Electron apps at a time and tell me if you don't feel the slugginess I run more than two Electron apps at a time and everything is fine. Unless you’re running ancient hardware with 4GB of RAM and trying to load up many intensive applications (Electron or otherwise) it’s not a problem. If anything gets “sluggish” then you’re probably swapping, but it’s difficult to actually reach that point with just two Electron apps.
  - anthk 5y ago
tomjen3 5y ago
I keep hearing that argument, but I also dropped Evernote for Apple notes because Evernote was too slow, even on my M1 mac. So there is definitely such a thing as optimizing your programs.

adwn 5y ago

Then create an open source cross-platform GUI framework/toolkit that's technologically superior to Electron and also at least as easy and convenient to use and deploy, and people will dump Electron in droves. I mean, please do! I would be delighted about an efficient, cross-platform, cross-language, convenient GUI toolkit. But I'm not holding my breath, and I'm tired of people complaining about Electron without offering an alternative that's superior along all relevant axes.

grishka 5y ago
Cross-platform GUIs shouldn't exist. That's it. They always inevitably are worse then native ones.
- adwn 5y ago
  You're falling for the "perfect is the enemy of good" fallacy.
  - grishka 5y ago
    I'm just not a fan of half-measures. Especially ones that stick in people's minds as an acceptable way of doing things as opposed to rapid prototyping kind of deal.
- stargrazer 5y ago
  It is as thought browser/javascript is the only thing out there now. Or at least appears to be implied in the comments. Just wanted to state that in other worlds, like C++, there exist tools like wxWidgets which provide cross platform GUI.
  - grishka 5y ago
    I know, of course. But at least on macOS, I can usually instantly tell when something is using a cross-platform UI library. Even if controls look native, they're usually laid out wrong and don't follow platform's conventions. There are examples of the opposite, of course. IntelliJ IDEs, despite using modified Swing GUI, feel native-ish to me because Jetbrains put in enough effort to replicate macOS native behaviors.

dang 5y ago

Please don't take HN threads on repetitive flamewar tangents. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

indymike 5y ago

> I so want this abomination of a technology uninvented. Good enough beats perfect almost every time. The real fail is that the major desktop OSes have spent the last 20 years jockeying for a monopoly on how software is made on and distributed their platforms. Apple and MS (and even the Linux desktops to a lesser degree) want me to have to build and maintain completely separate apps for their platforms to unlock all of the capability in their GUI. You know what I want as a user? I want to be able to buy Affinity Designer and run in on whatever device I have. I don't want to care about Mac, Windows, Linux Chromebook or whatever. I would love to have some real Adobe apps on Linux. As a software developer, it's about time that we stop having the native vs. whatever universal GUI layer debate, too. I've never seen a single ticket for an Electron app where the user was reporting that my app wasn't MacOS-y or Windows-y enough. I have seen plenty of tickets with native apps where something isn't right with the clipboard, print menu or or some component wouldn't correctly embed on a paste.

grishka 5y ago
Almost everyone is making native mobile apps — two copies of the same thing, for Android and iOS — but for desktop, it's suddenly something infeasible? Why so? It has always been other way around in my mind — my phone is an auxiliary limited communication device that's awkward to type on. Yet for almost every IT company with a mainstream product, phones are first-class, and computers are an afterthought. How so?
- indymike 5y ago
  More users.