10 ms·

Electron is absolutely unbeatable when it comes to being cross-platform. Because its core is the same as Chromium, every time Chromium, the biggest browser engi

by Otek 5y ago

Electron is absolutely unbeatable when it comes to being cross-platform. Because its core is the same as Chromium, every time Chromium, the biggest browser engine without question, is updated to run better, more stable on every platform, and big companies pump millions of dollars into it, Electron gets it "for free". Very hard to compete with that. Additionally, writing Electron applications has a relatively low entry point because it resembles writing web pages to some extent.

blorenz 5y ago
- F117-DK 5y ago
  why?
  - blorenz 5y ago
    Wow I didn’t mean for that to be a controversial response. My apologies. The parent comment referred to Electron being “absolutely unbeatable”. That is my belief of not being in the spirit of a hacker or have the willingness to disrupt the status quo. We have accepted Electron’s glaring shortcomings as a whole and consistently complain about it. There are projects out there that try to satisfy these points in each of them has particular trade offs. I hope to see these contenders rise. One thing I do know from my time in tech is not to get too complacent with the single tech who monopolies a problem space. Innovations will prevail.
- avazhi 5y ago
  - danlugo92 5y ago
    Just ignore em
  - ostenning 5y ago
    Your response seems even worse
    - avazhi 5y ago
      I expressed an opinion and then gave the reasons why I have it. Not sure you understood my initial comment.
      - 28304283409234 5y ago
        You used flamable wording.
      - Ourgon 5y ago
        Cut it out with the ad-hominems or move to Reddit.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - ostenning 5y ago
        You edited every comment multiple times downplaying your abusive comments, no point arguing with a troll
        avazhi 5y ago
        I edited two comments to give the original commenter the benefit of the doubt and to be less inflammatory. Interesting that you think that's trolling. Good day.
        dkersten 5y ago
        I edit most of my comments multiple times, until I'm happy with their tone, content and grammar. I do proof read them before posting, but things still slip through often, especially when its a comment with a more combative tone. Sometimes it takes a little time to tone it down and bring it more inline with my intent, especially if I didn't realize how combative it was originally. I think that's pretty normal and reasonable and certainly not trolling.
  - blorenz 5y ago
    You are right. I posted a follow up response under another comment here. Thank you for holding me accountable.
    - avazhi 5y ago
      Thanks for that, and I agree with you about something being considered 'unbeatable' and the industry becoming complacent about it. I think the original poster probably meant that it's only currently unbeatable, not unbeatable in perpetuity. At any rate, I definitely agree that the hacking mentality is inherently subversive and rebellious vis-a-vis monopolists (and just in general, for the intellectual challenge and bragging rights), and for whatever it's worth I hate Electron for the same reason as OP - it's slow and the battery life sucks (even on an M1 Pro).
- refactor_master 5y ago
  I’d argue that’s exactly what a hacker is. You’re doing something that works and serves a purpose, even though it might not be pretty.
  - karmakaze 5y ago
    The person who made and first used Electron is a hacker. Everyone now is merely taking the path of least resistance, which is not what a hacker is.
    - ironmagma 5y ago
      Taking the path of least resistance is very much in the hacker spirit. "I just hacked it together with what I had." Reinventing the wheel, that's for entrepreneurs.
- infinitezest 5y ago
  It provides reasonable explanations for the question that was originally asked. Efficiency is being traded for portability. We may not like that but plenty of people are using app built an electron everyday and a lot of those people aren't even paying attention to how much RAM it uses.
  - greggsy 5y ago
    Additionally, there’s a point where the user’s desired use case is just isn’t reasonable. 4gb RAM is very little to work with, particularly in a world where 8gb is the norm.
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      You do realise that sone people live in poorer countries and can't afford newest and latest?
    - xigoi 5y ago
      Yeah, fuck poor people! It's their fault that they can't afford to buy a new expensive computer every year!
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    Users do notice things like "my computer heats up and the fans are loud when I use this app" and "my computer slows down if I open this app with other apps already open".
- evocatus 5y ago
  It's too late. The dilution of the hacker community has crossed a critical threshold.
farseer 5y ago
This! An arrangement unlikely to change anytime soon.
gmueckl 5y ago
This means that software development is a failing discipline. All we can do is to come up with ever more ridiculous layers of complexity on top of mindboggling complexity, recursively. All of this is totally self-inflicted. The problem domains that our software needs to deal with are complex enough. But we keep piling on shit of our own making. If this is what software development has become, then there's no way it won't end in total and utter disaster when people start to recognize the already all too common piss poor products that barely manage to do the absolute minimum and rebel against them. It may not be marketing department of the Sirius Cybernetic Corporation who'll be lined up against the wall first, but software developers when the revolution comes. Crap. I'm now old enough to remember when computers were fast. :(
- cyanydeez 5y ago
  Yawn. What's important to the majority of computing tasks is boring, doesn't need super computer sppeds or IoT sized products This lament is really narrow sighted. Resources are cheap for the majority
  - wtetzner 5y ago
    > Resources are cheap for the majority Sure, if you're OK with running only one or two applications at a time. Also, if applications were written with care toward performance/resources, imagine how much more those applications could do?
  - paulryanrogers 5y ago
    This doesn't scale though. My mouse needs an always running Electron app. And the app suspends itself somehow everytime my computer is locked or the screen sleeps. This leads to a 30 second wait while it awakens when I get back. Now if every device and app is built on Electron with such minimal effort then I'm not sure even resurrecting Moore's Law could keep up.
    - chestnuttrees 5y ago
      I mean yeah you buy bad products and they’ll be bad… They’d manage to fuck that up in native land as well. Seems orthogonal.
pschastain 5y ago
And what happens when Google decides to move in a different direction and drop development of Chromium? It's highly unlikely but Google does have a track record of dropping projects and products for the most obscure and obtuse of reasons.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  We'll just go back to KHTML.
- farseer 5y ago
  Fork Chromium?
  - krapp 5y ago
    I've been assured by Hacker News that this is effectively impossible for any entity without Google's resources or budget.
    - farseer 5y ago
      True that. I think a large corp such as Microsoft would gladly sponsor Chromium were Google were to abandon it. It is also suicidal to fork the Linux kernel but you do it if the necessity arises such as Android.
      - paulryanrogers 5y ago
        Isn't Android striving to minimize its changes to Linux kernel?
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      I mean, Microsoft tried to build a Chrome killer (Edge) put real money and talent behind it, and failed. So now Edge is a Chromium fork, which is sad.
      - raydev 5y ago
chakkepolja 5y ago
I think this answer does not emphasize the main point enough. It's not about the quality of chromium at all, only ubiquity. Web developers are cheap, its easy to port website's code and slap UI on it. That is the _main_ point. The manager for whom electron is an option is least bothered by chrome being technically solid foundation. His motive is using cheap webshits and ticking a box. Doesn't help other cross platform toolkits are either outdated, or immature, or in a weird position like Qt. Our industry always optimized for some sort of local maxima. From a purely engineering perspective, scripting languages, or hacky UNIX/C glue, or weak typing, would not have made sense at all. But they sticked, because they fulfilled immediate commercial needs. I don't know if this phenomenon is prevalent in other disciplines of engineering or there is a common name for it.
- bsder 5y ago
  > It's not about the quality of chromium at all, only ubiquity. Bingo. I don't understand why people keep failing to learn this lesson. Java became popular because Sun drove it to become default installed on lots of enterprise computers. Python later became popular because if you had a standalone computer you had "batteries included" so you had the same stuff always installed. And what people keep forgetting is that Electron is the low friction way of supporting Linux and macOS--whom most programmers would mostly like to ignore. If you write your app in Electron, you write on Windows, claim you support Linux and macOS and then ignore them.
  - badpun 5y ago
    Java became popular on server side because alternatives were much worse (either lacking static typing like Perl or harder to develop like C++) AND Java was cross-platform. Back in those times, servers weren’t just x86+Linux boxes they are today, but had distinct os-es and CPU architectures.
- wiggledrome 5y ago
  Webshit? really dude. I started off as a desktop publisher, moved up to graphic designer in the creative hub of my country, doing 3d design and video editing, from there I moved to animation and then to user interface design. throwing around 'webshit' is elitist at best and derogatory at worst. As if lack mental ability to do your job? Can you do mine? You dont see any of us throwing around 'backend-bellend' when talking about fellow programmers. respect the field, we are all in it.
bsder 5y ago
I would go further in that desktop apps are now "second class" citizens so Electron is "good enough". Everybody who can solve their task using a web browser will do so. If they can't, then they will switch to Electron grudgingly. And only if that doesn't work will they do something else.
johnisgood 5y ago
Tcl/Tk was cross-platform 15 years ago, and you could make it really pretty. It is lightweight, too. Did people forget?
Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
I think chasing after 'Pretty UI' in the web have resulted in making customers falsely equate pretty/shiny UI with high quality/reputation. Then the software developer have no other choice but to replicate the same web UI/UX on the computer with a browser engine based GUI system like electron. OP, Me and many others here probably wouldn't mind an immediate mode GUI for an app on their computer which consumes very less memory as we know what electron does, But an average consumer couldn't care less about what electron is as long as the software does what it's supposed to do. Then again it didn't start with electron, Java GUI applications would make 32GB memory machine crawl like 4GB anyways. Just run couple of IntelliJ sessions for few days and Linux would suddenly kill Java, IntelliJ, XServer and thereby GNOME shell with it for good measure.

by Otek 5y ago

blorenz 5y ago

F117-DK 5y ago
why?
- blorenz 5y ago
  Wow I didn’t mean for that to be a controversial response. My apologies. The parent comment referred to Electron being “absolutely unbeatable”. That is my belief of not being in the spirit of a hacker or have the willingness to disrupt the status quo. We have accepted Electron’s glaring shortcomings as a whole and consistently complain about it. There are projects out there that try to satisfy these points in each of them has particular trade offs. I hope to see these contenders rise. One thing I do know from my time in tech is not to get too complacent with the single tech who monopolies a problem space. Innovations will prevail.
avazhi 5y ago
- danlugo92 5y ago
  Just ignore em
- ostenning 5y ago
  Your response seems even worse
  - avazhi 5y ago
    I expressed an opinion and then gave the reasons why I have it. Not sure you understood my initial comment.
    - 28304283409234 5y ago
      You used flamable wording.
    - Ourgon 5y ago
      Cut it out with the ad-hominems or move to Reddit.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - ostenning 5y ago
      You edited every comment multiple times downplaying your abusive comments, no point arguing with a troll
      - avazhi 5y ago
        I edited two comments to give the original commenter the benefit of the doubt and to be less inflammatory. Interesting that you think that's trolling. Good day.
      - dkersten 5y ago
        I edit most of my comments multiple times, until I'm happy with their tone, content and grammar. I do proof read them before posting, but things still slip through often, especially when its a comment with a more combative tone. Sometimes it takes a little time to tone it down and bring it more inline with my intent, especially if I didn't realize how combative it was originally. I think that's pretty normal and reasonable and certainly not trolling.
- blorenz 5y ago
  You are right. I posted a follow up response under another comment here. Thank you for holding me accountable.
  - avazhi 5y ago
    Thanks for that, and I agree with you about something being considered 'unbeatable' and the industry becoming complacent about it. I think the original poster probably meant that it's only currently unbeatable, not unbeatable in perpetuity. At any rate, I definitely agree that the hacking mentality is inherently subversive and rebellious vis-a-vis monopolists (and just in general, for the intellectual challenge and bragging rights), and for whatever it's worth I hate Electron for the same reason as OP - it's slow and the battery life sucks (even on an M1 Pro).
refactor_master 5y ago
I’d argue that’s exactly what a hacker is. You’re doing something that works and serves a purpose, even though it might not be pretty.
- karmakaze 5y ago
  The person who made and first used Electron is a hacker. Everyone now is merely taking the path of least resistance, which is not what a hacker is.
  - ironmagma 5y ago
    Taking the path of least resistance is very much in the hacker spirit. "I just hacked it together with what I had." Reinventing the wheel, that's for entrepreneurs.
infinitezest 5y ago
It provides reasonable explanations for the question that was originally asked. Efficiency is being traded for portability. We may not like that but plenty of people are using app built an electron everyday and a lot of those people aren't even paying attention to how much RAM it uses.
- greggsy 5y ago
  Additionally, there’s a point where the user’s desired use case is just isn’t reasonable. 4gb RAM is very little to work with, particularly in a world where 8gb is the norm.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    You do realise that sone people live in poorer countries and can't afford newest and latest?
  - xigoi 5y ago
    Yeah, fuck poor people! It's their fault that they can't afford to buy a new expensive computer every year!
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  Users do notice things like "my computer heats up and the fans are loud when I use this app" and "my computer slows down if I open this app with other apps already open".
evocatus 5y ago
It's too late. The dilution of the hacker community has crossed a critical threshold.

farseer 5y ago

This! An arrangement unlikely to change anytime soon.

gmueckl 5y ago

This means that software development is a failing discipline. All we can do is to come up with ever more ridiculous layers of complexity on top of mindboggling complexity, recursively. All of this is totally self-inflicted. The problem domains that our software needs to deal with are complex enough. But we keep piling on shit of our own making. If this is what software development has become, then there's no way it won't end in total and utter disaster when people start to recognize the already all too common piss poor products that barely manage to do the absolute minimum and rebel against them. It may not be marketing department of the Sirius Cybernetic Corporation who'll be lined up against the wall first, but software developers when the revolution comes. Crap. I'm now old enough to remember when computers were fast. :(

cyanydeez 5y ago
Yawn. What's important to the majority of computing tasks is boring, doesn't need super computer sppeds or IoT sized products This lament is really narrow sighted. Resources are cheap for the majority
- wtetzner 5y ago
  > Resources are cheap for the majority Sure, if you're OK with running only one or two applications at a time. Also, if applications were written with care toward performance/resources, imagine how much more those applications could do?
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  This doesn't scale though. My mouse needs an always running Electron app. And the app suspends itself somehow everytime my computer is locked or the screen sleeps. This leads to a 30 second wait while it awakens when I get back. Now if every device and app is built on Electron with such minimal effort then I'm not sure even resurrecting Moore's Law could keep up.
  - chestnuttrees 5y ago
    I mean yeah you buy bad products and they’ll be bad… They’d manage to fuck that up in native land as well. Seems orthogonal.

pschastain 5y ago

And what happens when Google decides to move in a different direction and drop development of Chromium? It's highly unlikely but Google does have a track record of dropping projects and products for the most obscure and obtuse of reasons.

zozbot234 5y ago
We'll just go back to KHTML.
farseer 5y ago
Fork Chromium?
- krapp 5y ago
  I've been assured by Hacker News that this is effectively impossible for any entity without Google's resources or budget.
  - farseer 5y ago
    True that. I think a large corp such as Microsoft would gladly sponsor Chromium were Google were to abandon it. It is also suicidal to fork the Linux kernel but you do it if the necessity arises such as Android.
    - paulryanrogers 5y ago
      Isn't Android striving to minimize its changes to Linux kernel?
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    I mean, Microsoft tried to build a Chrome killer (Edge) put real money and talent behind it, and failed. So now Edge is a Chromium fork, which is sad.
    - raydev 5y ago

chakkepolja 5y ago

I think this answer does not emphasize the main point enough. It's not about the quality of chromium at all, only ubiquity. Web developers are cheap, its easy to port website's code and slap UI on it. That is the _main_ point. The manager for whom electron is an option is least bothered by chrome being technically solid foundation. His motive is using cheap webshits and ticking a box. Doesn't help other cross platform toolkits are either outdated, or immature, or in a weird position like Qt. Our industry always optimized for some sort of local maxima. From a purely engineering perspective, scripting languages, or hacky UNIX/C glue, or weak typing, would not have made sense at all. But they sticked, because they fulfilled immediate commercial needs. I don't know if this phenomenon is prevalent in other disciplines of engineering or there is a common name for it.

bsder 5y ago
> It's not about the quality of chromium at all, only ubiquity. Bingo. I don't understand why people keep failing to learn this lesson. Java became popular because Sun drove it to become default installed on lots of enterprise computers. Python later became popular because if you had a standalone computer you had "batteries included" so you had the same stuff always installed. And what people keep forgetting is that Electron is the low friction way of supporting Linux and macOS--whom most programmers would mostly like to ignore. If you write your app in Electron, you write on Windows, claim you support Linux and macOS and then ignore them.
- badpun 5y ago
  Java became popular on server side because alternatives were much worse (either lacking static typing like Perl or harder to develop like C++) AND Java was cross-platform. Back in those times, servers weren’t just x86+Linux boxes they are today, but had distinct os-es and CPU architectures.
wiggledrome 5y ago
Webshit? really dude. I started off as a desktop publisher, moved up to graphic designer in the creative hub of my country, doing 3d design and video editing, from there I moved to animation and then to user interface design. throwing around 'webshit' is elitist at best and derogatory at worst. As if lack mental ability to do your job? Can you do mine? You dont see any of us throwing around 'backend-bellend' when talking about fellow programmers. respect the field, we are all in it.

bsder 5y ago

I would go further in that desktop apps are now "second class" citizens so Electron is "good enough". Everybody who can solve their task using a web browser will do so. If they can't, then they will switch to Electron grudgingly. And only if that doesn't work will they do something else.

johnisgood 5y ago

Tcl/Tk was cross-platform 15 years ago, and you could make it really pretty. It is lightweight, too. Did people forget?

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago

I think chasing after 'Pretty UI' in the web have resulted in making customers falsely equate pretty/shiny UI with high quality/reputation. Then the software developer have no other choice but to replicate the same web UI/UX on the computer with a browser engine based GUI system like electron. OP, Me and many others here probably wouldn't mind an immediate mode GUI for an app on their computer which consumes very less memory as we know what electron does, But an average consumer couldn't care less about what electron is as long as the software does what it's supposed to do. Then again it didn't start with electron, Java GUI applications would make 32GB memory machine crawl like 4GB anyways. Just run couple of IntelliJ sessions for few days and Linux would suddenly kill Java, IntelliJ, XServer and thereby GNOME shell with it for good measure.