6 ms·

But outside of the small percentage of technical people who know how inefficient e.g. Discord and Slack are, and how you could replace these applications that t

by mjr00 3y ago

But outside of the small percentage of technical people who know how inefficient e.g. Discord and Slack are, and how you could replace these applications that take 800MB of RAM each with something that took less than 50MB if they weren't using Electron... nobody cares. If people did care, you'd have someone writing a highly optimized chat/voip app from the ground up in Rust and native code for the mobile versions and people switching en masse. But it just hasn't happened, because for 99.999% of the world, they're good enough.

JohnFen 3y ago
I care a lot, but I'm not going to write a good version. Instead, I just don't use those apps (except at work where they force us to use Teams) -- that's a whole lot easier.
- mcronce 3y ago
  I care enough to violate TOS by bridging (some of) them to my Matrix server and chatting through a Matrix client instead. But absolutely not enough to (A) write one, and (B) attempt to acquire market share.
dylan604 3y ago
I don't know that this is accurate either though. Sure, there's as you say a small number of technical people that understand why an app taking 800MB+ of RAM is causing the sluggishness felt by 100% of users. There are other savvy enough people that know that having Slack and/or Discord open causes things to be less snappy. So even if they don't know why, they would also appreciate the rewritten app as much as the rest of us.
- jimmaswell 3y ago
  Discord's never had major performance problems for me, at least compared to anything else like Skype.
- mjr00 3y ago
  Of course if a snappier UI came "for free" nobody would be mad about it. But how many people would actually switch chat apps because of it? Discord and Slack are valued at $15b and $27b respectively; if you could get people to switch to a more efficient program written in native code, you'd become extremely wealthy.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    WARNING: PERSONAL OPINIONS AHEAD!!! If you're a company with a $27b valuation releasing an Electron app, then you're just a shite company. How do you have any self respect at that point. I get being a small team without subject experts in native apps and just need to get something going. If you are a $27b valuation small company we might continue the is Electron still the right choice conversation. I'd also be very curios what your app is doing that a small team can operate it and still be valued so highly. Otherwise, you're just a shite company making shite decisions and have no self respect.
    - HalcyonicStorm 3y ago
      While I agree with you in that we should have more native applications that are more conscious of how much resources they're using, making that transition from Electron to Native is probably not easy and riddled with pitfalls. Unless there's a standard path, how do you sell that to your superiors in the company in terms of opportunity cost?
    - progmetaldev 3y ago
      Would they have gotten there if they started off native? Most definitely it would have taken longer to get to market. If they were to rewrite as a native app, then they would need to at least keep the same features their current user base are used to. Then you're going to start all over with new bugs being found.
      - dylan604 3y ago
        when slack started off, were they a $27b valuation company? no, they were smaller and yes, needed something to get to MVP for getting there. you're saying that after reaching the point of receiving a $27b valuation that they can not afford to hire subject matter experts into delivering a much better tool than the bloated PoC released as a product? seriously?
myaccountonhn 3y ago
It’s extremely wasteful, people buying new phones because their calendar or slack app are sluggish on their 5 year old phone is insane to me. It’s so bad for the environment.
TeeWEE 3y ago
For companies selling hardware with software it does matter. Look at Apple. An iPhone has way less memory than an android and the profit margins are higher for Apple. Apps are running faster on lower hardware. I’d argue that this is a reason why people want iPhone. Good enough is often not good enough.
- danielbln 3y ago
  That's an US centric viewpoint, outside (e.g. Europe) Apple's iPhone matketshare is much, much lower. It's also a little bit like comparing gaming consoles to PCs. Yes, a stable platform with fixed hardware specs is much easier to optimize for than a hodgepodge of devices from various vendors (be that PCs or Android phones).
M95D 3y ago
> nobody cares. I don't agree. Most people don't actually know any better, to be able to care. That includes not just normal users, but programmers, web admins, team leaders and managers too. They never had to unload a TSR because there wasn't enough conventional DOS memory available. They never used Win3.10, where even the button light/shadow colors could be changed, yet fit into 1 MB RAM and 20 MB disk. They never browsed via 3KB/s dialup. Many never saw a website 1.0 without JS. Of them 99.999% never saw a 64K intro/demo. They don't know it's possible. > If people did care, you'd have someone writing a highly optimized chat/voip app from the ground up That does happen, rarely, and even then, it doesn't change the situation. 1) Very very few people are capable of writing apps. Out of them, very very few are capable of writing apps, optimized or not, that don't import the entire internet as a dependency. That's because that's how they were educated: "don't waste time rewriting code", "you'll repeat the mistakes", and other BS arguments that lead to nodejs and other monstrosities. 2) Those very few people are the same ones that actually wrote Discord, Slack, Teams. Most of them want to finish quickly and jump ASAP to the next big fancy project that caught their interest. So they import the entire internet as a dependency instead of writing again a 2-line function. These are the people that didn't care. You won't see anymore people like Christian Ghisler who write and maintain some piece of software for their entire life. 3) Someone recently wrote a Windows terminal app faster, smaller, better than the official, just as a tech demo. Most people (99%) won't find out about it. I'm sure there are Teams alternatives. Nobody finds out about them because Google and M$ control what everyone sees.

by mjr00 3y ago

JohnFen 3y ago

I care a lot, but I'm not going to write a good version. Instead, I just don't use those apps (except at work where they force us to use Teams) -- that's a whole lot easier.

mcronce 3y ago
I care enough to violate TOS by bridging (some of) them to my Matrix server and chatting through a Matrix client instead. But absolutely not enough to (A) write one, and (B) attempt to acquire market share.

dylan604 3y ago

I don't know that this is accurate either though. Sure, there's as you say a small number of technical people that understand why an app taking 800MB+ of RAM is causing the sluggishness felt by 100% of users. There are other savvy enough people that know that having Slack and/or Discord open causes things to be less snappy. So even if they don't know why, they would also appreciate the rewritten app as much as the rest of us.

jimmaswell 3y ago
Discord's never had major performance problems for me, at least compared to anything else like Skype.
mjr00 3y ago
Of course if a snappier UI came "for free" nobody would be mad about it. But how many people would actually switch chat apps because of it? Discord and Slack are valued at $15b and $27b respectively; if you could get people to switch to a more efficient program written in native code, you'd become extremely wealthy.
- dylan604 3y ago
  WARNING: PERSONAL OPINIONS AHEAD!!! If you're a company with a $27b valuation releasing an Electron app, then you're just a shite company. How do you have any self respect at that point. I get being a small team without subject experts in native apps and just need to get something going. If you are a $27b valuation small company we might continue the is Electron still the right choice conversation. I'd also be very curios what your app is doing that a small team can operate it and still be valued so highly. Otherwise, you're just a shite company making shite decisions and have no self respect.
  - HalcyonicStorm 3y ago
    While I agree with you in that we should have more native applications that are more conscious of how much resources they're using, making that transition from Electron to Native is probably not easy and riddled with pitfalls. Unless there's a standard path, how do you sell that to your superiors in the company in terms of opportunity cost?
  - progmetaldev 3y ago
    Would they have gotten there if they started off native? Most definitely it would have taken longer to get to market. If they were to rewrite as a native app, then they would need to at least keep the same features their current user base are used to. Then you're going to start all over with new bugs being found.
    - dylan604 3y ago
      when slack started off, were they a $27b valuation company? no, they were smaller and yes, needed something to get to MVP for getting there. you're saying that after reaching the point of receiving a $27b valuation that they can not afford to hire subject matter experts into delivering a much better tool than the bloated PoC released as a product? seriously?

myaccountonhn 3y ago

It’s extremely wasteful, people buying new phones because their calendar or slack app are sluggish on their 5 year old phone is insane to me. It’s so bad for the environment.

TeeWEE 3y ago

For companies selling hardware with software it does matter. Look at Apple. An iPhone has way less memory than an android and the profit margins are higher for Apple. Apps are running faster on lower hardware. I’d argue that this is a reason why people want iPhone. Good enough is often not good enough.

danielbln 3y ago
That's an US centric viewpoint, outside (e.g. Europe) Apple's iPhone matketshare is much, much lower. It's also a little bit like comparing gaming consoles to PCs. Yes, a stable platform with fixed hardware specs is much easier to optimize for than a hodgepodge of devices from various vendors (be that PCs or Android phones).

M95D 3y ago

> nobody cares. I don't agree. Most people don't actually know any better, to be able to care. That includes not just normal users, but programmers, web admins, team leaders and managers too. They never had to unload a TSR because there wasn't enough conventional DOS memory available. They never used Win3.10, where even the button light/shadow colors could be changed, yet fit into 1 MB RAM and 20 MB disk. They never browsed via 3KB/s dialup. Many never saw a website 1.0 without JS. Of them 99.999% never saw a 64K intro/demo. They don't know it's possible. > If people did care, you'd have someone writing a highly optimized chat/voip app from the ground up That does happen, rarely, and even then, it doesn't change the situation. 1) Very very few people are capable of writing apps. Out of them, very very few are capable of writing apps, optimized or not, that don't import the entire internet as a dependency. That's because that's how they were educated: "don't waste time rewriting code", "you'll repeat the mistakes", and other BS arguments that lead to nodejs and other monstrosities. 2) Those very few people are the same ones that actually wrote Discord, Slack, Teams. Most of them want to finish quickly and jump ASAP to the next big fancy project that caught their interest. So they import the entire internet as a dependency instead of writing again a 2-line function. These are the people that didn't care. You won't see anymore people like Christian Ghisler who write and maintain some piece of software for their entire life. 3) Someone recently wrote a Windows terminal app faster, smaller, better than the official, just as a tech demo. Most people (99%) won't find out about it. I'm sure there are Teams alternatives. Nobody finds out about them because Google and M$ control what everyone sees.