4 ms·

Because more often than not good enough is good enough. Electron is a great example. Look at the market share of slack, discord, spotify, etc. Optimizing as

Because more often than not good enough is good enough. Electron is a great example. Look at the market share of slack, discord, spotify, etc. Optimizing as step one is a very good way to not ship on time and miss opportunities to competition.

chrisdbanks 3y ago
+1
yashap 3y ago
Agreed, and as much as ppl hate it, this applies to a11y too. Ultimately all work that businesses do is only done if it’s a high enough priority for the business. If you have a massive customer base, and/or specific important customers who require strong a11y, then you prioritize it. But if you have a smaller customer base, with no important customers pushing for a11y, it’ll probably never get prioritized. That obviously sucks for your users who really need it, but if there aren’t many of them, the site/app/whatever will just be hard to use for them, probably forever.
- dbg31415 3y ago
  https://www.rhysmills.com/post/2023/02/10/a11y-isnt-accessible.html https://www.rhysmills.com/post/2023/02/10/a11y-isnt-accessib...
  - NooneAtAll3 3y ago
    finally I can express my opinion by linking to someone else's thank you I hate "ally" thing so much >_<
  - justinclift 3y ago
    For an article that seems overly long and wordy that includes things like: On the initial use of an unfamiliar acronym within a document or a section, spell out the full term, and then put the acronym in parentheses. ... then goes on to lecture people about making things understandable... not even mentioning wtf "a11y" is supposed to mean is kind of taking the piss. :/
    - sameerds 3y ago
      It looks like a deliberate decision to not explain the term until the very end ... a tongue-in-cheek demonstration of the problem being described. They eventually give the expansion towards the very end, but that too is obfuscated by putting it as an HTML abbr tag.
      - justinclift 3y ago
        Yeah, I got about 3 paragraphs into it, then did a search for a11y, then just closed the page.
  - yashap 3y ago
    This is a tech specific community, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to use highly common tech abbreviations like a11y, TTL, K8s, DNS, SaaS, PaaS, FaaS, IaaS, i18n, DoS, DDoS, ISP, CRM, API, etc. We all know what they mean, and it saves typing. In a non-tech specific community, I wouldn’t use these abbreviations, but I see no issue with them here.
    - jwestbury 3y ago
      I've been in tech for over a decade. I know all of your examples -- except a11y and i18n. Numeronym proliferation is a bit insane right now, and really needs to be stopped. :(
      - yashap 3y ago
        Hmm wild! I totally believe you, it’s just surprising to me. I’ve encountered these abbreviations constantly over the years, at multiple different tech companies, even though I work primarily as a backend engineer - they are FE concepts, are you by any chance a really heavily BE focused engineer, who doesn’t really touch frontends?
      - phanimahesh 3y ago
        Have you seen o11y to abbreviate observability?
PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
Electron is only good enough because the companies themselves aren't paying the cost of it (resources and performance). what gets considered important are things that hurt them rather than their users. In many ways it's an abuse of users.
- j1elo 3y ago
  Yes, yes, and a thousand times yes. People usually says "so what, RAM is there to be used" (I even think I saw it in this thread). But when 3 of these bulky apps are eating the whole RAM and no more software can run because of them, it's the user, especially the not very savvy user, the one who usually assumes their computer doesn't work any more for modern software and they need to incur in the effort and cost of acquiring a new one. Electron is a fine way to test a market, but it is only financially viable to use long term (such as done by Slack, Discord or Spotify) because it externalizes the actual cost to its users. For an app that is open-use-close, it's ok and I see no issue. But for apps meant to be constantly running in the background (like a music player or a chat app) I think Electron is almost a sin against its users.
- sockgrant 3y ago
  The companies do pay a cost — lost users and revenue due to the downsides. But they’ve determined that this cost isn’t meaningful enough to write performant native platform specific versions.

chrisdbanks 3y ago

yashap 3y ago

Agreed, and as much as ppl hate it, this applies to a11y too. Ultimately all work that businesses do is only done if it’s a high enough priority for the business. If you have a massive customer base, and/or specific important customers who require strong a11y, then you prioritize it. But if you have a smaller customer base, with no important customers pushing for a11y, it’ll probably never get prioritized. That obviously sucks for your users who really need it, but if there aren’t many of them, the site/app/whatever will just be hard to use for them, probably forever.

dbg31415 3y ago
https://www.rhysmills.com/post/2023/02/10/a11y-isnt-accessible.html https://www.rhysmills.com/post/2023/02/10/a11y-isnt-accessib...
- NooneAtAll3 3y ago
  finally I can express my opinion by linking to someone else's thank you I hate "ally" thing so much >_<
- justinclift 3y ago
  For an article that seems overly long and wordy that includes things like: On the initial use of an unfamiliar acronym within a document or a section, spell out the full term, and then put the acronym in parentheses. ... then goes on to lecture people about making things understandable... not even mentioning wtf "a11y" is supposed to mean is kind of taking the piss. :/
  - sameerds 3y ago
    It looks like a deliberate decision to not explain the term until the very end ... a tongue-in-cheek demonstration of the problem being described. They eventually give the expansion towards the very end, but that too is obfuscated by putting it as an HTML abbr tag.
    - justinclift 3y ago
      Yeah, I got about 3 paragraphs into it, then did a search for a11y, then just closed the page.
- yashap 3y ago
  This is a tech specific community, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to use highly common tech abbreviations like a11y, TTL, K8s, DNS, SaaS, PaaS, FaaS, IaaS, i18n, DoS, DDoS, ISP, CRM, API, etc. We all know what they mean, and it saves typing. In a non-tech specific community, I wouldn’t use these abbreviations, but I see no issue with them here.
  - jwestbury 3y ago
    I've been in tech for over a decade. I know all of your examples -- except a11y and i18n. Numeronym proliferation is a bit insane right now, and really needs to be stopped. :(
    - yashap 3y ago
      Hmm wild! I totally believe you, it’s just surprising to me. I’ve encountered these abbreviations constantly over the years, at multiple different tech companies, even though I work primarily as a backend engineer - they are FE concepts, are you by any chance a really heavily BE focused engineer, who doesn’t really touch frontends?
    - phanimahesh 3y ago
      Have you seen o11y to abbreviate observability?

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago

Electron is only good enough because the companies themselves aren't paying the cost of it (resources and performance). what gets considered important are things that hurt them rather than their users. In many ways it's an abuse of users.

j1elo 3y ago
Yes, yes, and a thousand times yes. People usually says "so what, RAM is there to be used" (I even think I saw it in this thread). But when 3 of these bulky apps are eating the whole RAM and no more software can run because of them, it's the user, especially the not very savvy user, the one who usually assumes their computer doesn't work any more for modern software and they need to incur in the effort and cost of acquiring a new one. Electron is a fine way to test a market, but it is only financially viable to use long term (such as done by Slack, Discord or Spotify) because it externalizes the actual cost to its users. For an app that is open-use-close, it's ok and I see no issue. But for apps meant to be constantly running in the background (like a music player or a chat app) I think Electron is almost a sin against its users.
sockgrant 3y ago
The companies do pay a cost — lost users and revenue due to the downsides. But they’ve determined that this cost isn’t meaningful enough to write performant native platform specific versions.