6 ms·

It's because the user interface is actually consistent and normalised across the whole platform and the paradigms are well documented and understood by the deve

by cjk2 3y ago

It's because the user interface is actually consistent and normalised across the whole platform and the paradigms are well documented and understood by the developers producing software. On Windows and Linux one minute you're constantly poked in the eye by fucked up scaling issues, different toolkit weirdness and quirks, various layers of abandoned shit going back 25 years and people with the design ability of a three legged goat with cataracts. It is fatiguing.

Solvency 3y ago
but anyone can create an electron app these days with total control over the UI polish with way less effort. in fact electron seems like the perfect use case here for a ffmpeg UI wrapper. surprised no one has done it.
- cjk2 3y ago
  Electron serves the developer not the user. It also looks shit on every platform then. And eats all your RAM
  - dotinvoke 3y ago
    The complaint that Chrome eats all your RAM is because it starts a new process for each tab, with all the overhead that entails. You’re not using multiple tabs in an Electron app.
    - cjk2 3y ago
      No instead I run 50 standalone browsers with one tab each on my machine ...
    - saagarjha 3y ago
      That’s not the complaint lol
    - ranger_danger 3y ago
      The overheard prevents any one tab from taking out the entire browser though.
      - dotinvoke 3y ago
        Chrome has good reason to use multiple processes, but criticism of Chrome doesn’t necessarily apply to Electron apps.
- ericlewis 3y ago
  Not that it really matters I guess, but electron apps are chunky. Huge bin size and large memory usage.
  - Solvency 3y ago
    were talking about a tiny desktop app that wraps ffmpeg CLI. this is the perfect use case for it, over, say, VISUAL STUDIO CODE.
    - cglong 3y ago
      I actually think VSCode is one of the best use cases for Electron. It enables a robust and well-documented set of APIs for extension and theme developers, which IMO is why it has one of the most thriving extension ecosystems out there. Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft, but not in Developer Division.
      - skydhash 3y ago
        > It enables a robust and well-documented set of APIs for extension and theme developers Didn't VIM and Emacs have that for ages? Look at https://vimawesome.com/ https://vimawesome.com/. I think the remote development extension is nice, but most people would just SSH and run their editor on the server or sync their project's files.
        bitwize 3y ago
        The Emacs APIs aren't exactly robust in the modern sense. They don't have the security and privilege isolation that VS Code's TypeScript APIs have.
    - ubercow13 3y ago
      The perfect use case for a massive incredibly complex browser runtime is...a tiny desktop app? What?
    - CyberDildonics 3y ago
      Do you as a user seriously want a 400MB binary that takes up 1 GB of memory at least just to have a sluggish interface to run a command line program for you when it could be an instant GUI that takes up 1 MB of memory ? Why would anyone want something taking up literally 1000x the resources it needs to?
- greggsy 3y ago
  People rage about Electron being insecure and bloated, but by Jove it’s a godsend for consistency and portability.
  - alwayslikethis 3y ago
    Electron and consistency?? I get Electron being easier to develop for, but it achieves portability by ignoring platform native UI guidelines. There is no consistency at all between electron apps.
    - giantrobot 3y ago
      Hey, maybe I want to learn two dozen different slightly incompatible UI paradigms! If I don't have constant impedance mismatches I might get lazy and be able to operate my computer with continuous partial attention and actually focus on the task at hand! Shit, just imagine the horror if two different applications could grab keyboard focus correctly without clicking some input field. My fingers might never leave the keyboard!
    - joshstrange 3y ago
      > There is no consistency at all between electron apps. No, there is not but there is consistency between platforms of the same electron app. Something that's much harder to do if you write a native app.
      - andsoitis 3y ago
        The reality is that for most people, they use an app on a sibgle platform (typical end users don’t constantly switch between Windows, Linux, and macOS) so that consistency does not primarily benefit the end-user.
        wtallis 3y ago
        Exactly. The consistency being extolled here is not from the perspective of the users but of the marketing department that wants to warp basic UI conventions in service of making their branding a more pervasive part of the user experience. Users basically never want you to give them an app where even the buttons and scroll bars are changed to comply with your corporate style guide.
- jwells89 3y ago
  In my experience, producing a polished Electron/web app takes substantially more effort than it does to produce an AppKit/UIKit equivalent. Those don’t get you multiplatform, but that’s why a lot of devs who care about these things only publish for macOS and iOS.
  - gmiwakura 3y ago
    [flagged]
- kergonath 3y ago
  > UI polish with way less effort. Clearly not. The least effort is to use the platform’s native widgets, or at least a decent toolkit. Those shiny web-based interfaces suck because the developer never put the effort to make the widgets behave as they should, and that’s because it’s actually very hard and expensive to build a UI framework from the ground up. Have a look at UITextField or NSTextField and what they do out of the box for free, for every single application. Nobody is going to implement half of that in their fancy text boxes. The only reason it takes less effort is that everybody half-arses it. The consequence is that most Electron apps are a dog’s breakfast and the polar opposite of consistent and well made.
  - ranger_danger 3y ago
    The least effort would be to use Qt. It's way easier to use than the native toolkit(s), and already looks native on every platform.
- datagram 3y ago
  There is LosslessCut[1], though it's only designed to handle trimming and not general re-encoding. [1]: https://github.com/mifi/lossless-cut https://github.com/mifi/lossless-cut
  - booi 3y ago
    if you re-encoded then it wouldn't be lossless anymore?
- rpgbr 3y ago
  Going the Electron route is the first and strongest signal that the developer doesn't care about the tid bits that makes a great app. Have never saw a good designed Electron app.
tailspin2019 3y ago
This is a brilliant summary. I mean… less of the goat bashing… but otherwise you summed it up pretty nicely.

by cjk2 3y ago

Solvency 3y ago

but anyone can create an electron app these days with total control over the UI polish with way less effort. in fact electron seems like the perfect use case here for a ffmpeg UI wrapper. surprised no one has done it.

cjk2 3y ago
Electron serves the developer not the user. It also looks shit on every platform then. And eats all your RAM
- dotinvoke 3y ago
  The complaint that Chrome eats all your RAM is because it starts a new process for each tab, with all the overhead that entails. You’re not using multiple tabs in an Electron app.
  - cjk2 3y ago
    No instead I run 50 standalone browsers with one tab each on my machine ...
  - saagarjha 3y ago
    That’s not the complaint lol
  - ranger_danger 3y ago
    The overheard prevents any one tab from taking out the entire browser though.
    - dotinvoke 3y ago
      Chrome has good reason to use multiple processes, but criticism of Chrome doesn’t necessarily apply to Electron apps.
ericlewis 3y ago
Not that it really matters I guess, but electron apps are chunky. Huge bin size and large memory usage.
- Solvency 3y ago
  were talking about a tiny desktop app that wraps ffmpeg CLI. this is the perfect use case for it, over, say, VISUAL STUDIO CODE.
  - cglong 3y ago
    I actually think VSCode is one of the best use cases for Electron. It enables a robust and well-documented set of APIs for extension and theme developers, which IMO is why it has one of the most thriving extension ecosystems out there. Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft, but not in Developer Division.
    - skydhash 3y ago
      > It enables a robust and well-documented set of APIs for extension and theme developers Didn't VIM and Emacs have that for ages? Look at https://vimawesome.com/ https://vimawesome.com/. I think the remote development extension is nice, but most people would just SSH and run their editor on the server or sync their project's files.
      - bitwize 3y ago
        The Emacs APIs aren't exactly robust in the modern sense. They don't have the security and privilege isolation that VS Code's TypeScript APIs have.
  - ubercow13 3y ago
    The perfect use case for a massive incredibly complex browser runtime is...a tiny desktop app? What?
  - CyberDildonics 3y ago
    Do you as a user seriously want a 400MB binary that takes up 1 GB of memory at least just to have a sluggish interface to run a command line program for you when it could be an instant GUI that takes up 1 MB of memory ? Why would anyone want something taking up literally 1000x the resources it needs to?
greggsy 3y ago
People rage about Electron being insecure and bloated, but by Jove it’s a godsend for consistency and portability.
- alwayslikethis 3y ago
  Electron and consistency?? I get Electron being easier to develop for, but it achieves portability by ignoring platform native UI guidelines. There is no consistency at all between electron apps.
  - giantrobot 3y ago
    Hey, maybe I want to learn two dozen different slightly incompatible UI paradigms! If I don't have constant impedance mismatches I might get lazy and be able to operate my computer with continuous partial attention and actually focus on the task at hand! Shit, just imagine the horror if two different applications could grab keyboard focus correctly without clicking some input field. My fingers might never leave the keyboard!
  - joshstrange 3y ago
    > There is no consistency at all between electron apps. No, there is not but there is consistency between platforms of the same electron app. Something that's much harder to do if you write a native app.
    - andsoitis 3y ago
      The reality is that for most people, they use an app on a sibgle platform (typical end users don’t constantly switch between Windows, Linux, and macOS) so that consistency does not primarily benefit the end-user.
      - wtallis 3y ago
        Exactly. The consistency being extolled here is not from the perspective of the users but of the marketing department that wants to warp basic UI conventions in service of making their branding a more pervasive part of the user experience. Users basically never want you to give them an app where even the buttons and scroll bars are changed to comply with your corporate style guide.
jwells89 3y ago
In my experience, producing a polished Electron/web app takes substantially more effort than it does to produce an AppKit/UIKit equivalent. Those don’t get you multiplatform, but that’s why a lot of devs who care about these things only publish for macOS and iOS.
- gmiwakura 3y ago
  [flagged]
kergonath 3y ago
> UI polish with way less effort. Clearly not. The least effort is to use the platform’s native widgets, or at least a decent toolkit. Those shiny web-based interfaces suck because the developer never put the effort to make the widgets behave as they should, and that’s because it’s actually very hard and expensive to build a UI framework from the ground up. Have a look at UITextField or NSTextField and what they do out of the box for free, for every single application. Nobody is going to implement half of that in their fancy text boxes. The only reason it takes less effort is that everybody half-arses it. The consequence is that most Electron apps are a dog’s breakfast and the polar opposite of consistent and well made.
- ranger_danger 3y ago
  The least effort would be to use Qt. It's way easier to use than the native toolkit(s), and already looks native on every platform.
datagram 3y ago
There is LosslessCut[1], though it's only designed to handle trimming and not general re-encoding. [1]: https://github.com/mifi/lossless-cut https://github.com/mifi/lossless-cut
- booi 3y ago
  if you re-encoded then it wouldn't be lossless anymore?
rpgbr 3y ago
Going the Electron route is the first and strongest signal that the developer doesn't care about the tid bits that makes a great app. Have never saw a good designed Electron app.

tailspin2019 3y ago

This is a brilliant summary. I mean… less of the goat bashing… but otherwise you summed it up pretty nicely.