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This can actually make sense - why not make Electron a shared part of the OS instead of so many apps bundling it. As I understand Apple once built its entire GU

This can actually make sense - why not make Electron a shared part of the OS instead of so many apps bundling it. As I understand Apple once built its entire GUI system around a flavour of PostScript which was designed for documents typesetting. Now the world just is doing a similar thing with HTML.

dajtxx 2y ago
Because I'm old and I'm sick to death of everything being a web app. Because I hate web app programming so it limits my employment options :-)
- qwerty456127 2y ago
  I feel the same.
- josephg 2y ago
  I'd be more mad about this if building native applications wasn't super shitty these days. Xcode crashes all the time. SwiftUI is terribly documented and buggy. And lots of standard things you see apple do in their apps are basically impossible to do from 3rd party code. And its impossible to debug anything because its all closed source. And windows has about 8 different native UI libraries that all look and feel different, and they're constantly making new ones instead of making one UI be good and well supported. I hate electron with a burning passion. But at least the web has open standards, good debugging tools and modern, performant, well documented and pleasant to use UI libraries like React, SolidJS and so on. Just don't ask about rich text editing on the web. Oh god. Its been decades and its still so shit.
com2kid 2y ago
> This can actually make sense - why not make Electron a shared part of the OS instead of so many apps bundling it. Microsoft did this ages ago, they lost a big anti-trust trial over it. Aside from that, people ship electron because it works the same across different OSs, if you just want to target one OS, you are better off using that OSs native dev toolkit. Although good luck finding anyone who knows how to write native apps for desktops anymore, and if you are on Windows, good luck figuring out what toolkit you are supposed to use now days! And Linux has had the decades long problem of QT vs GTK. So really the only platform with a native toolkit is MacOS, although when it first came out there were actually multiple toolkits to choose from there as well, and now days I think there is some argument over using Swift of not still (not sure, don't keep up). Or you can just use Electron and skip the above mess entirely.
- qwerty456127 2y ago
  > people ship electron because it works the same across different OSs Why does Microsoft build the very VisualStudio installer with Electron then? To me it seems companies ship electron because it's easy to hire a JavaScript developer.
  - com2kid 2y ago
    > Why does Microsoft build the very VisualStudio installer with Electron then? > To me it seems companies ship electron because it's easy to hire a JavaScript developer. When I worked at Microsoft, one team I was on, very ironically, had a really hard time finding Windows developers. We actually resorted to drawing straws to see who on the team would have to learn native Windows development! IMHO a large part of the problem is that native Windows development is a career dead end, unless you work at Microsoft, there are relatively few well paying jobs for what is now a niche skillset.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      Unless one works for the games industry, does IT at big corp, embedded devices programming.
      - saagarjha 2y ago
        None of which are particularly sexy, unfortunately.
        pjmlp 2y ago
        Given the hoards of candidates for game development and IoT jobs, putting up with the pay and hours, at least two of those are quite sexy.
        saagarjha 2y ago
        Game development, maybe. The IoT people just want something to pay their bills.
squarefoot 2y ago
> why not make Electron a shared part of the OS instead of so many apps bundling it. Because it's a wrong approach to a problem that was solved decades ago by much smaller and faster system libraries for UI development.
- qwerty456127 2y ago
  Apparently these libraries and the languages they are designed to be used with failed to offer sufficiently easy way to implement the UX people want. I myself strongly prefer classic desktop GUIs adhering to the 90s Microsoft and Apple design guidelines, also well-designed (rather than chaotically evolved like JavaScript) programming languages too yet the objective reality seems like that's not what the demand is for - real-life companies and people prefer fast-entry non-proprietary languages like JavaScript and virtually-unlimited expression like what CSS gives. The only libraries I know can technically be good alternatives to Electron are Qt Quick, WPF (and its spinoffs) and JavaFX but they all have downsides which limit their adoption.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
pjmlp 2y ago
Microsoft already did that with Windows 98, it was called Active Desktop. And you're mixing Apple with NeXT (NeXTSTEP) and Sun (NeWS).
idle_zealot 2y ago
> why not make Electron a shared part of the OS instead of so many apps bundling it You're describing a system webview, which is a thing on Android, Windows, iOS, and macOS.
- jokab 2y ago
  Isn't Chrome OS a better fit for his description?
mixmastamyk 2y ago
One attempt, XULRunner didn't work out.

dajtxx 2y ago

Because I'm old and I'm sick to death of everything being a web app. Because I hate web app programming so it limits my employment options :-)

qwerty456127 2y ago
I feel the same.
josephg 2y ago
I'd be more mad about this if building native applications wasn't super shitty these days. Xcode crashes all the time. SwiftUI is terribly documented and buggy. And lots of standard things you see apple do in their apps are basically impossible to do from 3rd party code. And its impossible to debug anything because its all closed source. And windows has about 8 different native UI libraries that all look and feel different, and they're constantly making new ones instead of making one UI be good and well supported. I hate electron with a burning passion. But at least the web has open standards, good debugging tools and modern, performant, well documented and pleasant to use UI libraries like React, SolidJS and so on. Just don't ask about rich text editing on the web. Oh god. Its been decades and its still so shit.

com2kid 2y ago

> This can actually make sense - why not make Electron a shared part of the OS instead of so many apps bundling it. Microsoft did this ages ago, they lost a big anti-trust trial over it. Aside from that, people ship electron because it works the same across different OSs, if you just want to target one OS, you are better off using that OSs native dev toolkit. Although good luck finding anyone who knows how to write native apps for desktops anymore, and if you are on Windows, good luck figuring out what toolkit you are supposed to use now days! And Linux has had the decades long problem of QT vs GTK. So really the only platform with a native toolkit is MacOS, although when it first came out there were actually multiple toolkits to choose from there as well, and now days I think there is some argument over using Swift of not still (not sure, don't keep up). Or you can just use Electron and skip the above mess entirely.

qwerty456127 2y ago
> people ship electron because it works the same across different OSs Why does Microsoft build the very VisualStudio installer with Electron then? To me it seems companies ship electron because it's easy to hire a JavaScript developer.
- com2kid 2y ago
  > Why does Microsoft build the very VisualStudio installer with Electron then? > To me it seems companies ship electron because it's easy to hire a JavaScript developer. When I worked at Microsoft, one team I was on, very ironically, had a really hard time finding Windows developers. We actually resorted to drawing straws to see who on the team would have to learn native Windows development! IMHO a large part of the problem is that native Windows development is a career dead end, unless you work at Microsoft, there are relatively few well paying jobs for what is now a niche skillset.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    Unless one works for the games industry, does IT at big corp, embedded devices programming.
    - saagarjha 2y ago
      None of which are particularly sexy, unfortunately.
      - pjmlp 2y ago
        Given the hoards of candidates for game development and IoT jobs, putting up with the pay and hours, at least two of those are quite sexy.
        saagarjha 2y ago
        Game development, maybe. The IoT people just want something to pay their bills.

squarefoot 2y ago

> why not make Electron a shared part of the OS instead of so many apps bundling it. Because it's a wrong approach to a problem that was solved decades ago by much smaller and faster system libraries for UI development.

qwerty456127 2y ago
Apparently these libraries and the languages they are designed to be used with failed to offer sufficiently easy way to implement the UX people want. I myself strongly prefer classic desktop GUIs adhering to the 90s Microsoft and Apple design guidelines, also well-designed (rather than chaotically evolved like JavaScript) programming languages too yet the objective reality seems like that's not what the demand is for - real-life companies and people prefer fast-entry non-proprietary languages like JavaScript and virtually-unlimited expression like what CSS gives. The only libraries I know can technically be good alternatives to Electron are Qt Quick, WPF (and its spinoffs) and JavaFX but they all have downsides which limit their adoption.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

pjmlp 2y ago

Microsoft already did that with Windows 98, it was called Active Desktop. And you're mixing Apple with NeXT (NeXTSTEP) and Sun (NeWS).

idle_zealot 2y ago

> why not make Electron a shared part of the OS instead of so many apps bundling it You're describing a system webview, which is a thing on Android, Windows, iOS, and macOS.

jokab 2y ago
Isn't Chrome OS a better fit for his description?

mixmastamyk 2y ago

One attempt, XULRunner didn't work out.