6 ms·

What a simplistic (and I think erroneous) view of Electron! You can't spare 40mb of RAM?

by yboris 2y ago

hulitupulii 2y ago
Probably a mac user. Those devices are low in ram.
- result2vino 2y ago
  I use macOS and don’t really have complaints about the few Electron apps that I use daily. “Electron bad!” is as much of a cargo culted snobby HN myth as “Macs have no RAM!”
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    Electron bad ===> Couldn't be bothered to learn how to do proper Web development and Google is my overlord.
    - mrtesthah 2y ago
      They're called desktop applications for a reason. Browser apps should run in a browser.
  - tiltowait 2y ago
    Electron apps are terrible at following platform conventions. Scrolling is wrong, menus are wrong, etc. There’s plenty to dislike.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Windows/Linux over here and anti lazy developers that help Google spread their browser monoculture.
pjmlp 2y ago
I already have a browser installed. Apparently the developers couldn't get rid of turning the Web into ChromeOS.
skydhash 2y ago
It's more like 400MB due to how they're packaged. And when you could have it run with 10x to 20x less RAM, it just scream "we don't care about you". Not everyone have 64GB RAM and 22 cores of CPU in their laptop. It's like using a semi-truck (with the trailer attached) to go buy groceries 100 meters away.
- Wissenschafter 2y ago
  The fact people prefer webapps over native locally run software because of '400MB' honestly pisses me off it's so stupidly trivial.
  - skydhash 2y ago
    It's not for the storage or ram space. It's for being inefficient which always making me doubt about the company culture. If you want native capabilities so much, just build a proper software for the platform. If VLC and Calibre can do cross platform, you can do it too.
  - squeaky-clean 2y ago
    It's not native though. It's just a webapp in a second browser without any of the usual browser features, and reduced sandboxing. It's all the negatives of a webapp and all the negatives of a native app with none of the positives.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    A website packaged with the Web browser isn't a native app.
  - hifromwork 2y ago
    How is 400MB trivial? I run more than 2 programs at once, and this adds up. Imagine if every trivial process in your OS used 400MB on startup. And what pisses me off, is when I have to close resource heavy electron applications (signal, vs code) running in the background to free up RAM.
- yboris 2y ago
  I'm unsure where I'm supposed to look. In the Task Manager, the app I created (Video Hub App), when running, is routinely between 40MB and 120MB under the "Memory" column. Are you saying there is RAM use tucked away under different row than the app name? https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App
TeMPOraL 2y ago
More like 400MB, and the problem isn't that I can't spare it. The problem is that I can only spare 400 MB a few times at most before it starts becoming an issue. I have stuff to do on my computer, stuff that often involves multiple programs (one of them almost always being a browser!). Then there's bunch of support stuff that I want, or have to, keep around. A music player, an IM, a mail client, etc. When everything gets packaged as Electron apps, even those tiny utilities add up quickly, and everything slows. down. Or worse, gets starved for RAM and starts stuttering (Windows) or just gets OOM-killed (Linux). And I say that as a dev/techie, who has plenty of RAM. Non-tech people tend to have computers that are memory-starved by default. Building trivial stuff as Electron apps, where native would be 100x less resource-intensive, is just peak developer laziness/selfishness.

What a simplistic (and I think erroneous) view of Electron! You can't spare 40mb of RAM?

by yboris 2y ago

What a simplistic (and I think erroneous) view of Electron! You can't spare 40mb of RAM?

hulitupulii 2y ago

Probably a mac user. Those devices are low in ram.

result2vino 2y ago
I use macOS and don’t really have complaints about the few Electron apps that I use daily. “Electron bad!” is as much of a cargo culted snobby HN myth as “Macs have no RAM!”
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Electron bad ===> Couldn't be bothered to learn how to do proper Web development and Google is my overlord.
  - mrtesthah 2y ago
    They're called desktop applications for a reason. Browser apps should run in a browser.
- tiltowait 2y ago
  Electron apps are terrible at following platform conventions. Scrolling is wrong, menus are wrong, etc. There’s plenty to dislike.
pjmlp 2y ago
Windows/Linux over here and anti lazy developers that help Google spread their browser monoculture.

pjmlp 2y ago

I already have a browser installed. Apparently the developers couldn't get rid of turning the Web into ChromeOS.

skydhash 2y ago

It's more like 400MB due to how they're packaged. And when you could have it run with 10x to 20x less RAM, it just scream "we don't care about you". Not everyone have 64GB RAM and 22 cores of CPU in their laptop. It's like using a semi-truck (with the trailer attached) to go buy groceries 100 meters away.

Wissenschafter 2y ago
The fact people prefer webapps over native locally run software because of '400MB' honestly pisses me off it's so stupidly trivial.
- skydhash 2y ago
  It's not for the storage or ram space. It's for being inefficient which always making me doubt about the company culture. If you want native capabilities so much, just build a proper software for the platform. If VLC and Calibre can do cross platform, you can do it too.
- squeaky-clean 2y ago
  It's not native though. It's just a webapp in a second browser without any of the usual browser features, and reduced sandboxing. It's all the negatives of a webapp and all the negatives of a native app with none of the positives.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  A website packaged with the Web browser isn't a native app.
- hifromwork 2y ago
  How is 400MB trivial? I run more than 2 programs at once, and this adds up. Imagine if every trivial process in your OS used 400MB on startup. And what pisses me off, is when I have to close resource heavy electron applications (signal, vs code) running in the background to free up RAM.
yboris 2y ago
I'm unsure where I'm supposed to look. In the Task Manager, the app I created (Video Hub App), when running, is routinely between 40MB and 120MB under the "Memory" column. Are you saying there is RAM use tucked away under different row than the app name? https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App

TeMPOraL 2y ago

More like 400MB, and the problem isn't that I can't spare it. The problem is that I can only spare 400 MB a few times at most before it starts becoming an issue. I have stuff to do on my computer, stuff that often involves multiple programs (one of them almost always being a browser!). Then there's bunch of support stuff that I want, or have to, keep around. A music player, an IM, a mail client, etc. When everything gets packaged as Electron apps, even those tiny utilities add up quickly, and everything slows. down. Or worse, gets starved for RAM and starts stuttering (Windows) or just gets OOM-killed (Linux). And I say that as a dev/techie, who has plenty of RAM. Non-tech people tend to have computers that are memory-starved by default. Building trivial stuff as Electron apps, where native would be 100x less resource-intensive, is just peak developer laziness/selfishness.