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I mean... Just to be clear, Electron has pretty much taken the world by storm. Huge number of Enterprise/productivity apps are shipped on Electron. It's hard

I mean... Just to be clear, Electron has pretty much taken the world by storm. Huge number of Enterprise/productivity apps are shipped on Electron. It's hard to beat the value proposition on the business side if you need a website for the product.

infogulch 2y ago
True but anyone that cares about battery life or runs more than one of these apps hates it. So I guess my threshold for "taken by storm" is both "very common" and "users don't hate it".
- icedrift 2y ago
  It is tragic that the only robust solution for cross platform apps eats up so much memory and storage but we're getting to the point where it's not that big a deal.
  - viraptor 2y ago
    Java and .Net/Avalonia are right there... Electron is not the only cross platform solution.
    - infogulch 2y ago
      While .NET has the cross-platform-vm thing going, is not particularly suited to cross-platform rendering. The web is. And don't get me started on WPF.
      - viraptor 2y ago
        That's why I mentioned https://avaloniaui.net/ https://avaloniaui.net/ which does the part. WPF is not bad compared to everything happening in the web frameworks.
        AcquiescentWolf 2y ago
        I disagree. After working with WPF for a while, I'd prefer almost anything from the frontend world (except React) over WPF. Avalonia is nice though.
      - throwaway2037 2y ago
        Is WPF cross-plaform?
        AcquiescentWolf 2y ago
        * WPF: Windows-only. * MAUI: Windows, macOS, Android, iOS. * Avalonia: Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, iOS, browsers.
    - lmm 2y ago
      I can remember when the rhetoric against Java apps being "slow" was just as strong as it is against Electron now. And they've always been less native-feeling and clunkier than Electron.
      - pjmlp 2y ago
        Java is a ferrari when compared to Electron.
        lmm 2y ago
        How so? I know there are theoretical arguments and microbenchmarks that Java might be faster than JavaScript, but I've never seen an actual user-facing GUI app in Java that felt smoother to use than good Electron apps.
      - viraptor 2y ago
        Electron shifted the scales to below the old Java while Java improved. It's still not great, but given a choice? Let Electron die.
akritrime 2y ago
Yeah I was going to comment the same thing. A very big reason why we are even having this conversation about a browser engine powering native apps is because electron exists. Yes it's sub-optimal but that hasn't impeded its conquest in the slightest.
pjmlp 2y ago
If you need a Website, use a browser.
- horsawlarway 2y ago
  They do and and they did. You just don't like that they used the browser in both places.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    My computer already has an browser installed, I am not a browser collector.
    - horsawlarway 2y ago
      Might be better if you were, though. Personally - I collect quite a few for different things. I almost always have at least chrome, firefox, ungoogled-chromium, and - recently - ladybird installed. Not to mention a couple different chromium versions for various electron apps (slack, discord, etcher, bitwarden, vscode, postman, etc). Different browsers do different things well, and electron does the "desktop app" niche better than the others right now. In the same way that ladybird does the "not tracked by corporations" part, and firefox does the "still supports manifest v2 extensions" part. You can complain all you'd like (and I recognize you from other places hating on electron) and it's fine, but it doesn't change incentive structures for the folks deploying these, and as a full time linux user... I am SO fucking happy to have all the BS apps my company requires "just work" on my computers because of electron. If you don't want to use software developed with Electron... more power to ya. Go make that choice. Leave the rest of us out of it. From my side... it'd be great if we can make electron suck less (and trust me, I definitely agree that we can), but right now... it's still a pretty huge win.
      - pjmlp 2y ago
        Only one Electron app is tolerated on my computer, VSCode, and that is because for some stuff that is the only place I get plugins for, and that is about it. Everything else, if there is a Web app, then I use the browser, no need to ship it alongside every single application out there. It is like those garbage mobile apps, that are exactly the same website that I can access via the Webbrowser, packaged inside a "native" app. And I say this as someone that works primarly in distributed systems and Web.

infogulch 2y ago

True but anyone that cares about battery life or runs more than one of these apps hates it. So I guess my threshold for "taken by storm" is both "very common" and "users don't hate it".

icedrift 2y ago
It is tragic that the only robust solution for cross platform apps eats up so much memory and storage but we're getting to the point where it's not that big a deal.
- viraptor 2y ago
  Java and .Net/Avalonia are right there... Electron is not the only cross platform solution.
  - infogulch 2y ago
    While .NET has the cross-platform-vm thing going, is not particularly suited to cross-platform rendering. The web is. And don't get me started on WPF.
    - viraptor 2y ago
      That's why I mentioned https://avaloniaui.net/ https://avaloniaui.net/ which does the part. WPF is not bad compared to everything happening in the web frameworks.
      - AcquiescentWolf 2y ago
        I disagree. After working with WPF for a while, I'd prefer almost anything from the frontend world (except React) over WPF. Avalonia is nice though.
    - throwaway2037 2y ago
      Is WPF cross-plaform?
      - AcquiescentWolf 2y ago
        * WPF: Windows-only. * MAUI: Windows, macOS, Android, iOS. * Avalonia: Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, iOS, browsers.
  - lmm 2y ago
    I can remember when the rhetoric against Java apps being "slow" was just as strong as it is against Electron now. And they've always been less native-feeling and clunkier than Electron.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      Java is a ferrari when compared to Electron.
      - lmm 2y ago
        How so? I know there are theoretical arguments and microbenchmarks that Java might be faster than JavaScript, but I've never seen an actual user-facing GUI app in Java that felt smoother to use than good Electron apps.
    - viraptor 2y ago
      Electron shifted the scales to below the old Java while Java improved. It's still not great, but given a choice? Let Electron die.

akritrime 2y ago

Yeah I was going to comment the same thing. A very big reason why we are even having this conversation about a browser engine powering native apps is because electron exists. Yes it's sub-optimal but that hasn't impeded its conquest in the slightest.

pjmlp 2y ago

If you need a Website, use a browser.

horsawlarway 2y ago
They do and and they did. You just don't like that they used the browser in both places.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  My computer already has an browser installed, I am not a browser collector.
  - horsawlarway 2y ago
    Might be better if you were, though. Personally - I collect quite a few for different things. I almost always have at least chrome, firefox, ungoogled-chromium, and - recently - ladybird installed. Not to mention a couple different chromium versions for various electron apps (slack, discord, etcher, bitwarden, vscode, postman, etc). Different browsers do different things well, and electron does the "desktop app" niche better than the others right now. In the same way that ladybird does the "not tracked by corporations" part, and firefox does the "still supports manifest v2 extensions" part. You can complain all you'd like (and I recognize you from other places hating on electron) and it's fine, but it doesn't change incentive structures for the folks deploying these, and as a full time linux user... I am SO fucking happy to have all the BS apps my company requires "just work" on my computers because of electron. If you don't want to use software developed with Electron... more power to ya. Go make that choice. Leave the rest of us out of it. From my side... it'd be great if we can make electron suck less (and trust me, I definitely agree that we can), but right now... it's still a pretty huge win.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      Only one Electron app is tolerated on my computer, VSCode, and that is because for some stuff that is the only place I get plugins for, and that is about it. Everything else, if there is a Web app, then I use the browser, no need to ship it alongside every single application out there. It is like those garbage mobile apps, that are exactly the same website that I can access via the Webbrowser, packaged inside a "native" app. And I say this as someone that works primarly in distributed systems and Web.