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hey, I have a question for any product managers who are in charge of making decisions re: rebuilding app UI in Electron, like 1Password with their entire app, A

hey, I have a question for any product managers who are in charge of making decisions re: rebuilding app UI in Electron, like 1Password with their entire app, Adobe with their dialog boxes, Windows with their Start Bar (!#@!$!) My understanding was that the proposition of Electron is that it’s there's some cross-platform advantages, also it’s basically easier and you can hire a junior dev to wing it. My understanding of AI is that you can just tell a junior dev to vibe it. So can't you turn your AI’s on making native UI via vibe apps? Shouldn't that be really easy for any idiot, and also performant?

rafterydj 4mo ago
Not a product manager but I habitually try to play devil's advocate as one. I think it's popularity, full stop. You _could_ vibe code a native app no problem - but then you're targeting one set of hardware. If you're already just vibing it, why not make something that will work cross-platform while you're at it? And if an LLM is prompted with that, they'll usually go with the popular choice: web app on Electron.
- bluGill 4mo ago
  There are plenty of cross platform options. I write with Qt for example.
  - rafterydj 4mo ago
    Yes but Qt comes with the drawbacks of being tied to Qt. With Electron + React, you'd be able to rip out any components you need and place them in other web apps. The browser is (psychologically) avoiding vendor dependencies to a greater degree than other options.
    - bluGill 4mo ago
      You are tied to web and react. You can substitute react for something else (I suppose) but still tied to that. I know of a few other cross platform toolkits if you don't like Qt, but in all cases you quickly become tied to it.
- Eric_WVGG 4mo ago
  Okay, but Windows isn't cross-platform. Adobe is but they have a ginormous multi-decade codebase that mastered cross-platform UI ages, an LLM coding assistant ought to be able to "add a range input here using our standard UI library" much more easily than "rebuild this with Electron." 1Password at least has a decent excuse for a rotten decision.

rafterydj 4mo ago

Not a product manager but I habitually try to play devil's advocate as one. I think it's popularity, full stop. You _could_ vibe code a native app no problem - but then you're targeting one set of hardware. If you're already just vibing it, why not make something that will work cross-platform while you're at it? And if an LLM is prompted with that, they'll usually go with the popular choice: web app on Electron.

bluGill 4mo ago
There are plenty of cross platform options. I write with Qt for example.
- rafterydj 4mo ago
  Yes but Qt comes with the drawbacks of being tied to Qt. With Electron + React, you'd be able to rip out any components you need and place them in other web apps. The browser is (psychologically) avoiding vendor dependencies to a greater degree than other options.
  - bluGill 4mo ago
    You are tied to web and react. You can substitute react for something else (I suppose) but still tied to that. I know of a few other cross platform toolkits if you don't like Qt, but in all cases you quickly become tied to it.
Eric_WVGG 4mo ago
Okay, but Windows isn't cross-platform. Adobe is but they have a ginormous multi-decade codebase that mastered cross-platform UI ages, an LLM coding assistant ought to be able to "add a range input here using our standard UI library" much more easily than "rebuild this with Electron." 1Password at least has a decent excuse for a rotten decision.