3 ms·

Yeah.... maybe. I think AI is still too prone to go down rabbit holes and not understand the whole picture well enough to come up with good optimisations. It's

Yeah.... maybe. I think AI is still too prone to go down rabbit holes and not understand the whole picture well enough to come up with good optimisations. It's probably good at micro-optimisation, e.g. pre-allocating arrays. But is it going to realise that you don't need that array in the first place? I dunno. On the other hand it does mean there's no excuse for writing your program using Python or Electron or whatever, which will have a big effect on performance.

paulhebert 2mo ago
The reason for using Electron is to write once and run everywhere right? I get that LLMs would make it faster to write distinct copies for different operating systems and maintain them both but thats still more costly than a single system. Sorry if I’m misunderstanding the goal of Electron but it still seems cheaper and easier (although admittedly worse than multiple native apps)
- IshKebab 2mo ago
  Yeah that's my point. Maybe AI will lower that cost to the point where it makes sense to write e.g. a native Slack app. I dunno, we'll see.
  - punarinta 2mo ago
    There is a native Slack client actually. Fast and with good feature coverage, it’s called msga.app
    - IshKebab 2mo ago
      Aha exactly what I was talking about. Vibe coded in a few months. Maybe it has slop bugs but if you have as many employees as Slack it shouldn't be that hard to whip into shape. There's no excuse for Slack not having done this themselves.
yboris 2mo ago
Are you suggesting Electron is slow? What evidence do you have? There may be a +200ms start up time compared to a native application; is that so bad? Besides a bootup that is no longer than your browser's, everything else inside an Electron app can be identically fast to a native application. Please be a better filter - do not spread bad memes.
- IshKebab 2mo ago
  > everything else inside an Electron app can be identically fast to a native application. HTML layout and rendering is almost never as fast as GUIs like Qt. Also Electron apps usually use JavaScript which is slower than "fast" languages like C++/Rust/Kotlin/etc. The reason people use Electron is because it's easy, especially if you have to have a website anyway. Slack is a great example of this. They already have a full website so it's kind of silly to redo the whole thing... Unless AI makes it easy. We'll see I guess.
  - yboris 2mo ago
    You are right about "almost never as fast as", but it is imperceptible to any human. We're talking about less than 100ms to render basically any typical UI, which then updates faster than 30fs. I said "identically fast"; I should have said "with respect to human perception".

paulhebert 2mo ago

The reason for using Electron is to write once and run everywhere right? I get that LLMs would make it faster to write distinct copies for different operating systems and maintain them both but thats still more costly than a single system. Sorry if I’m misunderstanding the goal of Electron but it still seems cheaper and easier (although admittedly worse than multiple native apps)

IshKebab 2mo ago
Yeah that's my point. Maybe AI will lower that cost to the point where it makes sense to write e.g. a native Slack app. I dunno, we'll see.
- punarinta 2mo ago
  There is a native Slack client actually. Fast and with good feature coverage, it’s called msga.app
  - IshKebab 2mo ago
    Aha exactly what I was talking about. Vibe coded in a few months. Maybe it has slop bugs but if you have as many employees as Slack it shouldn't be that hard to whip into shape. There's no excuse for Slack not having done this themselves.

yboris 2mo ago

Are you suggesting Electron is slow? What evidence do you have? There may be a +200ms start up time compared to a native application; is that so bad? Besides a bootup that is no longer than your browser's, everything else inside an Electron app can be identically fast to a native application. Please be a better filter - do not spread bad memes.

IshKebab 2mo ago
> everything else inside an Electron app can be identically fast to a native application. HTML layout and rendering is almost never as fast as GUIs like Qt. Also Electron apps usually use JavaScript which is slower than "fast" languages like C++/Rust/Kotlin/etc. The reason people use Electron is because it's easy, especially if you have to have a website anyway. Slack is a great example of this. They already have a full website so it's kind of silly to redo the whole thing... Unless AI makes it easy. We'll see I guess.
- yboris 2mo ago
  You are right about "almost never as fast as", but it is imperceptible to any human. We're talking about less than 100ms to render basically any typical UI, which then updates faster than 30fs. I said "identically fast"; I should have said "with respect to human perception".