Ask HN: How Hard Is Learning to Build Electron Apps?

Hi,

I'm a student and I'm thinking about contributing to some open source apps like Boostnote or Notable which use Electron (Javascript/Typescript).

How much time/effort does it require to learn the necessary skills/tools?

So far I'm comfortable with Python, C++ and Java and I'm mainly working on topics like machine learning and computer vision. So learning Electron will probably not be directly useful for my first job.

Would you say it's nonetheless a good use of my time or should I rather focus on my "more career relevant stack"?

Electron is fundamentally a packaging system, not a programming environment. It let's you write a web app in HTML, JavaScript, and CSS and deploy it as a desktop app on all three OS platforms.

So, to learn Electron, you just need to learn web programming, which is useful for nearly all programmers. One super cool thing about Electron is that you can package up any frameworks or other dependencies inside your same desktop app, giving you the whole world of web development tools and techniques without making your end user install any of them.