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I look at Electron apps the same way I used to look at Adobe Air apps. Any League of Legends player knows how bad the launcher is - 80% the fault of Adobe Air. Sure it was easier to build, but your users suffer for it. Electron apps are pretty terrible performance wise, and you can immediately tell it's an Electron app. - Atom - Slack - GitKraken All of these apps have 'tells'.
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JS is a terrible programming language I can never see the point of comments like these. Not one person who reads that will have his mind changed. HTML/CSS can be nice to have in such a situation, although a refusal to learn other GUI frameworks probably makes for a poor (native) developer. No it doesn't. Either the developer benefits or doesn't benefit from "refusing". There's only so much time in the day. I'll refus…
> I can never see the point of comments like these. Not one person who reads that will have his mind changed. I wasn't expecting to change anyone's mind with that. There are more robust programming languages that don't have the same inconsistencies and idiosyncrasies and encourages better practices in general (even though it is true than you can write terrible code in any language). > No it doesn't. Either the develo…
You can make an argument to say C++ is terrible, Java is, Ruby is, Python is, and it means absolutely nothing other than showing of your own insecurities. You can build great and mediocre things in any language and any platform. People do every day.
Also, if the developer is not one of the users of the software, you've already thrown a good chunk of quality out the window right there. You're simply not going to have the vision required to build the optimal user experience.
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I think the author really has some valid points and he warns you about the rant part. Valid points are: * Electron is often too much for the purpose * it does not look native and the devs don't care * often there are better tools His points about JS being not a good programming language, meh, the language wars are probably never over #SmalltalkIsStillTheBest
> it does not look native and the devs don't care this is not valid. no need to limit our use case to devs, either. at worst, users don't care. at best, users prefer it. see Spotify, Discord, Skype, Sublime, Chrome, Steam... should i keep going? whenever i open an app that uses entirely native controls i just expect the author didn't want to invest any time into making their app look good.
Well, if you'll accept a single data point, I dislike using them. If there's a native alternative I will always go for that. If there is not, then sometimes this tips the decision to not install.
This had me for the first half, where the author walks you through the 'case study' applications that offer minimal functionality despite shipping with an entire browser inside. But then the essay turns into a rant. It's 2016, people, the ship has sailed on pretending JS isn't a real programming language. Phrasing the argument the way he does just betrays his smug elitism. The fact is, for many types of applications,…
> It's 2016, people, the ship has sailed on pretending JS isn't a real programming language. Phrasing the argument the way he does just betrays his smug elitism. Using the date as an argument is also poor form. JS is a terrible programming language (I'm not denying that it is a programming language though) regardless of how popular it is (although I think I might be going against the grain here on HN, many people her…
> It feels like forcing a square peg into a round hole because the
> developer is seemingly unwilling to consider more appropriate
> technologies outside of their comfort zone
It just makes you feel good to dismiss other people as lazy or unwilling to venture outside their comfort zone, but that's more of a revelation about how you view others.
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TTK. It's got bindings in pretty much every language (because it's TK), but unlike plain-old TK, it doesn't look like absolute garbage, and instead takes on a vaguely native appearance on each platform.
Links? Thanks.
This article, like many similar to it, makes the (imo flawed) assumption that a dev tool ought to be evaluated on only a few variables--e.g., code quality, performance, package size. If writing software is about making users' lives easier, happier, or better, though, I think we ought to optimize for that and that alone. I say let the market and communities of users decide which software they want to use. I use Nylas…
That's (imo) your flawed assumption. And no, just choosing electron won't make your users happier.
> Love it or not, JS is a point of entry for a hell of a lot more ppl than C++ is
C++ is not the only alternative. And considering the staggering amount of frameworks and tools one must learn to get started with JS other alternatives are actually easier. Unfortunately, not as cool.
> That said, the article does skirt an issue I've thought about a little, and I'm interested to hear others' takes.
Is this a joke? I had to google what skirt means: "attempt to ignore; avoid dealing with." That's the exact opposite of what the article does. Let me quote it for you:
About electron: "One of the slowest, least memory efficient [...]"
About terminal: "They’ve taken one of the most lightweight and essential tools on your computer and bloated it by orders of magnitude. "
About lossless-cut: "For the price of 200 extra MiB of disk space and an entire Chromium process in RAM and on your CPU [..]"
The conclusion that "people will require more money to buy more hardware to run bloated software" is not something only you thought about, it's only one step away from what the article says. And it's actually hilarious (read: infuriating) that you don't see the problem with that way of thinking. NASA put people on the moon with computers less powerful than a mobile phone.
The article criticizes people who write bloated software, but you argue it's fine, because users are happy. Then you go on wondering if it's a problem that users won't afford the latest laptops to run bloated software. WAT?
I am currently trying to make a GUI to compose and render Terraform assets in a similar manner to AWS CloudFormation's visual designer, and I've spent an eternity trying to devise the best way to do this (this is mainly driven out of boredom more than anything else...Terraform works just fine as is). As much as I don't want to use Javascript and the cancer that is it's dependency management, the web stack is proving to be the path of least resistance thus far. Although I still don't understand why you need to download half of the known internet to install gulp and babel locally.
I'm a GUI novice. Is there any cross-platform software that generates a true native UI on target platforms?
This had me for the first half, where the author walks you through the 'case study' applications that offer minimal functionality despite shipping with an entire browser inside. But then the essay turns into a rant. It's 2016, people, the ship has sailed on pretending JS isn't a real programming language. Phrasing the argument the way he does just betrays his smug elitism. The fact is, for many types of applications,…
>Electron allows the world's most popular layout system (HTML+CSS) to be used with one of the world's most popular programming languages Just wanted to name the most obvious alternative: embedded browser component like QtWebKit, which allows to code most of the application logic on the language of your choice. Embedded browsers are the way people have been doing it since circa 2000 (by then, Windows was dominating pl…
Therefore all claims that electron bloats 200Mb are just temporary. Its still a relatively young technology with huge potential (which also means huge potential for misuse!)
I spent 5+ years writing native GUI apps in half a dozen frameworks, I hope to never do so again unless the project's requirements ask for it, which I don't see happening for most use-cases out there.
Besides, almost nobody writes true native applications anymore - its all C# now which is ironic as its also extremely bloated with huge pools of average developers at best.
OT: what's the difference between Electron and Electrode?