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Electron considered harmful

drewdevault.com

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Re: Electron considered harmful

#161

Post by z3t4 »

evilnode wrote: post #98

I've been fighting with this for a while now. I think the only good reason to use something like Electron is if you need to get a cross-platform POC up and running quickly. 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…

you dont need babel et al with electron because all your users will use the same "browser"

Re: Electron considered harmful

#162

Post by marcosdumay »

pluma wrote: post #108
ethbro wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> JS is a terrible programming language > I can never see the point of comments like these. At minimum, I think the hope is that js-only programmers become aware that there are alternatives. And hear that the people who use those alternatives often find them better.

The arrogance in it, though, is that because people who like JS are "obviously" wrong, the reason must be that they don't know (enough) other programming languages or don't know them well enough. I have used a number of different programming languages before JS, a couple of them more extensively and for a longer time than JS. I like JS. I understand its flaws. I also understand that all programming languages are terr…

First, X-only programmers are obviously wrong, whatever is the value of X.

That said, yes, somebody ought to love JS in a not blind way. Big numbers work that way. If that's you, I don't think those comments are for you. All languages have different flaws, every flaw relevance varies by context, and contexts are incredibly subjective. Yet, some contexts are much more common than others, and many people preach in support languages that are harming them because they don't know any better.

Re: Electron considered harmful

#163

Post by marcosdumay »

tlrobinson wrote: post #116
to3m wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"a variable is not required to have its type declared nor are types associated with properties" (ECMAScript 2016 spec, 4.2)

Are you suggesting all dynamically typed languages are "terrible"?

The only languages I can think that share those properties are Perl (5, don't know about 6) and the retired Visual Basic.

There is more there than dynamic typing.

Re: Electron considered harmful

#164

Post by sintaxi »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #106
niftich wrote: post #3

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 is a really good fit: for example, shipping a single-page webapp as a desktop app, a need that surfaces often in today's world, despite his derision of this concept." From a systems perspective that is emminently rant worthy, it indicates the system has completely failed the developer who cannot easily express what they can in a single page web app as a real application in the system.

Make no mistake, system-platforms failed.

Re: Electron considered harmful

#166

Post by ssivark »

cdnsteve wrote: post #10

If electron apps had a smarter way to manage chrome core as a dependency, the file size would be peanuts. Every apps is download on the same bundled core. Once this happens you won't have 100mb sizes. An intelligent installer could check core, if not installed download and install otherwise use what's on the system.

Isn't that what they call a web browser? For visiting websites and using web apps.

Re: Electron considered harmful

#167

Post by ld00d »

antihero wrote: post #21
ld00d wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with JavaFX? I don't ever see it recommended, but a lot of us can do Java, and from my experience, it's way better than swing or awt.

Purely out of interest, because I might have used one without even realising it, but could you link some desktop applications written in Java that haven't been sluggish as hell or a bit broken feeling?

I don't know. I did a cursory google search and came up mostly empty-handed. LoadUI is supposedly JavaFX. It's such an outlier for UI/UX though.

Re: Electron considered harmful

#168

Post by pkd »

antihero wrote: post #21
ld00d wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with JavaFX? I don't ever see it recommended, but a lot of us can do Java, and from my experience, it's way better than swing or awt.

Purely out of interest, because I might have used one without even realising it, but could you link some desktop applications written in Java that haven't been sluggish as hell or a bit broken feeling?

JEdit? Any IDE by IntelliJ? These are not JavaFX (its fairly new), but you asked for Java.

Re: Electron considered harmful

#169

Post by vvanders »

solatic wrote: post #148
niftich wrote: post #3

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,…

The point you're actually making is that the decision to build a desktop app with Electron is almost always a business decision and not a technical one. If you already have all this SPA code that you built, it's going to be cheaper to re-use it and provide the same UI to the end user that they already know from your SPA. Forget for a second that the performance will be terrible because it's not native code. Forget fo…

> Not for the HN purists.

Is that necessarily a bad thing? I'll throw a great counter-example to you, Mattermost. It's a great open source project that uses Electron to build a client app for just about every single platform.

Have you maintained a cross-platform app for Windows, OSX, and all the various flavor of linux? I have, it's hell. You have compiler differences, ui semantic differences and a litany of per-platform quirks.

Does Electron solve every single use case? No. However in the cases where it makes sense it's a great tool.

Re: Electron considered harmful

#170

Post by bryanrasmussen »

Splines wrote: post #145
mateuszf wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then you can't share the same code between your web application and desktop application. As a company you would have to pay two separate teams to develop each - developer time is expensive. Yes - electron apps are slower and eat more ram - but someone else is paying for that.

> Yes - electron apps are slower and eat more ram - but someone else is paying for that. I hope you're being facetious here. If you develop any kind of desktop application and truly believe this, honestly this is disappointing to read.

well if the developers or company don't actually use the app then their users are the ones paying for the ram, aren't they?
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