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Telegram Desktop is very good example of modern desktop client done in the most efficient way. C++ and qt, nothing else. Works like a charm an all major operating systems. Easy to install, use and update. Great stuff.
How do they manage to get the very native feel to the UI on Telegram for MacOS? Or is that a different native client? Also curious… in what language and UI framework is their iOS client written?
Telegram Desktop is very good example of modern desktop client done in the most efficient way. C++ and qt, nothing else. Works like a charm an all major operating systems. Easy to install, use and update. Great stuff.
Here's the thing. You know what the alternative to all of these Electron apps coming out is? If your answer is "A native Cocoa/WPF app", you are on another planet, the answer is, "It wouldn't exist at all". Nobody in the last 5-10 years cared about writing Desktop apps before Electron came along, there's basically zero money in it, and it's massively expensive, both in terms of actual dev time per feature (easily 10x…
So if the Electron bloat is such as issue for you, just hit Slack in the web directly.
FWIW, we're working on https://github.com/nidium/Nidium presicely to fix this. A new kind of browser engine, not based on any existing engine, allowing developers to use a subset of the web (webgl, 2d, layout) without being forced to use a bloated ecosystem (and which also works on mobile and low end device). Previous HN discussion : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6314961
> If you want to use JS and react to make a native app, try react native instead. Given the discussion of the recent ReactXP thread, I'm guessing most people don't realize you can do this today . React Native supports macOS [1] and UWP [2]. Edit: There's even some early work on Ubuntu support [3]. [1] https://github.com/ptmt/react-native-macos [2] https://github.com/Microsoft/react-native-windows [3] https://github.c…
I think the choice is obvious at this point, if the Windows version is complete and stable, I will start using it instead of Electron.
Long time javascript programmers are the loser (if they never learned more than javascript) they don't know how to programming an almost perfect program. That is the reason why they using javascript on Desktop. The average programmer learns just one fucking language but being a good programmer you need at least to learn 2+ languages. That you can see the performance issues in your stack. I started with PHP and javasc…
Or maybe it has something to do with time-to-market for existing web apps, or other loserish things. No, can't be. You must be right. Especially because you know more than one language. After all, when you learn more languages, it makes your words more true!
Here's the thing. You know what the alternative to all of these Electron apps coming out is? If your answer is "A native Cocoa/WPF app", you are on another planet, the answer is, "It wouldn't exist at all". Nobody in the last 5-10 years cared about writing Desktop apps before Electron came along, there's basically zero money in it, and it's massively expensive, both in terms of actual dev time per feature (easily 10x…
The underlying issue here is that Electron reduces the barrier to entry for cross-platform development. That is, it's cheaper to build a single cross-platform application in Electron than it is to build two or three native applications, and you can re-use your existing web experience. I can completely understand why companies might choose this approach.
The trade-off — and there is a trade-off — is that Electron applications are shite in comparison with proper native applications. They fail to integrate with the host platform, they are slow, they hog memory and drink power. It's fine to make those trade-offs – in some ways, it's better that you can get an application at all than the alternative of 'no support for your platform'. But let's be honest here – there is nothing preventing e.g. Spotify or Slack from building native clients for each platform they support, and I find it difficult to believe that the costs would be prohibitive.
I know I'm being completely naive but can all electron apps share one runtime (sorta like one browser with multiple tabs)?
But everyone is using a slightly different version of Electron and macOS and Windows don't have a good enough package manager, so everyone is static linking everything.
Telegram Desktop is very good example of modern desktop client done in the most efficient way. C++ and qt, nothing else. Works like a charm an all major operating systems. Easy to install, use and update. Great stuff.
Electron is a sub-optimal solution to the fact that desktop development today is horrible . You either have to write your app twice (or three times if you want Linux) or use Qt, which limits you to either C++ or this weird langauge/ecosystem nobody knows called Qt Quick. Electron lets you write desktop apps that work decently well everywhere in a language you already know.
Hmm, PyQt would remove the need to use c++ if that is an issue.