Electron is flash for the desktop (2016) • Hacker News Board

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#111

Post by matthewmacleod » Tue, Apr 11, 2017, 2:55 PM UTC

currysausage wrote: post #102

anaisbetts wrote: post #74

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…

> Nobody cared about writing Desktop apps before Electron came along, there's basically zero money in it I would acutally pay Spotify extra money if they brought back the old, snappy, pre-Electron version of their Windows desktop app. They replaced it with something that is simply too heavy to manage larger playlists (except maybe on the max-spec MBPs it's being coded on) just because they could iterate more quickly…

Seconded for the Mac app. The current experience is shameful.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#112

Post by joshstrange » Tue, Apr 11, 2017, 2:55 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #93

anaisbetts wrote: post #74

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 other thing I find ionic about this whole article is that it's perfectly easy to only use Slack within Chrome as a normal web app. And the UI is almost exactly the same because it's nearly all the same code. So if the Electron bloat is such as issue for you, just hit Slack in the web directly.

s/ionic/ironic

But I find it to be a humorous typo given the topic of this discussion as ionic is a browser-based cross-platform mobile framework.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#113

Post by Touche » Tue, Apr 11, 2017, 2:55 PM UTC

matthewmacleod wrote: post #97

anaisbetts wrote: post #74

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…

That's nonsense . Desktop apps have been frequently released since forever. 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 th…

> They fail to integrate with the host platform

Just as a counter-point, because native app fans often make this point as though it is universally recognized to be a good thing.

I don't want apps to integrate with the host platform. The host platform is not the thing I care about. I use several host platforms in different contexts (I have work and home computers and a smartphone, they all run different OSes) and I would prefer that Slack look like Slack and not have buttons in different places with different UI interactions just because that's the way Reminders.app works.

For me, the web is the host platform I care about. It's the one that I can use anywhere and only have to remember the URL.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#114

Post by Etheryte » Tue, Apr 11, 2017, 2:55 PM UTC

matthewmacleod wrote: post #97

anaisbetts wrote: post #74

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…

That's nonsense . Desktop apps have been frequently released since forever. 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 th…

> The underlying issue here is that Electron reduces the barrier to entry for cross-platform development.

It's very far-fetched to call a lower barrier to entry an issue. The easier we can make it for people to get started, the better, isn't it?

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#115

Post by mentos » Tue, Apr 11, 2017, 2:55 PM UTC

anaisbetts wrote: post #74

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…

I agree and the author fails to mention the tradeoff between ram/diskspace and development time.

>>all you web devs: Go learn C or Rust or something. Your program runs on a computer.

I don't think that is a realistic request.

When the cost of Slack's ram/diskspace usage starts affecting their profit then they can/will take steps to re-write the application in 'native' code. Until then its premature optimization?

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#116

Post by Veen » Tue, Apr 11, 2017, 2:56 PM UTC

matthewmacleod wrote: post #97

anaisbetts wrote: post #74

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…

That's nonsense . Desktop apps have been frequently released since forever. 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 th…

What you call "trade-offs" appears to me to be developers externalizing their costs onto users. There are costs to developing desktop applications and developers don't want to pay them, so they make users pay for them in wasted hardware dollars, bandwidth, RAM, battery life, and poor integration.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#117

Post by gkya » Tue, Apr 11, 2017, 2:56 PM UTC

anaisbetts wrote: post #74

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…

> Nobody cared about writing Desktop apps before Electron came along, there's basically zero money in it

Wut? So the whole Mac App Store, MS Office Suite, Adobe's apps, many other stuff were just a dream? Until Electron desktop was dead? You're bending facts here, and I hope that's because you don't know much about the stuff you're talking about.

Desktop is big, just that other things have grown bigger. That doesn't mean desktop is/was ever obsolete or losing it's utility.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#118

Post by jhasse » Tue, Apr 11, 2017, 2:56 PM UTC

cgh wrote: post #45

lazarus101 wrote: post #15

In most cases it's either an Electron app or no desktop app at all. It's simply not feasible to write native apps.

Qt exists and is really nice to work with. It has multiple language bindings. How is it unfeasible?

> It has multiple language bindings.

Not many of them are good though, as it's hard to bind C++.

If you want to work with Qt, C++ is really the best option. And not many people know that language well enough. They know JavaScript though ;)

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#119

Post by anon1385 » Tue, Apr 11, 2017, 2:56 PM UTC

anaisbetts wrote: post #74

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…

> finding specialist developers who know these dated technologies

WPF is newer than Javascript and the DOM. Using native desktop GUI frameworks isn't some sort of ancient dark art. It's easier than web development!

>if its massive "Beatles walking off the plane" moment hasn't happened by then, sorry, it's not gonna.

The same thing applies to the quality and performance of javascript apps. Decent performance and feature parity is always just about to happen when the next iteration of the standards is implemented, but it never arrives.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#120

Post by obstinate » Tue, Apr 11, 2017, 2:57 PM UTC

matthewmacleod wrote: post #97

anaisbetts wrote: post #74

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…

That's nonsense . Desktop apps have been frequently released since forever. 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 th…

Can't say I agree. Native apps are often garbage. Discord is another Electron app that I think is actually quite a bit better in most dimensions (attractiveness, functionality, speed) than the native apps it replaces (Mumble, Teamspeak, Skype, etc.).