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Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

josephg.com

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Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#851

Post by vatotemking »

grinich wrote: post #404

At Nylas we made a huge bet on Electron-- our desktop app Nylas Mail actually started as a fork of Atom Shell before the project was rebranded to "Electron." To be honest, we would have never built this app without Electron. It allowed us to have a small team (2 devs) ship the first version of the app without learning an entire new dev toolchain on multiple platforms. There certainly can be performance issues with bu…

I've seen this before in various forms:

* Don't use PHP its a fractal of bad design - most popular server side language before

* Don't use JavaScript its a scripting language - most popular programming language

* Don't use Flash its bad for security and accessiblity - most popular authoring tool for animated web apps.

* Don't use WordPress its a spaghetti mess - most popular CMS

* Don't use VB6! - most popular rapid application development tool

The most popular techs are the most practical and easy-to-use ones. Im not dismissing the arguments. The "dont use" arguments are valid. HOWEVER, you can't just tell people to "do the world a favor and don't use this tech because". That doesn't work. Unless you can release a competing tech that does better, with less amount of work.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#852

Post by namuol »

pdimitar wrote: post #780
grinich wrote: post #404

At Nylas we made a huge bet on Electron-- our desktop app Nylas Mail actually started as a fork of Atom Shell before the project was rebranded to "Electron." To be honest, we would have never built this app without Electron. It allowed us to have a small team (2 devs) ship the first version of the app without learning an entire new dev toolchain on multiple platforms. There certainly can be performance issues with bu…

It pains me to see how a person responsbile for a pretty important app is as oblivious as you are to the real issues. Many people use laptops and their battery life matters a lot, being one "minor" factor. Not to mention that in a technical sense, your app really shouldn't take any CPU while idling. Doing a socket wait is something a Raspberry Pi Zero handles without going to more than 1% CPU, for half a second. At a…

> [...] oblivious as you are to the real issues [...]

I understand that you're frustrated, but this kind of language does not foster productive discourse.

As I understand it, Nylas (grinich's OSS Email product/platform) wouldn't have been possible to build with a two-person dev team had they chosen to implement it in something other than Electron.

Are you suggesting we're better off without competitors to the existing email desktop-clients?

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#853

Post by wott »

jliptzin wrote: post #643
Veen wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The vast majority of users (like >99%) don't have a clue why their computer isn't performing up to par. They literally have no idea how any of it works. They might just assume that it's slow because they haven't deleted spam emails in a while (even while they use gmail) or didn't pay extra to get that 3.2Ghz machine instead of the 3Ghz. They certainly don't have any idea how to open up top stats and check what resour…

> The vast majority of users (like >99%) don't have a clue why their computer isn't performing up to par. They literally have no idea how any of it works.

Same thing for Web developers.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#854

Post by teyc »

mpweiher wrote: post #478
coldtea wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Computing for ever. We use C to avoid writing assembly. Use Java to avoid writing C. Use Python to avoid writing Java. Yeah, but until Electron and they like, we seldom shipped desktop apps in anything than C, C++, Delphi etc even after all those decades. Which are all as close to the metal as can be. And in fact C/C++ can be as fast, or even faster than hand-rolled assembly most of the time (with few exception), s…

Actually, I've been shipping desktop apps in Objective-C for roughly a quarter of a century. Gets me the high-level, Smalltalk-ish productivity when I want it (most of the time) and the low-level C efficiency when I need it (sometimes). Having my cake and eating it, that's me :-)

I'm curious how you get Smalltalk like productivity on objective C? I thought the productivity on Smalltalk comes from its live programming environment?

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#855

Post by wott »

sametmax wrote: post #423
cableshaft wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but Python still doesn't seem to have a great cross-platform desktop GUI, as far as I can find. I'd prefer to code entirely in Python if I could, but I haven't liked a single GUI library I've tried for Python. Although to be fair I haven't really tried PyQT out still, but I don't like the idea of having to buy a commercial license for it.

PyQT is alright. Kivy as well. Or anything in any other language. But none of them are close enough to the benefit of being able to use the tone of experience from the Web UI into the desktop. Eventually all GUI app toolkit ends up with a custom MVC framework, a client/server architecture, some kind of db for persistence, their own implementation of asynchronous event and communication models and a declarative layer…

> But none of them are close enough to the benefit of being able to use the tone of experience from the Web UI into the desktop.

Web UI is a gazillion shades of shit, please don't dump that rubbish on the desktop. Thank you.

Seriously, how can one take Web UIs, the most cumbersome, unreliable, inconsistent, unreactive UIs, as examples to be followed? That's beyond me.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#856

Post by nnain »

grinich wrote: post #546
LeoNatan25 wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nylas Mail > Nylas Mail - The best free email app | Nylas - The best free email app What exactly makes it "best"? It looks to offer nothing more than other "best" mail apps.

Hard to answer your question without hijacking the thread, but here goes: • It's got pretty much all the power features out there like Snoozing, Open Tracking, Send Later, Reminders, Enriched Contacts (i.e. Rapportive), Unified Inbox, Swipe Actions, Templates, etc. • It's open source and super easy to extend with JavaScript plugins. Developer have made dozens of themes and some cool plugins including PGP, Unsubscribe…

There are other comments in here comparing react-native to Electron. Do you know if you could build Nylas Mail at the same pace with react-native? Will the binary size/RAM usage drop significantly on react-native?

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#857

Post by dilap »

pdimitar wrote: post #788
dilap wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I downloaded this and signed up just to give it a try, since I've never used a Qt app on the Mac that didn't fall in the uncanny valley of UI -- trying to be native, but failing. This doesn't break the trend. Some problems: - Text boxes are non-native and do not support any standard keystrokes for navigation (this is huge!) - The division between the titlebar and the main app body is weird looking - Highlighting arou…

Three of your points use the word "weird" which immediately puts them in the subjective category (hint: zero argumentative value). "No bounce scroll" is subjective as well, hence no real argument there as well. Non-native text boxes is a 50/50 issue. I get that it can be alienating for some and that's just as valid as me not caring. But it's still subjective and bears zero argumentative value as well. Telegram Deskto…

Well, clearly you're either not sensitive to or don't care about look-and-feel issues. To those of us that do care, it's a big deal. Just not being able to use C-f, C-b, C-e, C-a &c keyboard shortcuts in text fields is pretty much a deal-breaker for me.

No argument here that Slack is hideously inefficient.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#858

Post by pdabbadabba »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #583
pdabbadabba wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, to the extent that these costs degrade the user experience, I'm not sure they really are externalizing them. Presumably they pay this cost in the form of decreased user satisfaction. It's just that this is a cost they are willing to pay. There may be an interesting economic lesson here: it really is not that easy to externalize costs. It surely can be done (air pollution), but it requires some special circumsta…

Yep, and when the government doesn't properly tax those harm-to-public-good things like air pollution to balance the incentives and make it cheaper to do "the right thing" and pollute less, companies (which are made of real people and are not just unthinking machines) will do whatever they can to maximize profits. This is why it's so important to e.g. Increase the price of water to reflect the true cost in the Centra…

Pretty funny that the only reply here is 'found the Marxist' (maybe it was supposed to be a joke?) when, in reality, all you're suggesting is that the government set the conditions for the proper functioning of the market, which is an idea straight our of Hayek.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#859

Post by kalleboo »

user5994461 wrote: post #562
brightball wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real trick is whether or not users care about: A) This works on all of the platforms that we use vs B) Performance could be better on my computer It's been a LOOOOOONG time since I worked on a laptop where I experienced noticeable performance problems...which is almost entirely because SSD's make them so much less noticeable if you start dipping into swap unless you're really working out your machine. For most us…

> It's been a LOOOOOONG time since I worked on a laptop where I experienced noticeable performance problems... Really??? Because personally, I keep having performance problems on all laptops I have. Don't try running on battery saving mode, seriously. I stop counting the 5+ years old laptops that have to be upgraded, they can't watch a youtube full HD video in good conditions. ---- Fun Anecdote: I had to trial an ent…

> I stop counting the 5+ years old laptops that have to be upgraded, they can't watch a youtube full HD video in good conditions.

Are they all netbooks? Because those were crap the day they came out and even more crap 5 years later. You can find terrible discount desktop machines that can't handle anything just as easy as you can find terrible laptops.

My laptop is 5 years old and the only time I feel a lack of performance is when the Swift compiler fires up. Your example link came up right away (OK it burns away 30% of a core, but I got 4 of those).

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#860

Post by EduardoBautista »

devmunchies wrote: post #835
wvenable wrote: post #783

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Desktop apps like Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Photoshop? I too can pick a few ridiculous outliers. Honestly I'm not sure if you're right or wrong but either way that argument isn't good.

> I too can pick a few ridiculous outliers Those examples aren't event good, though. They all seems to be becoming less popular these days.

Let me know what web apps are better than the desktop apps that were mentioned. They are just as popular as they have ever been.
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