11–20 of 143 posts
I'm a little disappointed that the article doesnt mention the benefits of JavaFX and why exactly I should ditch electron over javafx.
The author touches on app size and performance - both of which are fairly valid I believe, but they don't go into why JavaFX over other desktop UI frameworks.
"you can distribute it to any user on any OS and it will just work." I had to check the date on this article to see if it was from 2007 or something. Under no circumstances does java "just work", its an insane mess of java shipped with the os, being updated, and people not updating due to oracle trying to force feed crapware as part of their installers/updaters. I, for one, do not live in a world that resembles anyth…
"you can distribute it to any user on any OS and it will just work." I had to check the date on this article to see if it was from 2007 or something. Under no circumstances does java "just work", its an insane mess of java shipped with the os, being updated, and people not updating due to oracle trying to force feed crapware as part of their installers/updaters. I, for one, do not live in a world that resembles anyth…
There's not really an acceptable amount of arguments against Qt and Gtk+ to support the headline. It reads like, "I don't really know much about the alternatives other than JavaFX, but this is why I personally like it..."
To me, on a sliding scale of complexity, JavaFx is closer to Electron than Qt and GTK+ (especially since your options are C++, or using bindings that have varying quality and ease of use). If I was trying to sell someone who uses Electron on an alternative it'd definitely be JavaFx, maybe Qt with QML if they knew C++.
"Install this runtime, then you can install this app. Oh and that auto updater that is atrocious? You can thank us for having it. Thanks for being a loyal customer!"
As much as I dislike the inherent complexity of Electron, VSCode and Discord are existence proofs that it can be used effectively. VSCode is far faster than any other IDE I've used, and even beats VIM in terminal in terms of responsiveness (altough I suspect this is not VIM's fault). Discord is overall a great application, and quite responsive. Both are slightly bloated in terms of memory, from what I supect they cou…
I too like discord and VSCode, but VSCode uses far more resources than sublime, with the tradeoff being that it's more easily extensible and has a faster release cycle(which may or may not be related to team size). VIM locally is obviously also going to be much faster and capable of opening far larger files than VSCode.
You know what Electron has brought us? It's brought the Linux desktop reliable feature parity with other platforms. Fat chance Visual Studio Code (often hailed as "one of the best-optimized electron apps") would have existed on Linux without Electron.
Discord, another fantastic Electron app, is functionally identical on web and desktop (all platforms), feels fantastic on Linux, no issues at all. What are the odds I would have a functional Text/Voice/Video chat Linux desktop client for Discord if Electron didn't exist? How much time would have had to be spent reverse-engineering the protocol then implementing a decent UI for it all?
Obviously you shouldn't use Electron for certain things. If your app is tiny especially, you'll be better served with a leaner framework. But that's nothing new.
Electron has given desktop developers access to the web's fantastic tooling and iteration speed, and web developers access to the desktop market. It's given the ability and incentives to all those developers who might not have touched Linux before to make a Linux release alongside the rest.
If you don't like how Electron performs, your time would be better spent optimizing it than seeking out Java frameworks, which work atrociously bad on anything that isn't the author's platform (if even that).
"you can distribute it to any user on any OS and it will just work." I had to check the date on this article to see if it was from 2007 or something. Under no circumstances does java "just work", its an insane mess of java shipped with the os, being updated, and people not updating due to oracle trying to force feed crapware as part of their installers/updaters. I, for one, do not live in a world that resembles anyth…
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the Java updaters on Windows do bundleware anymore. I know nearly all the free Windows antivirus updaters automatically install Chrome and set it as your default browser unless you pay close attention still.