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Migrating Slack's Desktop App to BrowserView

slack.engineering

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Re: Migrating Slack's Desktop App to BrowserView

#191

Post by simooooo »

nkkollaw wrote: post #173
lwansbrough wrote: post #45

What the hell is taking up all that RAM? Slack is using over 800MB of RAM on my computer right now, and it's completely idle. I've got a C# process on my computer right now handling thousands of messages per second and consuming 1/20th the RAM. If you rebuild Slack in Xamarin you'd probably drop your RAM consumption to under 50MB, just a guess. JS fiends are gonna tell me C# ain't JS, and I agree. TypeScript ain't JS…

I understand that 800MB for a chat client is a lot, but don't devs have lots of RAM to spare? I run about 20 apps at any given time + background process which I haven't counted, and I never run out of RAM (8GB). It's a problem, but is it an actual problem..?

Yes it is. My entire visual studio uses half the memory of slack

Re: Migrating Slack's Desktop App to BrowserView

#192

Post by DanBC »

randyrand wrote: post #98
dang wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes, you can't comment like this on Hacker News regardless of how bad a desktop app may be. We ban users who do this, so would you mind reading https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and not doing it again? The idea for discussions on HN is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, then don't comment until you do. This isn't only about being nice, it's about preventing…

There's no need to ban. Just put comments like these at the bottom under a "see more comments" button. Then we can accommodate more people.

that's what happens. You have a setting in your profile called showdead, with that turned on you get to read most comments by banned accounts.

Re: Migrating Slack's Desktop App to BrowserView

#193

Post by dmitriid »

zeveb wrote: post #102
Drdrdrq wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am guessing you are not on Linux? Your priorities would be different then. For instance "similar in functionalities like on other OSs" is pretty high on my list.

I'm on Linux, and I want an XWindows-native UI. I want to be able to identify windows by their class. I want to be able to embed them. I want to be able to script them from the command line. I don't want something which is as weak & unusable as what I'd get on Windows or macOS.

That’s geek-speak. Most people don’t care about native/scriptability/embeddability. They want the same apps with the same functionality that the rest of the world uses.

Re: Migrating Slack's Desktop App to BrowserView

#194

Post by jsnar »

nerpderp83 wrote: post #21
nartz wrote: post #10

I think this article is really helpful when deciding to use a nascent technology (Electron) in production- pretty cool you can create a desktop app with javascript, but at the same time, expect to do a lot of custom bug fixing and hope that there aren't issues in the core code (note: there always are) =D

This isn't Electron's fault. This is slacks fault. Look at the memory footprint of VS Code opening hundreds of files. A much much more substantial application than slack that uses a small fraction of the memory. On my machine, VS code with hundreds of open files is using just over 200MB.

Electron could still be faulty: its multi process architecture makes application developer easier to write memory leaking code.

Re: Migrating Slack's Desktop App to BrowserView

#195

Post by psy-q »

dijit wrote: post #162
outworlder wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Some posters seem to think that, because you CAN build a chat app consuming a few megabytes of RAM, it means you should and it's practical. It's like pointing to 64KB demoscene games and saying "see, you can write a game in 64KB, why does this one take multiple gigabytes". Well, by all means, create a Slack competitor in hand-optimized assembly if you wish. Or whatever else you prefer (Rust?). If it's a bette…

Why is it one extreme or the other? I defend decisions made by IDE developers because those are niche markets, but slack is not a niche market. They're "IRC for normies" (yes, yes, they fix a lot of cruft too but, it's effectively the same system). We're not talking about hand optimised assembly, but maybe assuming that I'm going to throw 1/8th-1/3rd of my system resources into your IRC clone is not healthy. the high…

Indeed, and if they'd spent their time creating a standard protocol for "modern" chat and implementing a native app per platform they could perhaps be the harbingers of the world's best new chat protocol with a host of good clients competing to see who's the best.

But that would encourage competition and open up the market, something that web 4.0 companies never want.

Re: Migrating Slack's Desktop App to BrowserView

#196

Post by pritambarhate »

Does Slack use WebRTC for it's call and screen sharing features? If yes, that might be one of the main reasons why it is written with Electron. It's very very hard to find people who can actually handle WebRTC C++ stack. On the contrary, Chrome has one of the best WebRTC support and screen sharing works out of the box.

Re: Migrating Slack's Desktop App to BrowserView

#197

Post by nkkollaw »

simooooo wrote: post #191
nkkollaw wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that 800MB for a chat client is a lot, but don't devs have lots of RAM to spare? I run about 20 apps at any given time + background process which I haven't counted, and I never run out of RAM (8GB). It's a problem, but is it an actual problem..?

Yes it is. My entire visual studio uses half the memory of slack

Right.

But how much do you have left? Is RAM in computers to sit there, or to be used?

I get it, but all the fuss seems exaggerated to me.

Re: Migrating Slack's Desktop App to BrowserView

#198

Post by manigandham »

rosser wrote: post #125
didibus wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one else doing it right can be an argument to show that its because no alternative is much better, and so Electron is actually the possibly right choice. It still being too slow or memory hungry for your liking still remains though. But it seems that there might not be an obvious solution to this that does not compromise on features.

"No better alternative" != "right". As you observe, a compromised choice is still compromised.

Nothing is perfect, every choice is a compromise. As a company, there are limits to how much time and effort is spent while growing their business. How much RAM is used is very low on the list of considerations.

Re: Migrating Slack's Desktop App to BrowserView

#199

Post by jackson1way »

Klonoar wrote: post #12
afandian wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When these kinds of things come up there's often complaint that desktop apps running in the browser are inefficient. As it happens, I agree. An old favourite of mine, Adium, probably never used 600 MB because I'm pretty sure my PowerBook G4 had less RAM than that. But I think it's a mistake to jump to the conclusion that these apps should be written in a native framework rather than a web view. Slack is doing much mo…

I'll second this and note that Telegram, an app actually written in native code, is currently using ~500MB on my machine right now. I hate to be the one to say it (mostly because I just don't care about the ensuing argument), but I think most people who decry Electron/et al don't actually have that great of an understanding of how memory works. I say this as a guy currently sitting here writing an iOS/macOS app in Ob…

I'd challenge that. I have been using the Telegram native client on Windows since ~3 years and I don't remember having it ever going beyond 100 MB usage of RAM or ANY spikes in CPU usage (usually ~60 MB and 0% CPU). It usually sits there, quietly. Maybe its using more RAM when I take a call with it, but since its going back to normal after I finish (or it's always just low), it doesn't matter.

I am using Slack since more than 3 years too. I have tried their web-app, desktop client, iOS app, everything. The iOS app is pretty good and gets constant love. Both the web app and desktop client are pretty much equal in performance: laggish and slow. My laptop has only 8 GB RAM and a 3-4 years old CPU. The next Lenovo I'll be getting is available with max. 16 GB RAM.

I have switched to the web app in my Chrome since ~2 years, because after all, the desktop client does eat more RAM, since it will have 2-3 extra processes, whereas running as a Chrome tab, those processes already exist anyway (i.e. GPU process).

To have the Slack tab always open as a single dedicated window, without the toolbar and tab bar etc. I use this as a bookmark:

  javascript:(function(){window.open('https://your-company.slack.com', 'Slack', 'scrollbars=no');;})();
I am also using the WhatsApp web app (also tried their 'desktop client' for a while), it's about the same experience as with Slack. Crappy.

Coming all the way from ICQ, IRC, Miranda etc. Telegram is the best chat client I have ever been using. The iOS app is great and about the same quality as the WhatsApp app (which is maybe slightly better), but since most of the time I'm infront of a real keyboard, I'd rather use the desktop client, which is just really snappy. The product design comes close to Apple products. All the drag&drop features, selecting of multiple messages/pictures, search, hotkeys ... Someone really did an effort and thought about all these small details. You can't imagine how easy it is to show all sent photos, easily browse through all of them with hotkeys and they show up instantly, or show all sent URLs, and so on. It is so good, that many times, I'd rather get up from the sofa and sit down at my desk to type a 2-3 sentence message to someone, than using my iPhone (WhatsApp or Telegram or iMessage). Oh and it has bots! I actually did one! Announcing delays and stuff for public transport in my town, using a server with php that is doing all the web crawling. I'd never even think about doing that in Slack.

Re: Migrating Slack's Desktop App to BrowserView

#200

Post by chrismorgan »

amedvednikov wrote: post #89
LeoNatan25 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Native" does not just mean "use the native toolkit" or "write in non-web tech". This app looks nothing like macOS or Windows apps. Most likely, none of the features users are accustomed to will work.

True, but it will get better with time.

The fact of the matter is that in the things that matter, a web view is more native than this—and in practice probably always will be. :-(
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