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I've spent the last two years building a new email client

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Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#481

Post by collyw »

tjoff wrote: post #421
collyw wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can kind of see why. There is a lot of convenience in being able to log into any computer and access your mail. Plus Gmail search beats the search in native clients most of the time.

Gmail search is without doubt the worst search I've ever come across. It doesn't even return all the results. Why do you think it is good? There is nothing that says that you can't have both web and native mail clients.

It works for almost everything I try to find. It might take a few tries, but I can usually find the mail I was looking for.

Usually when I change jobs I have had another non Gmail account but I have never found the search as good. I have an outlook web client at work and that doesn't find things. Maybe its me being dumb and remembering different phrases from what is actually stored, but I almost always manage to finds what i am looking for in Gmail. I can't say the same with other clients.

Its just a pity that I have to give up my privacy to Google for it.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#482

Post by jerf »

sametmax wrote: post #324
jerf wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Qt isn't that much less bloated than Electron, especially when you start styling it and get dynamic." Given how many smart people are working to make the browser techs as efficient as possible, and the way that things like QT get "bloated" as soon as they start trying to do what browsers do, I've pretty much arrived at the idea that once you have images and an engine that can reflow text and load fonts and so on, an…

I agree with that to some extend, but the fact is, except for some very specific cases like vscode, I not only don't need "styling and dynamic", but I don't want it to be. My OS has UI semantics. I want most of the apps to work the same everywhere. Your app is not special. Stop reinventing a "visual identity". Give me congruency and features.

"I agree with that to some extend, but the fact is, except for some very specific cases like vscode, I not only don't need "styling and dynamic", but I don't want it to be."

Actually, I'm not referring to things like colors or fonts. What I'm referring to is the fact that had the web-browser style layout algorithms not been already invented by web browsers, they would have been invented by the inexorable progression of the pressures and features in desktop toolkits by now. If the people using web toolkits want to be able to lay things out without having to laboriously bundle things into horizontal and vertical scaling groups and specify flexing ratios and all the other crappy layout mechanisms used in desktop toolkits since they first came out, but to use a simple (to use, not implement), powerful HTML-esque layout mechanism, you're going to pay for that on the resource consumption.

And the people writing these programs want that, and will use toolkits that offer that, and if that's bothering you, well, spend some time writing this stuff yourself and you'll stop being bothered, you'll happily spend 100MB of the user's RAM to make the pain end. As neat as it is in some ways, and as much as it has been made to sing and dance over the last 50 years, that style of layout really stinks to use.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#483

Post by reaperducer »

tomc1985 wrote: post #437
misterbwong wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not grandparent but I tend to agree that it's NoBigDeal(TM). I'm no electron apologist but I don't understand why using electron is considered "inconsiderate". It seems like the developer(s) used the platform that they felt was best for this app. If the platform's issues overshadow the product's value, then that's a poor choice and the market will react by not using it. Is it inconsiderate for Ford to make a larg…

The way I see it, user's resources (and their experience related to these factors) aren't part of the calculus that goes into how most companies choose their platforms. To be fair, things have always been this way -- people have been writing good-but-bloated software in shitty frameworks since forever -- but I can't recall a time that one framework so bloated is so heavily in vogue. (edit: Flash, maybe? Though people…

I'm fortunate enough to work for a company that sees being thrifty with bandwidth and processing as very important.

We have regular audits to find ways to make things lighter/faster, and therefore better. Occasionally "flashier" mandates from on high override those considerations, but so far it's been specific and rare.

It's probably because our target audience isn't developers.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#484

Post by coldtea »

rootlocus wrote: post #355
coldtea wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is what I use. But ST3 doesn't have the full power of a 20+ strong MS team behind it, but a single person (and another hired to help here and there), and so doesn't have the same momentum -- and it's getting behind in features as well.

I never kept tabs on the development effort on neither VSCode nor Sublime Text, but it was always my impression that much of the power either editor has comes from 3rd party extensions rather than the editor core. As such, I believe it was the hype around Atom and VSCode that drove people to write extensions for them, leaving ST behind.

>but it was always my impression that much of the power either editor has comes from 3rd party extensions rather than the editor core

A lot of it, yes. But VSCode also invests a lot in core functionality (in what in other platforms would be plugins). The Git integration is one such example -- or the ability to debug Chrome in it.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#485

Post by reaperducer »

markbnj wrote: post #423
tomc1985 wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My compute resources are not an all-you-can-eat buffet. I'm sick of inconsiderate developers writing software in wasteful frameworks that waste my electricity and time. You can make pretty x-platform apps in JavaFX, QT Quick, GTK, hell even Lazarus, and they don't eat CPU and memory like Electron does. It is a shame that nearly every app released in the latter half of this decade is just wasteful Electron garbage. Do…

Pretty harsh lol. If you don't like electron apps then don't run them. It's hard to describe the actions of developers who use those frameworks as "inconsiderate" when they are a) providing the fruit of their labors for free; and b) not shoving it down your throat.

> If you don't like electron apps then don't run them.

Done.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#486

Post by Joeri »

tomc1985 wrote: post #437
misterbwong wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not grandparent but I tend to agree that it's NoBigDeal(TM). I'm no electron apologist but I don't understand why using electron is considered "inconsiderate". It seems like the developer(s) used the platform that they felt was best for this app. If the platform's issues overshadow the product's value, then that's a poor choice and the market will react by not using it. Is it inconsiderate for Ford to make a larg…

The way I see it, user's resources (and their experience related to these factors) aren't part of the calculus that goes into how most companies choose their platforms. To be fair, things have always been this way -- people have been writing good-but-bloated software in shitty frameworks since forever -- but I can't recall a time that one framework so bloated is so heavily in vogue. (edit: Flash, maybe? Though people…

I wrote a tiny app in flash / AS3 back in the day, a CAD floorplan viewer in a few hundred KB, including baked-in artwork and font. CPU and memory use was quite low. I never considered flash to be bloated or slow. The way most people used it made it bloated and slow, with heavy software-based vector animation, tons of video, and flex. Flex was very developer-friendly but also quite bloated, so I never used it.

I wonder if electron is a bit of the same deal, with the recommended way of using it optimizing for developer efficiency over resource efficiency.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#487

Post by voicedYoda »

muszc-master wrote: post #407
scottybowl wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm extremely interested.. Me sharing it with other people is a poor way of measuring my enthusiasm.. I'm not going to share it until I've tried it, so that I can vouch for its quality.

Noted. It was a poor choice of words / trick on my part it seems.

Don’t call it a trick. It isn’t a trick. It is a marketing ploy.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#488

Post by nobodyaccount »

lisper wrote: post #452
untog wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what am I endorsing? I haven't tried the product myself yet. It's not unethical, but it's also simply not something I'm prepared to do - I will not recommend something to anyone without having been able to evaluate it myself first.

This. In a world where publishing is essentially free, reputation is an extremely valuable commodity. The ask here is not trivial.

Yes, it is trivial. You have a warped perspective of importance if you think giving the nod to a new mail app is some holy thing.

I tell my friends about new apps, startups, and projects all the time. None of them think I'm staking my reputation when I shitpost about some new thing in Slack.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#489

Post by misterbwong »

tomc1985 wrote: post #437
misterbwong wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not grandparent but I tend to agree that it's NoBigDeal(TM). I'm no electron apologist but I don't understand why using electron is considered "inconsiderate". It seems like the developer(s) used the platform that they felt was best for this app. If the platform's issues overshadow the product's value, then that's a poor choice and the market will react by not using it. Is it inconsiderate for Ford to make a larg…

The way I see it, user's resources (and their experience related to these factors) aren't part of the calculus that goes into how most companies choose their platforms. To be fair, things have always been this way -- people have been writing good-but-bloated software in shitty frameworks since forever -- but I can't recall a time that one framework so bloated is so heavily in vogue. (edit: Flash, maybe? Though people…

I agree with you that efficient resource usage is pretty low on the priority list for a lot of development these days. I wish it wasn't too but that's a different discussion.

Electron being in vogue does definitely compound this issue but the benefits from using it (e.g. cross OS development on a familiar platform & language many devs already know) seem to outweigh the resource problem.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#490

Post by appleiigs »

untog wrote: post #435
kemiller wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not alone in this attitude, so don't take this personally, but I'm going to reply to you because you're the top comment. This is an incredibly destructive point of view. Promotion is essential to any software project, even open source, and in the vast majority of cases, word of mouth is not enough. This is an ethical, up-front, straightforward ask that costs you and anyone you might contact very little and is…

But what am I endorsing? I haven't tried the product myself yet. It's not unethical, but it's also simply not something I'm prepared to do - I will not recommend something to anyone without having been able to evaluate it myself first.

Then don’t refer anyone.

Or maybe only send to your friends who a new email client would interest?

Is “hey, saw this on HN, this looks interesting” really going to hurt your reputation?

He’s a dev trying to market, that’s all.

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