I've spent the last two years building a new email client • Hacker News Board

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

#531

Post by laumars » Wed, May 02, 2018, 9:33 PM UTC

tomc1985 wrote: post #412

dhruvb14 wrote: post #406

I find it crazy that everyone is harping on Electron instead of the cool features that this clearly has that most clients do not. Demo looked pretty polished dude. Don't let the typical HN crowd rain on your parade. The fact that you posted an actual product out to the public is more than most can say. Also: If you can't spare Max 300MB ram and you are complaining on HN wtf computer do you use?

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…

I would normally agree with you but I can actually see the point of Electron for email because you'd need a HTML renderer anyway to display emails (assuming you want the ability to view HTML emails, if not then you're better off with a console client and save yourself even more RAM :p)

Plus Gmail and a few others big names in webmail require a HTTP client for authentication if you want to use their proprietary sync (granted there's also POP3 and IMAP. But while IMAP is good in a number of ways it's still far from perfect).

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

#532

Post by khedoros1 » Wed, May 02, 2018, 9:41 PM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #458

gascan wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS Outlook, the heavyweight in the ring with every conceivable feature, has been running on my machine for days and is currently using 168MB.

every conceivable feature, a UI that leaves me with no idea how to use any of them.

I have no problems with the UI. Then again, I've been using versions for a decade.

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

#533

Post by markholmes » Wed, May 02, 2018, 9:49 PM UTC

unepipe wrote: post #474

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…

Sure, put my reputation behind something I have never tried. That makes sense. It's actually dangerous and unethical TO put my name behind this untested product. It's not open source, and I'm being asked to put my seal of trust and approval on their project. That's a hard no.

So don’t? The dev isn’t forcing you to give five referrals to sign up.

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

#534

Post by khedoros1 » Wed, May 02, 2018, 9:58 PM UTC

deagle50 wrote: post #392

chrismorgan wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See my update to the comment. Its memory footprint is greater than I expected. I shan’t pursue it any further at present, I was mostly just curious to get an initial feel for it. Taking it (or something like it) to a polished product is something I’d like to do, but I’ve got other, much more important things to do on FastMail and Topicbox, and I don’t think anyone else in the company feels strongly about it, so it’s…

Maybe you can help me understand the outcry over Electron memory usage, especially on HH. I can't remember the last time I ran out of memory on my laptop or desktop unintentionally. Seems to me battery life and jank should be main areas of focus. You can have a 2GB if you cut CPU usage and typing latency.

I've run out of memory a few times this week on my Linux VM at work, and also at home on the beater laptop I use in the living room. Those are both stuck at 4GB of RAM, though.

On my laptop with 16GB, it's certainly been at least a few months since I've done anything that made it hit swap.

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

#535

Post by rootlocus » Wed, May 02, 2018, 10:02 PM UTC

tomc1985 wrote: post #412

dhruvb14 wrote: post #406

I find it crazy that everyone is harping on Electron instead of the cool features that this clearly has that most clients do not. Demo looked pretty polished dude. Don't let the typical HN crowd rain on your parade. The fact that you posted an actual product out to the public is more than most can say. Also: If you can't spare Max 300MB ram and you are complaining on HN wtf computer do you use?

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…

The way I see it, without the comfort of using Electron, many apps would simply not exist, because nobody would invest the considerably larger) time and effort.

So it's not electron vs native, it's electron vs nothing.

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

#536

Post by rebeccaskinner » Wed, May 02, 2018, 10:09 PM UTC

rootlocus wrote: post #535

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…

The way I see it, without the comfort of using Electron, many apps would simply not exist, because nobody would invest the considerably larger) time and effort. So it's not electron vs native, it's electron vs nothing.

Given the choice I'll take the "nothing" option. Electron is gaining momentum and things that would have been written in a reasonable native framework are going to get sucked into it's ecosystem and we're all going to be worse off.

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

#537

Post by unt34teuotns » Wed, May 02, 2018, 10:12 PM UTC

misterbwong wrote: post #434

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…

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…

> I don't understand why using electron is considered "inconsiderate".

Because I chose my OS carefully and found that I like the way its native controls work. It has a number of features missing from other OSes and I want to use apps that integrate naturally with it. I have yet to find an electron app (or web app) that is 1/10th as good as a native app at fulfilling that desire. Electron apps feel like generic imitations of native apps. Yeah, they work, but everything is just off. Also, it comes from Google so I can only assume it's doing some sort of tracking of me and/or my machine resources. No thank you.

> Is it inconsiderate for Ford to make a larger SUV

It depends on which dimension they extend it and by how much. If they make it wider to where it doesn't fit in a lane on a normal road, then hell yes it's inconsiderate. That's essentially what electron does.

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

#538

Post by akvadrako » Wed, May 02, 2018, 10:13 PM UTC

ynniv wrote: post #262

I don't think this puts enough emphasis on the fact that it is a local client and not a web service. I see some people here griping about Electron, but the privacy implications of being a local app are way more important than the performance of the framework used.

Compared to web-based clients. But the best email client (MailMate) is already local.

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

#539

Post by irinai13 » Wed, May 02, 2018, 10:17 PM UTC

kemiller wrote: post #417

salimmadjd wrote: post #370

I put my name on the waitlist, but instantly lost interest and confidence by: “Jump forward 5 steps in the line for every person you invite and get beta access sooner.” Why? If the product is that good I’ll evangelize it. This is a desktop application, so I don’t see a big boost from a network effect. All this does makes me wonder if the product is more about building hype than value

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…

It's simply a blocker to adoption. What's dropoff rate from people who land on it to people who actually go through with this request?

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

#540

Post by Jedd » Wed, May 02, 2018, 10:18 PM UTC

fermuch wrote: post #497

kuschku wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve reversed and broken real-life products written in JS, Java, WebAssembly and native code. Minified JS and obfuscated Java (DexGuard or ProGuard) are almost identical in complexity, you can restore the actual datatypes still, and you can even restore the rough outlines of where control structures were. Obfuscated WebAssembly, NaCl or native code is much worse to work with, and often data structures and control str…

I'd be very interested about your findings decompiling wasm. Do you have a blog, by chance?

From parent's HN profile:

Janne Koschinski, CompSci student. https://github.com/justJanne

Current maintainer of QuasselDroid https://quasseldroid.info/ https://github.com/sandsmark/QuasselDroid