Electron Is Cancer

#1

Post by applekicks » Thu, May 03, 2018, 11:46 PM UTC

Electron Is Cancer
medium.com

Re: Electron Is Cancer

#2

Post by paulddraper » Fri, May 04, 2018, 1:36 AM UTC

VS Code is the hallmark of electron done well.

Does it use more resources than vim or sublime? Yes.

But it's fast enough to be a workhorse for gobs of devs. And it's core + community development outstrips every other IDE.

Would I prefer saving $20 of RAM? Sure. But what I really like is best in class $LANG support. (In my case, Typescript.)

Re: Electron Is Cancer

#3

Post by argimenes » Fri, May 04, 2018, 1:45 AM UTC

I liked these kind of articles better when they were called, "X considered harmful"...

Re: Electron Is Cancer

#4

Post by ddtaylor » Fri, May 04, 2018, 2:01 AM UTC

> You are not your end-users, and you if you are a developer most likely do not run average hardware.

Well, in that case (Atom) end users were developers.

Re: Electron Is Cancer

#5

Post by tonetheman » Fri, May 04, 2018, 2:08 AM UTC

This article cannot be posted enough. :)

Re: Electron Is Cancer

#6

Post by Clobbersmith » Fri, May 04, 2018, 2:25 AM UTC

My counterpoint to the frequent "electron is worse than Hitler and aids combined": what's the alternative? Especially when it comes to commercial software where certain open source licenses are a non-starter and there just aren't a lot of resources for writing desktop apps.

Re: Electron Is Cancer

#7

Post by scarface74 » Fri, May 04, 2018, 3:06 AM UTC

paulddraper wrote: post #2

VS Code is the hallmark of electron done well. Does it use more resources than vim or sublime? Yes. But it's fast enough to be a workhorse for gobs of devs. And it's core + community development outstrips every other IDE. Would I prefer saving $20 of RAM? Sure. But what I really like is best in class $LANG support. (In my case, Typescript.)

Why is it that VS Code works well and nothing else does? I just started using VS Code with Python after using Visual Studio almost exclusively for 20 years with C++ and then C#/Typescript/JavaScript.

I actually like VSCode better than PyCharm and I am usually a fan of JetBrains products.

Re: Electron Is Cancer

#8

Post by scarface74 » Fri, May 04, 2018, 3:07 AM UTC

Clobbersmith wrote: post #6

My counterpoint to the frequent "electron is worse than Hitler and aids combined": what's the alternative? Especially when it comes to commercial software where certain open source licenses are a non-starter and there just aren't a lot of resources for writing desktop apps.

The alternative is to build a native app using a native tool chain like developers have been doing for years....

Re: Electron Is Cancer

#9

Post by pvh » Fri, May 04, 2018, 3:09 AM UTC

Worth noting that Electron and native apps both only need to run at the frame rate of your monitor, and do the actual work within your users' expected response times.

The quality of your applications is primarily determined by what you care about, not by what tools you build them with.

Re: Electron Is Cancer

#10

Post by seandougall » Fri, May 04, 2018, 3:12 AM UTC

Clobbersmith wrote: post #6

My counterpoint to the frequent "electron is worse than Hitler and aids combined": what's the alternative? Especially when it comes to commercial software where certain open source licenses are a non-starter and there just aren't a lot of resources for writing desktop apps.

> there just aren't a lot of resources for writing desktop apps.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by this? I develop primarily for macOS, and I’ve very rarely been unable to find resources for what I need.

As far as alternatives for cross-platform, one possibility in many scenarios is to write your core functionality in a language that can target multiple platforms (e.g. C, C++, Rust, Swift) and then write platform-specific wrappers around it.

(I don’t personally think Electron is the end of humanity, but it does irk me when people call it “native”.)