Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Everybody who works on a cross-platform version of a generic utility has potentially many millions of users. Not the same thing. And other threads have established there are already popular color pickers this would be competing with if rewritten in a native lean style, that this would first need to take mindshare away from as well. I'm going to assume the answer is "no, this does not currently have a million users"…
> I'm going to assume the answer is "no, this does not currently have a million users". You can spend all day asking irrelevant questions and answering them yourself, it won't get us anywhere. The point is that "developer time is more expensive than hardware" is not a valid argument from the user's perspective. As you can see from the complaints here, people already find the color picker less attractive because it us…
We're discussing how dev time is best spent in service to the end user (and environment.) It's absolutely relevant.
> The point is that "developer time is more expensive than hardware" is not a valid argument from the user's perspective. As you can see from the complaints here, people already find the color picker less attractive because it uses wasteful Electron. It's not a good product, regardless of how cheap it was for the developer to produce and will be less successful as a result.
Things the end user does care about include features, price, and the actual existence of the end product, all things I see frequently sacrificed by the "maximum efficiency at any cost" crowd, because they're misallocating dev time. They aren't even optimizing the actual efficiency bottlenecks half the time, just micro-optimizing some unimportant edge case.
You're right that the discussion doesn't matter to the end user, but that doesn't mean it's the wrong decision. As you can also see from the posts here, not everyone is convinced it's a big deal either. People are constructing strawman arguments "these devs and their 4k monitors and 32GB+ machines", but I'm using electron apps from an underpowered 8GB laptop just fine.
Yes, if you're traveling and downloading it over a mobile connection, it'll take a hit. Yes, I'm sure you can find a worse laptop than mine, and if you search hard enough you'll even find one where the fact that it's an electron app will be a problem. Yes, you can spend more resources to make a better app - that's always true, the question is where diminishing returns make that no longer cost effective. Yes, if there's no outlets nearby, it won't stretch battery life as far.
But no, I'm not convinced that calling it "not a good product" as a result of being an electron app is quite right either. Not the best product it possibly could be, but no product is.
> You don't need justification for developing something that isn't good because of wrong or selfish priorities,
Nor am I convinced there are wrong or selfish priorities in using electron. What, exactly, is wrong or selfish with saving dev time to work on something more important to the end user? Even if that's another product entirely?