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Show HN: Svelte NodeGUI, a lightweight Electron alternative with native UI

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Re: Show HN: Svelte NodeGUI, a lightweight Electron alternative with native UI

#241
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand the reasoning against modern tools under the moniker that they’re slow. If you can type out a class in a 10th the time but your ide is 40% slower (as a hypothetical impact) that is a net gain in output. In reality it’s not anywhere near a 40% slow down to use the features on computers made in the last 5 years. Anecdotal to this, I am a slowish typer (40 wpm) and because of this writing code was a l…

Visual Studio has been pretty modern, specially when compared against traditional UNIX offerings. Anyone measuring typing speed as productivity measurement is doing it wrong. Writing code is around 50% of daily activities. Visual Assist doesn't do nothing when I have to write documentation, architecture diagrams, meetings to decide roadmap items, demos at customer review meetings,.... On top of that, none of the OS S…

I don’t think JetBrains is going anywhere soon; been using their products for almost a decade.

I don’t measure my productivity by how much code I can write, that was just an example.

The way I work designing systems and architecture, I have already made the solution in my head and basically the “coding” part is just trying to get that info out as fast as possible. I have a similar thing to eidetic memory, but I am so ADHD what gets remembered can be random or missing stuff. I remember all code I’ve ever written, seen, or thought about and tools that allow me to basically brain dump this info greatly improve my production, leadership, confidence, and architectural designs.

Re: Show HN: Svelte NodeGUI, a lightweight Electron alternative with native UI

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at a few things on my machine right now: - Emacs (with 251 open files and IRC running): 100MB - Activity Monitor: 98MB - Word: 227MB - Spotify: 465MB - Slack: 526MB - Thunderbird (not Electron, but a similar weird browser hybrid thing): 663MB - Teams (which appears to be Electron): 747MB I'm not seeing too much of a blur here. The worst chat app (Teams) is using ~7x the RAM of my primary code editor that also…

What some people actually build with Electron doesn't really say much about what people _can_ build with Electron. You can't just compare Emacs with Spotify here, I can't even scroll a list in Spotify without seeing it disappearing on me momentarily, that says more about Spotify's engineers or project managers than it says about Electron. Teams and Slack kind of address the same problem and I'm seeing wildly varying…

> What some people actually build with Electron doesn't really say much about what people _can_ build with Electron.

no, it does. anyone can build incredible apps on any tech, given infinite budget and time. What matters is how the average app behaves, and for electron it is much worse than the average Qt app for instance.

Re: Show HN: Svelte NodeGUI, a lightweight Electron alternative with native UI

#243
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 MB is less than 0.25% of my desktop machine's memory, and 2% of a 2010-era netbook. 20 MB, while much larger than what it has to be, is tiny even by the standards of decade-old computers. RAM is cheap and plentiful. If you don't use it, its value is almost zero (the "almost" comes from OS-level caching of files and CPU-level cache misses of code).

HN: "RAM is cheap and plentiful." Also HN: "The MacBook Pro is worthless if I can't get it with at least 64GB of RAM."

Go back to Year 2000, Jobs may laugh and agree with disagree. Now Year 2021, HN: “Noodle JS is centenary and memories are around it”

Re: Show HN: Svelte NodeGUI, a lightweight Electron alternative with native UI

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is nobody actually uses hello world programs, by the time you build a real application the difference in RAM usage between that and a good Electron app for example blurs significantly.

Looking at a few things on my machine right now: - Emacs (with 251 open files and IRC running): 100MB - Activity Monitor: 98MB - Word: 227MB - Spotify: 465MB - Slack: 526MB - Thunderbird (not Electron, but a similar weird browser hybrid thing): 663MB - Teams (which appears to be Electron): 747MB I'm not seeing too much of a blur here. The worst chat app (Teams) is using ~7x the RAM of my primary code editor that also…

Get-Process WINWORD

PM(K) ----- 51600

Re: Show HN: Svelte NodeGUI, a lightweight Electron alternative with native UI

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What some people actually build with Electron doesn't really say much about what people _can_ build with Electron. You can't just compare Emacs with Spotify here, I can't even scroll a list in Spotify without seeing it disappearing on me momentarily, that says more about Spotify's engineers or project managers than it says about Electron. Teams and Slack kind of address the same problem and I'm seeing wildly varying…

> What some people actually build with Electron doesn't really say much about what people _can_ build with Electron. no, it does. anyone can build incredible apps on any tech, given infinite budget and time. What matters is how the average app behaves, and for electron it is much worse than the average Qt app for instance.

That argument makes no sense to me, do you think you'd change your mind on Electron if access to it were restricted only to very intelligent and motivated people who made very good apps then?

The average Qt app would probably be close to the average Electron app if Qt attracted the same kinds of people, i.e. Electron is basically just easier to use and/or the developers picking it think they are getting more value out of it.

Re: Show HN: Svelte NodeGUI, a lightweight Electron alternative with native UI

#246
post #138

Maintainer here – Happy to answer any questions!

It’s looking good! One really common usecase Id suggest emphasizing (it looks supported) is the systray UI. I’ve had a lot of cases where my program is mostly just a background nodejs service and the simple task of adding a dock UI required electron. A great thing to have solved!

Qt supports this! so you should be covered.

Re: Show HN: Svelte NodeGUI, a lightweight Electron alternative with native UI

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What some people actually build with Electron doesn't really say much about what people _can_ build with Electron. no, it does. anyone can build incredible apps on any tech, given infinite budget and time. What matters is how the average app behaves, and for electron it is much worse than the average Qt app for instance.

That argument makes no sense to me, do you think you'd change your mind on Electron if access to it were restricted only to very intelligent and motivated people who made very good apps then? The average Qt app would probably be close to the average Electron app if Qt attracted the same kinds of people, i.e. Electron is basically just easier to use and/or the developers picking it think they are getting more value ou…

> That argument makes no sense to me, do you think you'd change your mind on Electron if access to it were restricted only to very intelligent and motivated people who made very good apps then?

but that's not the world we live in - everything has to be considered in that context and not in the abstract, in order to make any sense. Consider musical instruments - you can technically make great music with literally anything. But if, say, 80% of what people are doing with a given instrument ends up sucking, the problem lies more in the instrument than in the people, even if a very talented (and dedicated) 20% is able to make symphonies with it.

Re: Show HN: Svelte NodeGUI, a lightweight Electron alternative with native UI

#248
post #171
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it rendering html5/javascript like a browser would? it would be great if somebody could take time to reply and explain things in a calm logical manner without reaching for downvotes

I think nobody wants to tell you since it’s something that is easily found on the linked site. To answer your question, there is no more HTML involved in this than in a React Native app. The result looks like HTML, but it’s really used to compose native OS widgets.

my bad i saw the github but couldn't find any code examples other than someone smiling

Re: Show HN: Svelte NodeGUI, a lightweight Electron alternative with native UI

#249
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8 bit BASICs were extremely tightly coded and packed a lot of functionality. They had working garbage collection for strings, with useful string processing built on it. Programs could be interrupted to safely return to the prompt, and errors which terminated the program informed the user of the line number, e.g. "illegal quantity error in 210". The internal, tokenized representation of programs could be interactively…

Very impressive. But it didn't have a metacircular evaluator! sectorlisp does.

I see there is a metacircular evaluator in the repository (lisp.lisp), but I don't see where that is pulled into the image.

In the BASIC heyday, there existed compilers for BASIC (some of them written in BASIC). These didn't ship in the ROM images either, they were third-party apps.

Re: Show HN: Svelte NodeGUI, a lightweight Electron alternative with native UI

#250
post #126
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both the App Store and Microsoft Store deal with installs and updates, no need for custom wrappers. Not sure about Linux.

End-users are still more familiar with a download link on a website for a exe/dmg installer on desktop. You also need to need to redo your subscription/payments to support the stores and give a percentage of your revenue to Apple/Microsoft. On mobile you have no option but on desktop it's hard to justify giving up so much of your profit margin when there's a popular alternative. BTW, Linux has the Snap Store.

Hmm I really don’t think so. You might be thinking of tech people, not the general public.
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