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Electron Fiddle: Get started with Electron

electronjs.org

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Re: Electron Fiddle: Get started with Electron

#51

Post by speps »

oblak wrote: post #40
avx56 wrote: post #15

Please can Electron die already? Almost every Electron program I use could be a PWA. Slack has no reason to need another browser engine running. You could make a point for native integration, but there is none. And all it does is display text (and images). What a world we live in. Worse is better, amirite?

I find all this hate rather bizarre. Why do you even use the electron versions instead of opening things in browser tabs? I find all this hate rather bizarre.

Some apps only come as Electron apps with no web version.

Re: Electron Fiddle: Get started with Electron

#52

Post by eastbound »

2h wrote: post #21
aerhardt wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll reply to your question with a question: once VSCode has proved one could build hyperscale complex apps that perform well, would you be fast to bet for less proven tech? I’ve had a great experience using VSCode on occasion (I’m a JetBrains guy), and loads of other people, including some great programmers, rave about it. I’ve similarly had a fairly solid experience with Spotify desktop across different platforms.…

> VSCode has proved one could build hyperscale complex apps that perform well did it though? It might perform "good enough", but its still an order of magnitude worse than native solutions. the only reason to ever use Electron or similar is for rapid prototyping. once you have an MVP, you should immediately work towards a native solution. people seem to forget that part, out of laziness or ignorance.

> once you have an MVP, you should immediately work towards a native solution.

All of the chat apps that worked towards a native solution have died. Most of the other apps too, but all of the chat apps. Going native, despite being satisfying for the user, carries a maximum cost in terms of internal organization (several departments in the company for each target OS), HR (developers that can’t be recycled in other departments), marketing: “Wait, does HipChat MacOS has the same features as HipChat-on-the-mac-but-in-browser? Wait it doesn’t matter, HipChat is dead.”

Re: Electron Fiddle: Get started with Electron

#53

Post by holoduke »

fwlr wrote: post #20
yazzku wrote: post #13

What exactly makes the average Electron program so goddamn awful? Does the Javascript language inherently result in a bloat runtime? Are the runtimes accidentally bloat? Is it all the browser stuff and not the JS runtime per se? Or maybe just bad programming on the dev side?

“Does the Javascript language inherently result in a bloat runtime?“ No “Are the runtimes accidentally bloat?” Not accidentally “Is it all the browser stuff and not the JS runtime per se?” Basically, yes “Or maybe just bad programming on the dev side?” No Essentially the reason Electron apps are so heavy is they run on a browser, not on an operating system. In the beginning, programs ran directly on hardware, and thi…

Browser performance is actually very good. Its runtime js engine is heavily optimized. Same for the render. Wether its the dom node render or canvas one. They can be very fast. Certainly possible to write native like apps. The problem are those libs . In this case electron. There are a zillion parsers and inefficient steps in every app code execution path i see.

Re: Electron Fiddle: Get started with Electron

#54

Post by [deleted] »

Ygg2 wrote: post #44
heapwolf wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rust is a non-starter for the majority of web devs. That’s why Tauri had remained niche. Maybe try https://github.com/socketsupply/socket

> That’s why Tauri had remained niche. > try https://github.com/socketsupply/socket Points to an even less popular niche.

[deleted]

Re: Electron Fiddle: Get started with Electron

#55

Post by heapwolf »

Ygg2 wrote: post #44
heapwolf wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rust is a non-starter for the majority of web devs. That’s why Tauri had remained niche. Maybe try https://github.com/socketsupply/socket

> That’s why Tauri had remained niche. > try https://github.com/socketsupply/socket Points to an even less popular niche.

It was just open sourced, if your pointing out how few stars it has. It also hasn't been officially announced. But HTML, CSS, and JS are far less niche than Rust.

Re: Electron Fiddle: Get started with Electron

#56

Post by 0x073 »

eecc wrote: post #46
bboygravity wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you realize how slow those are, how slow they make your entire machine (eating the RAM for no good reason) and how insanely fast similar apps could be if written in something that doesn't involve massive bloat. Electron is also how Microsoft essentially broke Skype (on purpose?) IMO. For me Electron just stands for lazy companies/devs who are not interested in producing something elegant that runs as fa…

Honest question: where does all the RAM go? If a chrome tab eats about 200 MB ram, shouldn’t an electron app consume about the same? After all Electron is just an SPA with all the assets packaged with the browser engine. Like the zip’d web archives of yore

Chrome engine is build for browsing the web multiple windows multiple tabs etc.

If you drive with a empty truck with trailer it uses more oil than a car.

Chrome is not designed for this. There are other engines like https://sciter.com that are work for single apps, but probably scale bad if they are misused as a browser.

Re: Electron Fiddle: Get started with Electron

#57

Post by samsquire »

I don't underestimate the sheer amount of cognitive effort, money and time needed to maintain native versions of software. Or to build a desktop application at all!

From my perspective Thunderbird, IntelliJ, Firefox, Chrome are extremely complicated pieces of software. My initial exposure to Qt is that it is a very difficult framework to use properly to build nontrivial applications. Not only do you have the barebones complexity of C (build everything yourself) or the overwhelming complexity of C++ (there's many ways of doing the same thing) you also have a graphical GUI framework AND a platform API to work with. It's simply a lot of moving parts.

I've written a few Java SWING GUIs and an electron app but I wouldn't want to use a low level programming language to build a GUI.

Re: Electron Fiddle: Get started with Electron

#58

Post by tomkarho »

zhs wrote: post #2

Honest question, when solutions like https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri exist out there that promise smaller build sizes and similar developer experiences, are folks still using Electron to build new apps?

Here's a couple

- Not everyone wants to learn Rust but want to use the same language throughout their stack

- Tauri is still new which means it is not considered "tried and true"

- More developers know how to use Electron or at least know enough Javascript to learn which means larger talent pool = cheaper and easier to replace developers if need be

- Last I checked (was not recently I admit), the build time for Tauri was abysmal

- I would argue very few gives a damn about smaller build sizes unless the problem space actually requires size to matter

In short, Electron is established tech and "good enough" while Tauri is the new kid in the block. It takes time for it to carve a space for itself. With all the Rust hype going on, I don't doubt it will happen.

Fun fact: I actually embarked on a project recently where my plan is to build the app in Electron first and once I had a change to learn Rust, I'll probably try to migrate the Electron app to something like Tauri.

Re: Electron Fiddle: Get started with Electron

#59

Post by garyclarke27 »

synergy20 wrote: post #16

I struggled between Flutter and Electronjs, checked at Tauri too. Electronjs does the 3 Desktops (linux,windows,macos). Tuari is new, serves the same user base, smaller, but you need learn Rust. Flutter does 3 Desktops and 2 Mobile platforms(android,ios), but you need learn Dart. While doing my own research, I eventually chose Flutter, reasons are: * it does 5 platforms fairly well * its user base keeps rising rapidl…

Let’s hope the regulators recent attention to Browser engine restrictions will allow Node.js and Electron to run on IOS and Android.

Would be fantastic especially for smaller software development companies that cannot afford to fund 3 dev teams.

Re: Electron Fiddle: Get started with Electron

#60

Post by jiggunjer »

samsquire wrote: post #57

I don't underestimate the sheer amount of cognitive effort, money and time needed to maintain native versions of software. Or to build a desktop application at all! From my perspective Thunderbird, IntelliJ, Firefox, Chrome are extremely complicated pieces of software. My initial exposure to Qt is that it is a very difficult framework to use properly to build nontrivial applications. Not only do you have the barebone…

Spoken like a dev, not a user. Try using older hardware if you really want to understand the other side.
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