Live data from Hacker News

Why is Claude an Electron app?

dbreunig.com

231–240 of 483 posts

Re: Why is Claude an Electron app?

#231
post #179
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't this have been vibe coded into a native app that is more performant?

> vibe coded > more performant I found the problem.

...I think a vibe-coded Cocoa app could absolutely be more performant than a run-of-the-mill Electron app. It probably wouldn't beat something heavily optimized like VS Code, but most Electron apps aren't like that.

Re: Why is Claude an Electron app?

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed! I built a MacOS Postgres client with just Claude Code[1]. It could use some UI improvements, but it runs much better than other apps I’ve tried (specifically what it’s replacing for me: RazorSQL) and the binary is smaller than 20MB. 1: https://github.com/NeodymiumPhish/Pharos

Tauri is still a WebView wrapped in some chrome, right? That's not what I would consider "native".

Eh, didn't even Microsoft give up and just shipped a React-based start menu at one point? The range of "native" on Windows 11 is quite wide - starts with an ancient Windows 3.1 ODBC dialog box.

Re: Why is Claude an Electron app?

#233

Boris from the Claude Code team here. Some of the engineers working on the app worked on Electron back in the day, so preferred building non-natively. It’s also a nice way to share code so we’re guaranteed that features across web and desktop have the same look and feel. Finally, Claude is great at it. That said, engineering is all about tradeoffs and this may change in the future!

But the question isnt really why claude is electron based. Its that if, for some reason, it had to be native on 3 platforms, could a swarm of agents make and maintain the 3 aps while all the humans did was make the spec and tests?

With your context and understanding of the coding agent's capabilities and limitations, especially Opus4.6, how do you see that going?

Re: Why is Claude an Electron app?

#234
post #192

Boris from the Claude Code team here. Some of the engineers working on the app worked on Electron back in the day, so preferred building non-natively. It’s also a nice way to share code so we’re guaranteed that features across web and desktop have the same look and feel. Finally, Claude is great at it. That said, engineering is all about tradeoffs and this may change in the future!

Didn’t you say coding is a solved problem? So why are you still reaching for the lowest common denominator tech stack?

Did they say that? I doubt it.

Re: Why is Claude an Electron app?

#235

Boris from the Claude Code team here. Some of the engineers working on the app worked on Electron back in the day, so preferred building non-natively. It’s also a nice way to share code so we’re guaranteed that features across web and desktop have the same look and feel. Finally, Claude is great at it. That said, engineering is all about tradeoffs and this may change in the future!

As a user I would trade fewer features for a UI that doesn't jank and max out the CPU while output is streaming in. I would guess a moderate amount of performance engineering effort could solve the problem without switching stacks or a major rewrite. (edit: this applies to the mobile app as well)

Thats probably the janky react, not electron.

Re: Why is Claude an Electron app?

#236

Boris from the Claude Code team here. Some of the engineers working on the app worked on Electron back in the day, so preferred building non-natively. It’s also a nice way to share code so we’re guaranteed that features across web and desktop have the same look and feel. Finally, Claude is great at it. That said, engineering is all about tradeoffs and this may change in the future!

I keep being told by Anthropic and others than these AI coding tools make it effortless to write in new languages and port code from one language to another. This is an important lesson to watch what people do, not what they say.

Any examples of Anthropic saying that?

Re: Why is Claude an Electron app?

#237
post #192

Boris from the Claude Code team here. Some of the engineers working on the app worked on Electron back in the day, so preferred building non-natively. It’s also a nice way to share code so we’re guaranteed that features across web and desktop have the same look and feel. Finally, Claude is great at it. That said, engineering is all about tradeoffs and this may change in the future!

Didn’t you say coding is a solved problem? So why are you still reaching for the lowest common denominator tech stack?

ofc it is. thats why they need jarred to babysit them. just a little more amodei says we will get to agi...

Re: Why is Claude an Electron app?

#238

Boris from the Claude Code team here. Some of the engineers working on the app worked on Electron back in the day, so preferred building non-natively. It’s also a nice way to share code so we’re guaranteed that features across web and desktop have the same look and feel. Finally, Claude is great at it. That said, engineering is all about tradeoffs and this may change in the future!

That's a very sensible, realistic and non-BS response.

I'm glad to see this coming from a company that is so popular these days.

Thanks!

Re: Why is Claude an Electron app?

#239
post #196
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> vibe coded > more performant I found the problem.

I mean, we both know it couldn't, but the company claims it can be done so why don't they do it?

I suppose because generating tokens is slow. It is a limitation of the technology. And when data is coming in slowly, you don't need a super high performance client.
Post reply on HN