Electron Is Cancer • Hacker News Board

Re: Electron Is Cancer

#11

Post by brandonjm » Fri, May 04, 2018, 3:30 AM UTC

ddtaylor wrote: post #4

> 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.

I believe this is implying that developers take Atom (and other Electron apps) working fine on their computer and believe Electron app products they build will also work fine on any computer their end user may be using. So that particular line doesn't apply to the original "which editor is faster" article, but it does apply to the context of this article.

Re: Electron Is Cancer

#12

Post by krapp » Fri, May 04, 2018, 3:36 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.

What's wrong with Visual Studio, or Visual Studio Code, or Code::Blocks, or Eclipse, or... Sublime Text?

Re: Electron Is Cancer

#13

Post by dman » Fri, May 04, 2018, 3:39 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.

Qt?

Re: Electron Is Cancer

#14

Post by paulddraper » Sat, May 05, 2018, 6:36 PM UTC

seandougall wrote: post #10

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…

> Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?

I'm 100% certain the OP meant "resources for writing cross-platform desktop apps".

> write your core functionality in a language that can target multiple platforms...write platform-specific wrappers around it

This is nearly always suggested by someone who has never attempted this.

There is a reason there are mountains of Windows-only or Mac-only software out there.

Re: Electron Is Cancer

#15

Post by seandougall » Thu, May 10, 2018, 4:58 AM UTC

paulddraper wrote: post #14

seandougall wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Can you elaborate on what you mean by this? I'm 100% certain the OP meant "resources for writing cross-platform desktop apps". > write your core functionality in a language that can target multiple platforms...write platform-specific wrappers around it This is nearly always suggested by someone who has never attempted this. There is a reason there are mountains of Windows-only or Mac-only software out there.

> This is nearly always suggested by someone who has never attempted this.

Oh, I've done it, and seen it done many times—it all depends on what the application is attempting to do. If the goal is something platform-specific enough that this approach doesn't work well, then something like Electron generally doesn't seem to either.