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Electron 3.0.0

electronjs.org

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Re: Electron 3.0.0

#101

Post by orange8 »

JakeTyo wrote: post #34
geodel wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is. Especially for multi billion dollar companies with 100s of developers. Because you know careful evaluation, strategic direction, ROI etc has shown users prefer to update their own hardware instead of demanding companies to write efficient software.

If it's hard for a dev to write a native apps, then maybe they should re-evaluate their career choices and leave it to the competent ones.

If the "competent ones" have to resort to bitter FUD wars to protect their turf, then maybe they are the ones who need to re-evaluate their so-called careers.

Somewhere out there, there's a bitter COBOL developer still complaining about that "new fangled" c++

Re: Electron 3.0.0

#102

Post by orange8 »

MBCook wrote: post #46
jonny_eh wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, this is the "real" changelog. I wish projects didn't waste these great PR opportunities. There should be a blog post written by a human for human consumption that explains why we should be excited.

As someone who doesn’t follow Electron even that is worthless to me. Is there a significant speed/memory usage change? Is the install smaller? Some new features that people want? I don’t know. And I’m not going to read the names of dozens of tickets to try to find out.

As someone who doesn't follow or even like electron from the sounds of it, why do you expect anything about their release log to be worth anything to you?

Re: Electron 3.0.0

#103

Post by ivm »

api wrote: post #58
Razengan wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is writing native apps honestly still so hard these days? I can appreciate the concerns about maintaining multiple codebases and dealing with different delivery mechanisms and their rules, but modern iOS/macOS and Windows APIs (at least; I cannot speak for Android and Linux) seem just as easy, let you work in arguably better languages, evolve at a faster rate, and provide a better experience for users and their machi…

Yes. At least N times the work for N platforms. Fewer developers, harder to recruit. Cross-platform options like Qt are not modern/pretty enough and sometimes aren't that much thinner than Electron (depending on how well written the app is). Java/Swing/SWT is also quite bloated and looks terrible. Development is much slower in languages like C++. Other languages are not cross-platform or have immature/buggy cross pla…

> Other languages are not cross-platform or have immature/buggy cross platform support. How's ObjC on Windows? C# on Mac? They exist, but nobody uses them.

What's wrong with C# on Mac? It's basically bindings to the native API via Xamarin.Mac.

You can build a cross-platform app with Xamarin on iOS / Android / Mac, UWP on Windows, and Gtk# on Linux. Using something like MvvmCross will allow to share most of the business logic between platforms.

Re: Electron 3.0.0

#104

Post by h1d »

scarface74 wrote: post #63
mikhailt wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not writing the native code that's the problem, it's designing the same GUI experience across platforms that's nearly impossible to do. If it was so easy as you said, a lot of macOS apps would've been portable to Windows years ago given the market share. I work for a cross-platform company, Windows is a much more difficult to develop for compared to macOS. You can write a Cocoa UI but what do you do on Windows w…

It's not writing the native code that's the problem, it's designing the same GUI experience across platforms that's nearly impossible to do. I don’t want the same “GUI experience” across platforms, I want a GUI experience that is consistent with the platform I am running. When I was a heavy Mac user, I hated iTunes on Windows because it felt like being on a Mac instead of Windows.

You do realize every web apps that you use have a consistent look among all platforms and none of the native looks and I think we're used to that approach of using apps that seeing a 'web like' app on desktop doesn't feel odd anymore.

Re: Electron 3.0.0

#105

Post by h1d »

scarface74 wrote: post #90
eschaton wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The classic example of this was Microsoft Office; they tried to unify the UI and implementation for just the reasons you argue in the mid-1990s and faced a user revolt as a result. Subsequent versions were very much a rewind, with a native Mac human interface on a cross-platform core. I don’t know how it is now as I haven’t used Office in about 15 years.

It feels very Mac like today.

It only does. Everything seems like some optimized hack of some sort that things aren't as performant as true native apps. Just maximizing the window size feels sluggish.

Re: Electron 3.0.0

#106

Post by h1d »

eschaton wrote: post #79
mikhailt wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not writing the native code that's the problem, it's designing the same GUI experience across platforms that's nearly impossible to do. If it was so easy as you said, a lot of macOS apps would've been portable to Windows years ago given the market share. I work for a cross-platform company, Windows is a much more difficult to develop for compared to macOS. You can write a Cocoa UI but what do you do on Windows w…

You shouldn’t push for the same human interface on different platforms, they all have their own conventions that applications need to fit. At least back in the 1980s and 1990s, cross-platform toolkits tried to look native everywhere, and that’s why.

Have you mailed Google customer support to do so with their Gmail?

Today, web apps are getting to the point that it can functionally be called 'apps' (whatever its definition is) and we're all seeing exactly the same UI from every platform and people seem to be just fine with that.

Re: Electron 3.0.0

#107

Post by h1d »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #38
mikhailt wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not writing the native code that's the problem, it's designing the same GUI experience across platforms that's nearly impossible to do. If it was so easy as you said, a lot of macOS apps would've been portable to Windows years ago given the market share. I work for a cross-platform company, Windows is a much more difficult to develop for compared to macOS. You can write a Cocoa UI but what do you do on Windows w…

Equating electron and cross platform is a gigantic fallacy. Qt and other GUI frameworks (like Juce and FLTK) exist and are blisteringly fast. You don't have to package an entire web browser to make something cross platform.

To me QT apps look like they came out of some old code base with old UI and web apps look more appealing imo.

Re: Electron 3.0.0

#108

Post by h1d »

pvg wrote: post #26
enraged_camel wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twice the work for front-end only, and even that is arguable. The overall logic of the client across different platforms will be very similar. The only thing that will change is language and implementation details.

Different environment, different conventions, different bugs, different design, different support, different everything. Different teams that have to communicate. It is 'arguable' that it's twice the work, that is true. Twice is the lower bound.

Yes. It's typical for a team to have different people handle different platform and spreading task on multiple people suddenly slows down the progress than letting 1 set of people handle the front end.

Re: Electron 3.0.0

#109

Post by kitsunesoba »

orange8 wrote: post #100
kitsunesoba wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is having 1-3 Mac guys and 1-3 Windows guys (which is realistically all the vast majority of apps would need) really that much more expensive? To me it seems the real attraction is being able to hire from a giant pool of cheap, generic, interchangeable, fully replaceable developers.

> from a giant pool of cheap, generic, interchangeable, fully replaceable developers A giant pool? Sorry, not really. JS skills are highly sought after, and finding good, experienced front end developers is very hard. Inexperienced developers are easy to find in any language, including your favorite one, whatever that is. The "cheap, generic, interchangeable, fully replaceable" part just sounds bitter and vindictive,…

When compared to the hiring pools for iOS and Android devs, the size of the web front end pool is certainly larger, because that’s what’s currently hot and has the lowest barrier to entry. You’re right that quality is just as hard to find, but given the performance issues that continually plague most modern web apps (with apps like VS Code serving as evidence that it need not be that way), I’m not convinced that quality is the highest priority with these hires.

I will concede that I am a bit bitter. It’s frustrating to watch the industry push ever harder to render specialized developers unnecessary.

Re: Electron 3.0.0

#110

Post by PurpleRamen »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #38
mikhailt wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not writing the native code that's the problem, it's designing the same GUI experience across platforms that's nearly impossible to do. If it was so easy as you said, a lot of macOS apps would've been portable to Windows years ago given the market share. I work for a cross-platform company, Windows is a much more difficult to develop for compared to macOS. You can write a Cocoa UI but what do you do on Windows w…

Equating electron and cross platform is a gigantic fallacy. Qt and other GUI frameworks (like Juce and FLTK) exist and are blisteringly fast. You don't have to package an entire web browser to make something cross platform.

How easy is it these days to create web, smartphone and tablet-UIs with Qt and those other frameworks? Cross platform is not limited to desktop anymore.
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