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Why is Claude an Electron app?

dbreunig.com

241–250 of 483 posts

Re: Why is Claude an Electron app?

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are humans not machines?

That’s something that more than half of humans would disagree with (exact numbers vary but most polls show that more than 75% of people globally believe that humans have a soul or spirit). But ignoring that, if humans are machines, they are sufficiently advanced machines that we have only a very modest understanding of and no way to replicate. Our understanding of ourselves is so limited that we might as well be magi…

>if humans are machines, they are sufficiently advanced machines that we have only a very modest understanding of and no way to replicate

Well, ignoring the whole literal replication thing humans do.

Re: Why is Claude an Electron app?

#242
post #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?

It is really confusing how we're told the last few years how all ourp rogrammers are obsolete and these billion dollar companies can't be arsed touse these magical tools to substantially improve their #1 user facing asset.

Re: Why is Claude an Electron app?

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Coding is solved. Engineering is not solved.

Coding ain't solved

Re: Why is Claude an Electron app?

#244
post #21

Likewise OpenAIs browser is still only available on macOS, four months after launch, despite being built on a mature browser engine which already runs on everything under the sun. Seems like low-hanging fruit, and yet...

Probably has more to do with underwhelming adoption than anything else.

Re: Why is Claude an Electron app?

#245
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They did, with the caveat that its solved" for most use cases".

https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/head-of-claude-code-what-...

Re: Why is Claude an Electron app?

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Coding is solved. Engineering is not solved.

that is because software “engineering” does not exist, it only exist as a fairytale story and bullshit job titles like SW”E”

Re: Why is Claude an Electron app?

#247
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

> a UI that doesn't jank and max out the CPU While there are legitimate/measurable performance and resource issues to discuss regarding Electron, this kind of hyperbole just doesn't help. I mean, look: the most complicated, stateful and involved UIs most of the people commenting in this thread are going to use (are going to ever use, likey) are web stack apps. I'll name some obvious ones, though there are other candi…

You might try giving an example of a complex UI that isn't a frustratingly slow resource hog next time you're posting this rant.

Re: Why is Claude an Electron app?

#248
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point still stands. If you are so much more productive and have some of the most expensive engineers in the world, why not write something decent

Why rewrite if thing exists? You can use those expensive engineers to build more stuff, not rewrite old stuff

For some people the relevant properties of "thing" include not needing overpowered hardware to run it comfortably. So "thing" does not just "exist", at least not in the form of electron.

Re: Why is Claude an Electron app?

#249

Because it's the most popular & flexible cross platform user space compositor: - unlike QT it's free for commercial use. - I don't know any other user land GUI toolkit/compositor that isn't a game engine(unity/unreal/etc).

Qt is LGPL, so free for commercial use in most situations.
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