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Why I chose Electron.js for my side business

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Re: Why I chose Electron.js for my side business

#41

Post by jsdavid »

_odey wrote: post #6

No matter how much I hate the bloat, and no matter how much I don't like JavaScript as and language due to it's behaviour around type coercion, I can't help it but to agree with everything in this article. Reusing the frontend skills I learned throughout the years to build desktop apps when needed, instead of having to learn an OS toolkit (and in the case of linux, multiple desktop environments, neve mind Wayland vs…

The tweet mentioned in the article, saying:

Electron app memory usage: 150MB

Native app memory usage: 0 MB (because you never ship it)

really hit home for me.

Re: Why I chose Electron.js for my side business

#42

Post by theobeers »

jfengel wrote: post #13

For me the big win is that it feels familiar to users. It's not a native app, but it looks like their native browser. Users are acutely sensitive to apps that feel right. It's something Java learned the hard way, or not at all: there's an uncanny valley if you get it wrong, and users hate that. Native apps will always be better than a web app, but a web app will be better than an app that doesn't really have a home o…

Exactly: a world full of Chromium natives. I'm torn between accepting this while waiting for the next paradigm shift, and resisting it out of a sense that someone has to.

Re: Why I chose Electron.js for my side business

#43

Post by speedgoose »

jfengel wrote: post #13

For me the big win is that it feels familiar to users. It's not a native app, but it looks like their native browser. Users are acutely sensitive to apps that feel right. It's something Java learned the hard way, or not at all: there's an uncanny valley if you get it wrong, and users hate that. Native apps will always be better than a web app, but a web app will be better than an app that doesn't really have a home o…

I think you are spot on about the uncanny valley of non native apps that try to look native. Java Swing apps or Qt apps look and feel bad on Mac or Windows. It's a bit better on GNU/Linux but a GTK app in a KDE environment or a Qt app in a Gnome environment will feel a bit wrong. Meanwhile an Electron app will look very normal and modern.

Re: Why I chose Electron.js for my side business

#44

Post by _odey »

stefan_ wrote: post #39
_odey wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I do want to learn things, but the choice is simple, you either: 1. Learn Electron and implement an app, publish to all platforms. 2. Choose your target OS, learn the native toolkit, implement the app, switch to other OS, implement again, rinse and repeat for all, and in the case of linux you have to deal with multiple toolkits and you have to know the quirks around Wayland support (with electron you don't necess…

You keep mentioning Wayland as if it is the magic keyword that will strike fear into the heart of native app developers. That's just not a thing, it won't matter at all for your app. The irony is that if you write a desktop app at one point, you will soon learn about all the things that Chromium doesn't do for you. Want to run some kind of privileged operation (since disk benchmarks came up)? Tough luck, there is no…

I mention it because that's basically what I keep reading related to it, the fact that it's incompletely implemented right now and some apps that used to work with X no longer do. Isn't it natural to consider it a potential risk for app development as well?

For the OS specific stuff that chromium doesen't handle, that's fair, hopefully I'll have to deal with as little of that as possible.

Re: Why I chose Electron.js for my side business

#45

Post by Ygg2 »

wayneftw wrote: post #8

I wish more companies would choose Electron instead of native apps so they could iterate faster on all platforms. I bet most people who have a problem with Electron are laptop users. I use a refurbished HP desktop i7 that I bought two years ago for $300 on Amazon and upgraded the SSD and 32gb RAM for another $250 or so. I can run numerous instances of VS Code, Chrome, Slack, Postman, etc all day without even a hint o…

I have desktop and I hate Electron apps with a passion.

Sure one or two apps are ok. But since each app is Electron (not literally but a huge number). Your RAM melts like butter in near Sun's orbit.

Re: Why I chose Electron.js for my side business

#46

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

cogman10 wrote: post #36
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Werid. You hate the language and the bloat, but you still would choose Electron over something like Lazarus?

In a heartbeat. The fact of the matter is, ecosystem trumps everything else. For UX development, nothing comes close to javascript. The language may suck, npm is somewhat of a trainwreck, and yet, if you want any sort of esoteric component, you'll find it in JS. It's got so many tools that it simply isn't uncommon for newer desktop apps to have embedded browser in them as an option. Want proof? - Show me a Lazarus na…

> It was built for UX

It kinda really isn't. "Great UX" is not something I associate with any web app. They're generally slow and unresponsive, have atrocious accessibility, and don't integrate with OS native UX concepts.

Re: Why I chose Electron.js for my side business

#47

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

_odey wrote: post #38
dave84 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reusing to the frontend skills I learned throughout the years Not weird at all.

Oops, had and typo there, meant to say: reusing the frontend skills... what is weird about that? Here's another example: GNOME shell uses JavaScript and CSS, and it's pretty straightforward to understand. Was looking at the code of a plugin to hide the workspace switcher popup and tried a few things to instead reduce the animation time to something that does not necessarity stick around over my windows too long to bo…

I don't think they were commenting about the typo, they were simply pointing out that it isn't weird to prefer using things you know.

Personally I can't agree, since in this case using what you know involves shoe-horning a hacked together and mutated beast into a role it wasn't designed for.

Re: Why I chose Electron.js for my side business

#48

Post by OJFord »

viktorcode wrote: post #37
yesimahuman wrote: post #22

This is the entire reason Electron is so popular, and generally users love these apps and don't care about whether apps use native OS controls. This is the same approach Capacitor takes for mobile. Being able to use your existing frontend skills and access the existing web dev market is really compelling.

Users love functionality provided by those apps, not the fact they were made with Electron for business reason. People love Discord. On a desktop they have no choice but to use its Electron client. Some people love Skype, but I guess not one of them wanted for native Skype to migrate to Electron. The list goes on. Electron app developers are dime a dozen, comparing to native app developers. That's the biggest driver…

> People love Discord. On a desktop they have no choice but to use its Electron client

These are just the last few results for `yay -Ss discord`:

    aur/purple-discord-git v0.0.r637.d47f0bc-1 (+13 0.24)
        A libpurple/Pidgin plugin for Discord.
    aur/ripcord 0.4.27-1 (+20 0.66)
        Qt-based Discord and Slack client
    aur/discord-canary 0.0.115-1 (+29 2.70)
        All-in-one voice and text chat for gamers that's free and secure.
    aur/discord_arch_electron 0.0.12-4 (+46 17.96)
        Discord (popular voice + video app) using the system provided electron for increased security and performance
    community/discord 0.0.12-2 (50.8 MiB 173.6 MiB) (Installed)
        All-in-one voice and text chat for gamers that's free and secure.

Re: Why I chose Electron.js for my side business

#49

Post by apozem »

Slartie wrote: post #10
moneywoes wrote: post #4

How is Flutter for Windows and MacOS in contrast to electron?

It is alpha and it is from Google. Electron has neither of those flaws (which btw combine in my opinion to some kind of super-flaw, like those Transformers toys).

Many years ago, after they iced one of their half-assed messaging apps, I joked that the Google motto is, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.”

Will Flutter keep improving? Or will Google get bored with it and neglect it, like they have with Angular? I have a guess.

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