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Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

josephg.com

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Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#431

Post by speeder »

ballenf wrote: post #235
matthewmacleod wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's nonsense . Desktop apps have been frequently released since forever. The underlying issue here is that Electron reduces the barrier to entry for cross-platform development . That is, it's cheaper to build a single cross-platform application in Electron than it is to build two or three native applications, and you can re-use your existing web experience. I can completely understand why companies might choose th…

> ... Electron applications are shite in comparison with proper native applications. Is that true from a user's perspective? The average user I know would not have the idea that Slack is somehow inherently worse than say MS Word or any other truly native app they use everyday. What would Slack gain by integrating better with my Mac? Slack starts up too fast for me to read the little quotation (penultimate Macbook Pro…

I use a macmini for my dev work. Almost every time it freezes out of the blue the culprit was some html based "app" frequently with process nwjs using 100% of cpu and huge amounts of ram.

This includes chrome and electron based stuff

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#432

Post by LeoNatan25 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #418
newhere420 wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Electron applications are shite in comparison with proper native applications. They fail to integrate with the host platform, they are slow, they hog memory and drink power. Are they though? The two applications that use the most energy on my Mac - by far - are Steam and Skype. Steam still has trouble with HiDPI and freezes when performing various UI interactions. The number of problems with Skype are uncountable.…

VS Code has way fewer features than Visual Studio, especially for C#/.NET development. VS Code is a minimalistic IDE, very useful, especially for javascript development where tooling is quite minimal anyways. But let's not think that VS Code outclasses visual studio.

VS Code is not an IDE in the classic sense of what IDE is - integrated development environment. It's a text editor with some debugging extensions. I don't think it is even comparable to Visual Studio at all.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#433

Post by carlosrg »

vmasto wrote: post #291
carlosrg wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit. Spotify, for example, existed before Electron, and it was very fast. Text editors existed before Electron, and they didn't require 300 MB minimum to run. Same with collaborative chat programs. Electron is just a way to reuse web developers for desktop development - I.e. a way companies now have to cut development costs.

I'll give it a go to call you on "bullshit": Spotify is not built on Electron. (Surprise, the author is wrong). It is and was, however, always built on Chromium Embedded Framework (the UI), even when you say it "was" fast.

Chrome was released as a beta the 2 September 2008. The first version of Spotify was released 7 October 2008, and the download size was around 5 MB. I know because I've using Spotify since it was invite-only, back in those days.

So according to you Spotify was able to build a full featured client using a beta technology in a month. Impressive.

Anyway, here's the version I'm speaking about, built by the people that developed uTorrent IIRC, by the way: http://static.filehorse.com/screenshots/mp3-and-audio/spotif...

Also even if the current version is not using Electron, it's still using Chrome, so the same argument applies.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#434

Post by flamedoge »

RedCrowbar wrote: post #395
newhere420 wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Electron applications are shite in comparison with proper native applications. They fail to integrate with the host platform, they are slow, they hog memory and drink power. Are they though? The two applications that use the most energy on my Mac - by far - are Steam and Skype. Steam still has trouble with HiDPI and freezes when performing various UI interactions. The number of problems with Skype are uncountable.…

Each Chrome (and Electron) app instance is a group of processes. You are probably just looking at the main process, while the bulk of RAM/CPU use comes from the renderer processes. Here are stats on my (Linux) box: * atom - ~500MiB (one window) * slack - ~816MiB * chrome - ~935MiB (two tabs + hangouts) * google music electron app - ~500MiB

At least if one crashes it wont bring down the Chrome stack.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#435

Post by Touche »

atombender wrote: post #298
Touche wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They fail to integrate with the host platform Just as a counter-point, because native app fans often make this point as though it is universally recognized to be a good thing. I don't want apps to integrate with the host platform. The host platform is not the thing I care about. I use several host platforms in different contexts (I have work and home computers and a smartphone, they all run different OSes) and I wo…

I doubt you don't care. These are examples "integration with the host platform": * Text selection * Caret behaviour (e.g. Option-arrows on macOS) * Clipboard * Spell check * Open/save dialogs * File system access * Drag/drop * Window management * Accessibility (screen reader support etc.) * Standard right click menus * Indexing (e.g. Spotlight on macOS) * etc. You may be thinking to native UI idioms, which even Apple…

No, I don't care about most of those things. I don't know why you didn't believe me when I wrote it the first time :). "Caret behavior", I use a Mac 8 hours a day and I have no idea what option-arrow does.

That clipboard shortcuts work the same is the only one that I'm used to enough to be annoyed if it were done differently.

There's something about Mac fans that are very preoccupied with all of the details of how Macs work. I'm not criticizing that, you like what you like, but you shouldn't be surprised that I don't care about Spotlight indexing.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#436

Post by vram22 »

mantas wrote: post #211
spiderfarmer wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess he meant Indie developers. I am one. I didn't care, but do now.

Eh? Indie developers thrived on Mac ecosystem for years.

And also on Windows, and even on DOS, before Windows.

Googling terms like "shareware" and its history (not the only model, there were, of course, outright paid products too), will show some stories, maybe not a lot, since some of this was before the web, so not archived. But will show enough to get an idea. Jim Button was a classic example, but there were many other indie devs (many of them one-man shows), who may not have made it so big, but made good money from desktop apps.

Google term: shareware jim button

Edited to add:

http://asp-software.org/www/history/the-origin-of-shareware/

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#437

Post by automathematics »

vmasto wrote: post #291
carlosrg wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit. Spotify, for example, existed before Electron, and it was very fast. Text editors existed before Electron, and they didn't require 300 MB minimum to run. Same with collaborative chat programs. Electron is just a way to reuse web developers for desktop development - I.e. a way companies now have to cut development costs.

I'll give it a go to call you on "bullshit": Spotify is not built on Electron. (Surprise, the author is wrong). It is and was, however, always built on Chromium Embedded Framework (the UI), even when you say it "was" fast.

Yep! And IFRAMES. Oh god, the horror.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#438

Post by skuzye »

cableshaft wrote: post #360
sametmax wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computing for ever. We use C to avoid writing assembly. Use Java to avoid writing C. Use Python to avoid writing Java. The world is asking for more and more software, and the resources to provide it are not following so people are taking shortcuts. Want something better ? Someone has to pay for it.

Yeah, but Python still doesn't seem to have a great cross-platform desktop GUI, as far as I can find. I'd prefer to code entirely in Python if I could, but I haven't liked a single GUI library I've tried for Python. Although to be fair I haven't really tried PyQT out still, but I don't like the idea of having to buy a commercial license for it.

If you really want to use PyQT you may try PySide which is LGPL licensed. I'm not sure whether it restricts commercial use.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#439

Post by k__ »

paraboul wrote: post #14

FWIW, we're working on https://github.com/nidium/Nidium presicely to fix this. A new kind of browser engine, not based on any existing engine, allowing developers to use a subset of the web (webgl, 2d, layout) without being forced to use a bloated ecosystem (and which also works on mobile and low end device). Previous HN discussion : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6314961

Nice.

But I was hoping for something like Electron/Node.js with a different/smaller engine like Ducktape. There seems to be a Chakra version of Node.js so this should be possible in the future.

The only heavy weight in this constellation remains Chromium...

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#440

Post by zo1 »

true_religion wrote: post #351
mlsarecmg wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is scared of C# and Swift, XAML and so on, but these technologies aren't even close to what you have available on the web. React and Redux make apps possible that you wouldn't get with older technologies, not even with 10 times the effort and code. The animation possibilities, transitions, the flexibility overall, the eco system, debugging capabilities, hot module reload - if you have worked with it, you will…

What is VSCode doing that's impossible to do in a native application? I'm curious, since I use PyCharm and I wonder what I could be missing out on.

You get to write plugins for it in Javascript. That seems to be the big thing about it. I've tried it, the hype is just fluff.
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