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Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

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Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#491

Post by Karrot_Kream »

mentos wrote: post #115
anaisbetts wrote: post #74

Here's the thing. You know what the alternative to all of these Electron apps coming out is? If your answer is "A native Cocoa/WPF app", you are on another planet, the answer is, "It wouldn't exist at all". Nobody in the last 5-10 years cared about writing Desktop apps before Electron came along, there's basically zero money in it, and it's massively expensive, both in terms of actual dev time per feature (easily 10x…

I agree and the author fails to mention the tradeoff between ram/diskspace and development time. >>all you web devs: Go learn C or Rust or something. Your program runs on a computer. I don't think that is a realistic request. When the cost of Slack's ram/diskspace usage starts affecting their profit then they can/will take steps to re-write the application in 'native' code. Until then its premature optimization?

> I don't think that is a realistic request.

Hm? How come? Is there a mental barrier here that I'm not understanding? (C and Rust are "hard" languages?) I taught myself to code on my parents' hand-me-down Pentium 100Mhz in the early 2000s, and I started with the K&R C book. Python and C were my swiss army knives at the time. I really can't see this stuff being super difficult, I mean I was a teenager and I had no understanding of algorithms.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#492

Post by goatlover »

sametmax wrote: post #406
wvenable wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help but think there's a different flavor to this than with higher-level languages. This is adding a platform on top of another platform. The same objections existed years ago with Java when Swing was released. Java is a cross-platform high-level language but Swing is basically an entirely new platform. It's this platform on top of a platform that is objectionable from a performance, memory, storage, and inte…

We see the same thing with containers. Docker, flatpak, snap... It's just the right time for it. Languages have evolve to change the way we handle constraints like memory, speed, readability, expressivity etc. We are arriving at the pick of what languages can bring on the table. Sure we can improve things here and there, but the huge challenges now are integration, packaging, distribution, updates, communications, mu…

Alan Kay might have something to say about all this.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#493

Post by camgunz »

sametmax wrote: post #182

People complaining about electron are the same type than the ones that used to say : - why are people writing this stuff in C. It's so slow and you don't have as much control on memory. Write it in Assembly. - why are people writing this stuff in Java. It's so slow and you don't have as much control on memory. Write it in C. - why are people writing this stuff in Python. It's so slow and you don't have as much contro…

Software dev is about tradeoffs, and the argument against Electron is that the tradeoff in resource usage is bananas for nebulous claims about "it looks better" and "I wrote my app faster". Every time this comes up on HN, someone says, "wow, Electron is Dracula to batteries, and all I'm doing is sending text to people/playing an MP3/blinking a cursor".

Managing tradeoffs is a fundamental part of development strategy. You can ramp up quickly in a productive language like Python and then stabilize on a more efficient language like Java. New platforms like Go/Swift/Kotlin are trying to get in this sweet spot (and mostly succeeding), and existing platforms are trying to inch closer towards it (Python/JS with performance and Java/C#/C++ with ease-of-use features) to avoid the "do over"

> And before you start providing an EXISTING solution, remember people tried it and they didn't like it as much as electron. And since electron is so bad, that should tell you something.

I doubt everyone who's built a desktop in Electron tested Qt first. Definitely not in C++, but probably not even in QML or Go.

> People. Don't. Care.

People absolutely care, they're just not software engineers so they can't articulate precisely what they care about. It's like you never heard someone complain about shit battery life, unresponsive web pages and apps, or slowness in general.

Most of these Electron apps work in network effects. People have Spotify because their friends have Spotify; people have Slack because their work uses Slack; essentially people are generally saddled with your app for non-technical reasons. But that should be an argument for giving them good tech, not an excuse for giving them bad tech. "Well, you'd have to use this anyway so I can get away with burning through your battery life and you'd still count towards my usage numbers". Ick.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#494

Post by ksk »

anaisbetts wrote: post #74

Here's the thing. You know what the alternative to all of these Electron apps coming out is? If your answer is "A native Cocoa/WPF app", you are on another planet, the answer is, "It wouldn't exist at all". Nobody in the last 5-10 years cared about writing Desktop apps before Electron came along, there's basically zero money in it, and it's massively expensive, both in terms of actual dev time per feature (easily 10x…

What is there to be excited about? Having your battery drain every-time your browser runs some JS app? Wasting CPU and memory that I paid for? Lost productivity waiting hundreds of milliseconds (sometime seconds) for any UI response? I dread using any technology coming out of a SV startup, and its rather sad. I want to be excited, but can't get myself to be. As an aside, with all due respect to these startups, calling them successful is premature. They only appear successful because they're burning through someone else's money.

These technologies you diss have been reliable and stable for over a decade. As an embedded developer, my code has to be running 24/7 for months without rebooting, without running out of memory, without crashing. But forget embedded, and imagine a web service. Can you truly honestly say that an app written in electron will give me that reliability? Or should we just accept that if you want to write apps using "modern" tech, you'll just have to deal with it? I personally can't imagine any web framework ever maturing and being stable enough to where you can invest money in it knowing that it will be around 10 years from now. Having your underlying technology platform in a constant flux makes your entire product stack brittle. That is a Big Deal.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#495

Post by LeoNatan25 »

cr0sh wrote: post #357
matthewmacleod wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point taken – 'issue' is not the correct term here. Perhaps 'cause' is better. Lowering the barrier to entry is great, I agree. It's awesome that Electron and web technologies can be used to quickly launch proof-of-concept desktop apps. I find it significantly less awesome that companies with hundreds or thousands of engineers continue to use it after the concept has been proven, however!

But these apps aren't "proof-of-concept" apps - they are fully functioning, working cross-platform applications. So are you saying that these companies which have implemented these apps should instead say "You know what, we have this app developed, and working on the major platforms - but let's instead devote three new teams, one each for Windows, Mac, and Linux - to re-implement this app natively! I'm sure upper man…

> It's not the developers. Developers would love to make native apps, for all the platforms.

I don't think that's true in the case of Slack. They only have JS "hacker" webdevs, and those are notoriously resistant to any change to their comfort zone. C++? WPF? Swift? Cocoa? Scary stuff.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#496

Post by nilliams »

aidenn0 wrote: post #331
TuringTest wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you basically agree with the parent post, why do you say it's nonsense? > The underlying issue here is that Electron reduces the barrier to entry for cross-platform development. Precisely. > The trade-off — and there is a trade-off — is that Electron applications are shite in comparison with proper native applications. But native applications are shite in terms of portability. > But let's be honest here – there is…

The "nonsense" part was that "nobody" was writing desktop apps for the past 5-10 years.

Well they were exaggerating but I think they had a point, til recently on my Desktop machines I only cared about having a web-browser, terminal (+ Steam at home).

Lately there are more UI-ish apps I value having everywhere including desktop (Spotify, Hipchat, Whatsapp, VSCode). I'd also love a decent cross-plat podcasts app.

I think it's clear there's now more demand for certain types of consumer-ish desktop apps (chat apps & music apps especially) than there was a few years ago.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#497

Post by pharrington »

pdabbadabba wrote: post #172
Veen wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you call "trade-offs" appears to me to be developers externalizing their costs onto users. There are costs to developing desktop applications and developers don't want to pay them, so they make users pay for them in wasted hardware dollars, bandwidth, RAM, battery life, and poor integration.

Well, to the extent that these costs degrade the user experience, I'm not sure they really are externalizing them. Presumably they pay this cost in the form of decreased user satisfaction. It's just that this is a cost they are willing to pay. There may be an interesting economic lesson here: it really is not that easy to externalize costs. It surely can be done (air pollution), but it requires some special circumsta…

I don't understand. The cost is mostly externalized into, quite literally, massively distributed increased electricity consumption. That an individual's power bill may be subsidized only emphasizes that problem.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#498

Post by cookiecaper »

pikzen wrote: post #311
wishinghand wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you been trained as an engineer, in a country where "engineer" is a very specific thing and is held to higher expectations, including the possibility of having your title taken away by your peers if you do not respect your duty to, first and foremost, your users and/or society, like every country that takes the title of engineer seriously? No country trains software engineers in the way you describe.

All of Europe, also parts of Canada. No place in the US does, indeed.

Are there standardized licensing bodies for software developers in the EU and Canada? I'd be really interesting in learning more about them if so.

I sympathize your argument and I think the field is doing a great job right now demonstrating some of the upsides of a licensing authority, but actually getting one would be bad IMO.

Most software is not life and death, and licensing authorities, like unions, quickly become gatekeepers that work to prevent competition whilst simultaneously enriching themselves through extortionary means (today, these are mostly indirect because everyone is on the look out for them, but they are nevertheless still there). There are good arguments that the AMA and ABA have both seriously contributed to the astronomical expense of their respective services.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#499

Post by AlexandrB »

bitmapbrother wrote: post #470
smokeyj wrote: post #403

There's two kinds of developers. Dorks who care about programming, and programmers who care about creating deliverable value. What do consumers think about electron apps? That's all that matters. Consumers don't know what the heck electron is, only that their apps work seamlessly across platforms. The only people who complain about electron apps are dorks who have an axe to grind with web developers. I'd rather have…

Well said. Being able to write an application and have it work on multiple platforms without any major UI inconsistencies or UX idiosyncrasies is a major benefit.

You're joking, right? Electron apps are fully inconsistent with any environment they live in. Want right-click? Sorry. Platform-standard control elements or animations? Nope.

Reminds me of some of the worst excesses[1] of AAA Windows software - now available on Mac.

[1] http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lFgnREt7Q_c/U2mqWkYYDiI/AAAAAAAAAJ...

Edit: I think it's ironic that Macs were criticized for years for having single-button mice but now developers are more than happy to ship apps with no right-click support at all.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#500

Post by Mithaldu »

grinich wrote: post #444
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.…

Another one for your list: Nylas Mail. We straight up would have not shipped it without Electron and the CPU it uses to sync is on-par with apps like Apple Mail & Thunderbird.

I'm holding off my downvote to see if i can get a straight answer out of you. Nylas Mail bills itself as the best email app. Them's strong words, but maybe you're worth the claim? Let's see!

I see from screenshots that Nylas has folders and labels. Can i use either of these in the following fashion?

- i can have a tree structure of them

- an email can be in two separate folders/labels at the same time

- folders/labels can be configured to learn which emails to automatically sort into themselves, based on the email contents, by dragging and dropping the email into or out of them

Ball's in your court.

E: Bonus round! In this screenshot there's only 6 emails in the list: https://www.nylas.com/static/img/nylas-mail/hero_graphic_mac... Is there a way to get a list of emails where each line is actually only a line of text tall?

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