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I've spent the last two years building a new email client

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Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#591

Post by reaperducer »

tomc1985 wrote: post #525
reaperducer wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fortunate enough to work for a company that sees being thrifty with bandwidth and processing as very important. We have regular audits to find ways to make things lighter/faster, and therefore better. Occasionally "flashier" mandates from on high override those considerations, but so far it's been specific and rare. It's probably because our target audience isn't developers.

Funny, following that logic one would think that developers would be the most picky about performance...

Old developers. Seasoned developers. Developers who know what they're doing.

But the devs coming out of schools today (and half of HN) believe it's OK to build a skyscraper by stacking frameworks one upon the other.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#592

Post by mr_overalls »

nobodyaccount wrote: post #555
mr_overalls wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recommending a product you haven't reviewed is a form of lying. Some of us value our integrity.

Literally, nobody said to do that. Good lord, are you aware of nuance? You can make people aware of something that looks promising, without lying.

> You have a warped perspective of importance if you think giving the nod to a new mail app is some holy thing.

You're taking a needlessly confrontational stance here with insulting language, and people are responding to that.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#594

Post by dang »

superkuh wrote: post #520
dang wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16975199 and marked it off-topic.

Please stop censoring views that don't align with the hackernews majority. Just because these complaints are so common that HN hipsters now like to hate on them does not invalidate them.

This seems contradictory, since hipsters would never align with the majority.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#595

Post by khedoros1 »

deagle50 wrote: post #569
khedoros1 wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've run out of memory a few times this week on my Linux VM at work, and also at home on the beater laptop I use in the living room. Those are both stuck at 4GB of RAM, though. On my laptop with 16GB, it's certainly been at least a few months since I've done anything that made it hit swap.

I said "unintentionally" as a hedge for corner cases like VMs where you are likely aware of the limits. I probably should have been more clear. I also prefer native apps, which is why I still mostly use Sublime over Code despite the latter's advantages. But it's because of speed and battery life, not memory consumption. If we're going to make a case for native apps, lets at least focus on the biggest pain points, as…

Battery life's something that I only rarely have to think about. All of my development has always been somewhere with convenient power. It irks me when the CPU's churning along on a process that should be near-idle, though.

> I said "unintentionally" as a hedge for corner cases like VMs where you are likely aware of the limits.

I was aware of the limited memory of the VM, but almost everything I run there is a text-mode application, so it usually doesn't matter. Honestly, I thought that Slack would fit easily in the free memory, but I'm logged into 3 teams, so it ate more than I expected. And it's a spinning rust drive; swapping sucks, and it slows down the host OS at the same time.

It's an avoidable situation; just run Slack under the host's Windows, instead of in the Linux VM. But it remains the case, in my uses, that memory has caused more issues than CPU, and that CPU has caused more issues than battery drain. I don't know why everyone else focuses on memory so much...I perceive my own issues as kind of a corner case.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#596

Post by luuio »

laumars wrote: post #531
tomc1985 wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My compute resources are not an all-you-can-eat buffet. I'm sick of inconsiderate developers writing software in wasteful frameworks that waste my electricity and time. You can make pretty x-platform apps in JavaFX, QT Quick, GTK, hell even Lazarus, and they don't eat CPU and memory like Electron does. It is a shame that nearly every app released in the latter half of this decade is just wasteful Electron garbage. Do…

I would normally agree with you but I can actually see the point of Electron for email because you'd need a HTML renderer anyway to display emails (assuming you want the ability to view HTML emails, if not then you're better off with a console client and save yourself even more RAM :p) Plus Gmail and a few others big names in webmail require a HTTP client for authentication if you want to use their proprietary sync (…

What does rendering HTML or needing a HTTP client have to do with Electron?

As far as I know, every single usable language comes with a HTTP client, and every single GUI framework has a "WebView" control or equivalent.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#597

Post by Can_Not »

dhruvb14 wrote: post #406

I find it crazy that everyone is harping on Electron instead of the cool features that this clearly has that most clients do not. Demo looked pretty polished dude. Don't let the typical HN crowd rain on your parade. The fact that you posted an actual product out to the public is more than most can say. Also: If you can't spare Max 300MB ram and you are complaining on HN wtf computer do you use?

What kind of computer an I using? I'm using a work computer that needs RAM for the actual work I do. If one auxiliary program used 300MB that would not be a big deal. But we're talking about electron MVP after electron MVP after electron MVP endlessly. Memory hogging electron MVP's are being released at 100x the speed of my computer's RAM growth. I bought a high RAM computer because I already need it for work, not because I want to fill it with Electron MVPs.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#598

Post by SnowingXIV »

tomc1985 wrote: post #412
dhruvb14 wrote: post #406

I find it crazy that everyone is harping on Electron instead of the cool features that this clearly has that most clients do not. Demo looked pretty polished dude. Don't let the typical HN crowd rain on your parade. The fact that you posted an actual product out to the public is more than most can say. Also: If you can't spare Max 300MB ram and you are complaining on HN wtf computer do you use?

My compute resources are not an all-you-can-eat buffet. I'm sick of inconsiderate developers writing software in wasteful frameworks that waste my electricity and time. You can make pretty x-platform apps in JavaFX, QT Quick, GTK, hell even Lazarus, and they don't eat CPU and memory like Electron does. It is a shame that nearly every app released in the latter half of this decade is just wasteful Electron garbage. Do…

While I somewhat agree, no one is forcing you to use this software and this holier than thou attitude is not constructive.

You're free to use gnus, notmuch, mu4e, whatever million other variants if you're so concerned about your "precious" resources. This electron app that's been built has some neat features that a lot of people might find useful, like that search seems pretty cool.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#599

Post by z3t4 »

kashyapc wrote: post #506
dhruvb14 wrote: post #406

I find it crazy that everyone is harping on Electron instead of the cool features that this clearly has that most clients do not. Demo looked pretty polished dude. Don't let the typical HN crowd rain on your parade. The fact that you posted an actual product out to the public is more than most can say. Also: If you can't spare Max 300MB ram and you are complaining on HN wtf computer do you use?

I see where you are coming from. My main work laptop has 24GB (recently refreshed; the previous one had 16GB), so I can trivially spare 300MB, if I want. That said ... I work on open source Linux virtualization (KVM-based), and I fiercely guard my laptop's memory. Why? Allow me to tell my "corner case" scenario. I have a couple of development virtual machines (VMs), and build containers running on my laptop. They hel…

Have you considered getting a dedicated server for this !?

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#600

Post by saagarjha »

sciurus wrote: post #514
saagarjha wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If their tech stack isn't appropriate for the job, then they shouldn't be using it for. We don't have people writing software for space probes in Python.

But we do have people writing some of the most used email clients in the world using HTML and Javascript, so that's hardly a valid criticism in this case. https://emailclientmarketshare.com/

Apple iPhone, Apple iPad, Outlook, Samsung Mail, and Google Android, together making up well over 70% of that list, are all native clients. Plus, the clients that aren't native are all web-browser based.
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