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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

#61

Post by MattGaiser »

makecheck wrote: post #57

The more I look at “modern” web sites and apps, the more I think that there should be a way to force software providers to offer discounts if their products are, essentially, bloated. (Prior to getting the software, you cannot tell how it is going to be implemented.) There is a measurable cost to me for using these “lazy” apps: - time and data plan spent downloading and updating these monsters - my disk space (yes, m…

The cost to them is in you choosing not to use it if you do not view the resource use as a good deal.

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

#62

Post by sabellito »

makecheck wrote: post #57

The more I look at “modern” web sites and apps, the more I think that there should be a way to force software providers to offer discounts if their products are, essentially, bloated. (Prior to getting the software, you cannot tell how it is going to be implemented.) There is a measurable cost to me for using these “lazy” apps: - time and data plan spent downloading and updating these monsters - my disk space (yes, m…

I'd like to understand your point of view a little better.

My understanding is that you could not use these apps. So how could one feel entitled to discounts based on implementation quality?

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

#63

Post by adzm »

jcelerier wrote: post #55
_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…

> Without Electron it would take me months of intense dedicated time, which I would rather spend on something else. c'mon, getting the very basics of it in Qt took the better part of 15 minutes and less than 100loc - then it's mostly a menial "where to show which data" https://github.com/jcelerier/fio-ui

It's not only that, it is also leveraging the very rich ecosystem built on html and js

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

#64

Post by serial_dev »

jcelerier wrote: post #55
_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…

> Without Electron it would take me months of intense dedicated time, which I would rather spend on something else. c'mon, getting the very basics of it in Qt took the better part of 15 minutes and less than 100loc - then it's mostly a menial "where to show which data" https://github.com/jcelerier/fio-ui

It might be 15 minutes for you, because you already know and used Qt.

I can almost guarantee you that an average frontend developer (web) would not be able to do that.

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

#65

Post by Cu3PO42 »

OJFord wrote: post #48
viktorcode wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/disco…

The ToS explicitly forbid usage of third-party clients and people have been banned over this issue. Some people may be fine with taking this risk, but I also absolutely understand not wanting to deal with it. Personally, I fall in the latter category, so I mostly have the web client open in a pinned tab.

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

#66

Post by joshmanders »

jcelerier wrote: post #55
_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…

> Without Electron it would take me months of intense dedicated time, which I would rather spend on something else. c'mon, getting the very basics of it in Qt took the better part of 15 minutes and less than 100loc - then it's mostly a menial "where to show which data" https://github.com/jcelerier/fio-ui

> c'mon, getting the very basics of it in Qt took the better part of 15 minutes and less than 100loc

I used to think this same way about things because I had so much time in the tools that I never looked at stuff from a perspective of people who have no clue.

Now that I have a friend going through coding schools and everything with zero understanding, everything I think is "just a 15 minutes of tinkering and you'll know all the bits you need" is actually 3 months of banging your head against the fucking wall.

Don't let your existing experience cloud your judgement.

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

#67

Post by jcelerier »

_odey wrote: post #60
jcelerier wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Without Electron it would take me months of intense dedicated time, which I would rather spend on something else. c'mon, getting the very basics of it in Qt took the better part of 15 minutes and less than 100loc - then it's mostly a menial "where to show which data" https://github.com/jcelerier/fio-ui

From your GH profile I see you're quite familiar with C++ development. Personally I'm not, at all, I'm barely comfortable enough with installing Emacs from source. Considering the time I need to dedicate to my dayjob and the limited amount I have on the weekends I'm not exagerating when saying it would take me months to reach and level where I would be comfortable developing something in Qt. Not impossible, of course…

> Personally I'm not, at all, I'm barely comfortable enough with installing Emacs from source.

sure - but to give you an example doing something like that is the kind of project that I'd give to beginning computer science students that know pretty much nothing outside of for-loops and variables, and I know from experience doing that every year that they'd get it done in a few weeks, including learning enough of Qt to achieve it. So if you have existing programming knowledge it should not take more than a week, even without knowing C++.

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

#68

Post by gigel82 »

I think React Native is also a contender, now with Windows and macOS support coming online. Yes, the "UI Framework" story still needs some work and it's obviously nowhere near the web, but otherwise it's a nice middle choice where you get a lot of the perf benefits and "native UX" look and feel, while still being able to leverage a lot of webdev skills like JavaScript and Flex.

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

#69

Post by [deleted] »

blackoil wrote: post #17

I understand performance concerns, but not "native" app. Most popular thing on desktop used by people are Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Gmail and Google Calendar, Reddit, Netflix, Wikipedia. I have never seen people avoiding them, because they don't have a native interface. As long as interface is intutive, people are happy to use them.

[deleted]

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

#70

Post by fnord123 »

kevsim wrote: post #23

We're in the same boat. One of our main driving factors is that in the issue tracker we're building [0], we use an editor (SlateJS) that has its own format for how documents are represented, and our issues are pretty rich and complex. To try and reproduce an editor that adhered to the same schema across multiple platforms is simply more work than we can take on as a small startup. We will of course ship native iOS/An…

Looks awesome. Jira's shit performance is a real killer.
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