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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

#71

Post by snazz »

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…

Linux users are also super happy they're not left out of using Electron apps. If Discord were to write a native app, they might only include Windows and macOS support—or even omit Mac support altogether.

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

#72

Post by tylerhou »

serial_dev wrote: post #64
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

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.

I wouldn’t say just web developer, but average programmer unfamiliar with Qt’s stack.

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

#74

Post by pwdisswordfish4 »

_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…

> I would never attempt to implement something like this in Qt or GTK

In fact, you can write GTK apps in JS. A year or two before Electron came along, the Gnome folks had the foresight to declare that JS would be the language of choice for promoting GTK and Gnome app development, with the option to drop back to C otherwise. This caused a minor controversy, where the community decided to rage against this effort and essentially rejected it. Here we are then, instead.

Rather than the "default" toolkit of choice in 2020 being GTK, which is cross-platform, provides an opportunity to get closer to "native", and has the roots and traditions of pre-GitHub FOSS, an vacuum was left wide open—unfilled due to the internal revolt/denial of the Linux desktop crowd. So the NodeJS and web developer community swooped in and filled it, with their dubious sui generis practices pushed to the forefront instead, and the world is shipping apps in browser runtime containers.

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

#75

Post by kevsim »

fnord123 wrote: post #70
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.

Thanks! We fully agree. For us, with whatever features we decide to add, keeping it as snappy as possible and keeping it possible to do literally everything with the keyboard is a must.

We do every once in a while end up with really embarrassing bugs though since we rarely touch the mouse ourselves.

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

#76

Post by CJefferson »

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…

If you don't want it, you don't have to use it.

In practice you are getting a "discount", because there was a time when most apps were paid for, while all the electron apps I use at least are free -- so there isn't anything to discount.

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

#77

Post by maxk42 »

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

This code genuinely looks simple. Can you recommend a good resource for getting started with Qt? Also, is this just for desktop development or is there a relatively straightforward to make it cross-platform compatible? If I can build one Qt app and export it to iOS and Android then I'd much rather do that than Electron.

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

#78

Post by asddubs »

maxk42 wrote: post #77
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

This code genuinely looks simple. Can you recommend a good resource for getting started with Qt? Also, is this just for desktop development or is there a relatively straightforward to make it cross-platform compatible? If I can build one Qt app and export it to iOS and Android then I'd much rather do that than Electron.

qt supports mobile

https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/supported-platforms.html

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

#79

Post by MaxBarraclough »

_odey wrote: post #52
jsdavid wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I used to disagree with this view, since I was "raised" in school to think that raw performance is the only worthy attribute of a computer program, regardless of purpose. Then, when I started working on real products instead of homework I learned how wrong that way of thinking was. Of course it does not apply to everything, some apps do need every last clock cycle of speed, but so far none of mine had.

How about Electron-based chat apps like Slack and Teams? We know it's possible to implement this kind of functionality in For comparison, the Playstation 3 has 256MB of system RAM, and manages to run GTA V.

[0] See the Ripcord application, discussed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23163960

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

#80

Post by sroussey »

nxc18 wrote: post #30
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.

I’m working on some Windows apps currently in the native-ish WPF and UWP frameworks. Being somewhat detail-oriented, I’ve noticed a few major areas where Electron apps tend to deviate from native: * button/link handling: win desktop uses the pointer with hover effects; electron uses a hand cursor with hover effects * minimize/maximize/close buttons, and title bars in general; electron apps tend to have them being big…

The button hover and the text selection issues are one line CSS changes.
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