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Show HN: DeskGap – Like Electron, but uses the system webview

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Re: Show HN: DeskGap – Like Electron, but uses the system webview

#81

Post by hitekker »

toper-centage wrote: post #60
aylmao wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody This is like claiming nobody wants to write C because no one wants to manage their own memory in 2019, or miss out on all the cool new packages in the JS ecosystem. Evidently _some people_ do. I can assure you there's at least number _n > 1_ of people who care more about app size than either of your points. I personally wrote a side project in system web-view, because I don't want my macOS-only system-tray a…

I mean, fuck the users. Will nobody think of the poor poor developers?

It is unfortunate that this unsaid sentiment has pervaded all the engineering organizations I've worked for... except the one that made software for developers. Funny that.

Re: Show HN: DeskGap – Like Electron, but uses the system webview

#82

Post by intertextuality »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #42
ploxiln wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't consider Slack and Spotify to be good at making applications (despite their popularity). These are the least efficient chat app and least efficient music app ever, in a multi-decade history of chat and music apps, which didn't have the overflowing abundance of convenience and productivity offered by Electron. (This is like the obviously silly quote "we lose money on every sale, but we'll make it up in volume!…

> These are the least efficient chat app and least efficient music app ever Which 99% of users never care about. The idea that large memory usage is a negative business driver is almost laughable at this point, yet for some reason it is a huge pet peeve among lots of technologists.

This is a completely arrogant view of users.

People quite obviously care about speed and latency issues, but they might not be able to pinpoint slack or discord, etc as the root cause.

Re: Show HN: DeskGap – Like Electron, but uses the system webview

#83

Post by pmontra »

kalleboo wrote: post #22
Klonoar wrote: post #5

These projects completely overlook _why_ people choose Electron over the system view. - Nobody wants to be testing against multiple browser/rendering engines in 2019. - Nobody wants to wait for a vendor to update their implementation when Chrome has the feature available almost immediately. Edit: Since I can already see the litany of armchair-quarterback-desktop-app-authors, I'm just going to link to the comment from…

The Slack dev you're quoting doesn't mention any of your points. His points were that the native extension API was clunky (DeskGap could improve upon this), that users of old OS versions are completely left out in the cold for updates (he mentions severe UI bugs, which is very different from "we need bleeding-edge Chrome features"), and that the difference would be negligible anyway since the poor RAM and CPU usage i…

A Slack written with DeskGap wouldn't run on Linux. I'm using Slack in the browser anyway but maybe not supporting Linux could make some software fail compared to a competitor supporting it.

Re: Show HN: DeskGap – Like Electron, but uses the system webview

#84

Post by elcomet »

arcturus17 wrote: post #74
toper-centage wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, fuck the users. Will nobody think of the poor poor developers?

Never heard a non-programmer user complain about the Spotify or Slack desktop apps, but that’s just me.

That's because programmers know that it could be much faster if done with native technologies.

Non-programmers assume this is normal and now they are used to slow apps. Also, they don't know that the reason their whole system is very slow is slack.

Re: Show HN: DeskGap – Like Electron, but uses the system webview

#85

Post by jhgg »

kijin wrote: post #80
vedantroy wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that developers don't want to be testing against multiple browser/rendering engines--hence why Electron was built. Maybe having multiple engines is good (although maybe the benefits are overstated since nowadays most engines align with the spec instead of implementing non-standard extensions like ActiveX), but it's not good for people for who want to quickly, and with low effort, develop desktop applicat…

What developers want is important, but what users want is even more important. If a lightweight app is what users want, that's a good enough reason for at least some companies to consider DeskGap over Electron. I'm sick of sluggish "native" apps on my i7 PC with fast SSDs and 32GB of RAM. I don't even want to imagine how those apps perform on low-end devices.

The cost savings here is in download/package size, and not runtime performance. Chances are latest chromium is faster than the system web-browser.

Re: Show HN: DeskGap – Like Electron, but uses the system webview

#86

Post by laumars »

Klonoar wrote: post #5

These projects completely overlook _why_ people choose Electron over the system view. - Nobody wants to be testing against multiple browser/rendering engines in 2019. - Nobody wants to wait for a vendor to update their implementation when Chrome has the feature available almost immediately. Edit: Since I can already see the litany of armchair-quarterback-desktop-app-authors, I'm just going to link to the comment from…

I get that writing tests often isn’t fun but it’s as much a part of responsible development as writing useful error messages and not using experimental features on production builds.

What really blows my mind is that we’ve reached a point in computing where the developers laziness now outranks the customers needs.

> Since I can already see the litany of armchair-quarterback-desktop-app-authors

I think you’ll find those who are offering counter arguments aren’t just armchair critics. Eg I’ve been writing software since the 80s. This includes a considerable amount of desktop software. So I’d like to think my opinion is just as valid as your own. ;)

Re: Show HN: DeskGap – Like Electron, but uses the system webview

#87

Post by kijin »

jhgg wrote: post #85
kijin wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What developers want is important, but what users want is even more important. If a lightweight app is what users want, that's a good enough reason for at least some companies to consider DeskGap over Electron. I'm sick of sluggish "native" apps on my i7 PC with fast SSDs and 32GB of RAM. I don't even want to imagine how those apps perform on low-end devices.

The cost savings here is in download/package size, and not runtime performance. Chances are latest chromium is faster than the system web-browser.

Startup time matters. Chances are the system web browser is already cached in memory, whereas every Electron app wants to load its own Chromium runtime.

Re: Show HN: DeskGap – Like Electron, but uses the system webview

#88

Post by chipotle_coyote »

arcturus17 wrote: post #74
toper-centage wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, fuck the users. Will nobody think of the poor poor developers?

Never heard a non-programmer user complain about the Spotify or Slack desktop apps, but that’s just me.

I have absolutely heard non-programmer users complain about the Slack desktop app. They may not be able to diagnose why it is being slow or unresponsive, but they can still tell when it's being slow and unresponsive. And while the term "power user" has fallen out of favor, there are still users who aren't programmers, per se, who nonetheless understand concepts like memory and CPU usage.

Re: Show HN: DeskGap – Like Electron, but uses the system webview

#89

Post by icelancer »

hitekker wrote: post #81
toper-centage wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, fuck the users. Will nobody think of the poor poor developers?

It is unfortunate that this unsaid sentiment has pervaded all the engineering organizations I've worked for... except the one that made software for developers. Funny that.

It's not that difficult. You ship products to specific usergroups and don't need to exceed their tolerances. That 5% of users really hate Electron - or even know what it is - simply just doesn't matter to Slack.

And besides, of that 5% of people who hate it, a large percentage of them use it anyway because they have to.

Overengineered products for the minority don't do well unless you charge a huge premium for it, something my field unfortunately does a lot of and I have to deal with.

Re: Show HN: DeskGap – Like Electron, but uses the system webview

#90

Post by icelancer »

kijin wrote: post #80
vedantroy wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that developers don't want to be testing against multiple browser/rendering engines--hence why Electron was built. Maybe having multiple engines is good (although maybe the benefits are overstated since nowadays most engines align with the spec instead of implementing non-standard extensions like ActiveX), but it's not good for people for who want to quickly, and with low effort, develop desktop applicat…

What developers want is important, but what users want is even more important. If a lightweight app is what users want, that's a good enough reason for at least some companies to consider DeskGap over Electron. I'm sick of sluggish "native" apps on my i7 PC with fast SSDs and 32GB of RAM. I don't even want to imagine how those apps perform on low-end devices.

> but what users want is even more important

Only developers and very tech-savvy people bitch about Slack. Your average person working in Sales, HR, or operations cares not for the memory footprint of Slack.

It's also not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. Yeah, it's slower than mIRC, fair enough. But IRC is dead to almost everyone and Slack took over, so it is what it is.

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