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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

#81

Post by jakelazaroff »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #79
_odey wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think we can hold multi-billion dollar venture-backed companies to a different standard than we do indie developers working on side projects.

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

#82

Post by coding123 »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #79
_odey wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The PS5 has 16GB of RAM.

So does the Mac I'm using.

Slack is taking less than 1% of my Ram.

PS3 was released 13 YEARS ago.

At the time AIM was the dominant chat client, and it probably took more like 5% of RAM available.

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

#83

Post by _huayra_ »

jcelerier wrote: post #67
_odey wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have not taught webdev folks C++, but I have taught brand-new C++ programmers just basic things for an intro course. I think it's easy to forget how hard it is to pick up for beginners except for the handful of people who have the ability to "think like the abstract machine".

I think folks who are steeped in the webdev stuff and UI don't always grok languages like C++ or its many footguns as easily as one may suspect. fwiw I feel the same way when I have to do any web stuff (i.e. out of my element). C++ may seem easy, especially when using a framework like Qt, but students tend to get really overwhelmed by all of the rules to avoid the language's pitfalls (e.g. the GSL rules, abseil's tips, Scott Meyer's books and so many other authors, etc).

Perhaps if one is a great teacher, the pedagogy can introduce these things in a tolerable progression. I found as long as students stuck to value semantics only they got it, but as soon as they used a framework that dealt in references / pointers it was a real step function in difficulty. Thinking about the lifetime pitfalls and related UB really ratcheted up the mental load, and I was not really trained how to teach effectively (like most grad students).

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

#84

Post by Falling3 »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #79
_odey wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yea, completely agree. I think context is very important here. We should not be making the same arguments for a one-person side business and a company with 400MM in revenue. Slack really can't stand on the arguments presented in the article.

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

#85

Post by cxr »

joshmanders wrote: post #66
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

> 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 k…

There is wisdom in this comment. It's important to note, though, that the point about investment applies also to the tools and methodology that the blank slate programmers are being steered towards.

It's both interesting and exasperating that the modern JS ecosystem and its influencers have managed to recreate the experience of downloading SDKs and fiddling with configuration options and dealing with builds that sometimes fail, and that when they don't, build success means producing inscrutable blobs where View Source is rendered useless. On the whole, it's a community that has neglected to maintain the ecosystem's original strengths.

https://www.colbyrussell.com/2019/03/06/how-to-displace-java...

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

#86

Post by gumby »

Given how nonexistent the development documentation is (not poor, nonexistent) it feels like Apple doesn’t even want you to write native apps.

Obviously they do, but it seems like explaining things to developers should be table stakes.

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

#87

Post by stu2b50 »

snazz wrote: post #71
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…

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.

Yes, I personally am happy that Spotify is an electron app. Considering that the Linux binary is maintained by volunteers at the company I'm pretty sure it just wouldn't exist otherwise.

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

#88

Post by jancsika »

pwdisswordfish4 wrote: post #74
_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 e…

> In fact, you can write GTK apps in JS.

I'll eat my hat if it's as easy to write a hello world in GTK as it is in Electron/nw.js.

Keep in mind that with Electron/nw.js I download the toolkit binary and then simply declare an arbitrary webpage or js file filled with arbitrary modern HTML5 to be my "main" page/script. That means any frontend dev can immediately get a "hello world" running with no extra tooling and immediately access the full dev environment they are used to. Aside from the json file they don't even have to learn any of the non-HTML5 APIs (which, btw, are typically where the most nefarious bugs live in these toolkits).

What is more, the dev can immediately bring in any of the zillion frameworks they depend on to pad strings or whatever.

I'm guessing GTK has a way to hook into its own API through javascript. But if it's anything more than a single call to create a window and fill its webview with a page (or execute a js in its context), it's already more complicated and electron/nw.js wins.

Edit: typo

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

#89

Post by cxr »

_huayra_ wrote: post #83
jcelerier wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I have not taught webdev folks C++, but I have taught brand-new C++ programmers just basic things for an intro course. I think it's easy to forget how hard it is to pick up for beginners except for the handful of people who have the ability to "think like the abstract machine". I think folks who are steeped in the webdev stuff and UI don't always grok languages like C++ or its many footguns as easily as one may suspe…

> I think folks who are steeped in the webdev stuff and UI don't always grok languages like C++ or its many footguns

It's not specific to web developers. "Grok" has a meaning (and C++ a beastliness) that precludes most C++ programmers from being able to be described as "grokking" C++. Most C programmers don't even grok C, and as far as feats go, it's one that's many times smaller than the one discussed here.

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

#90

Post by nvrspyx »

pwdisswordfish4 wrote: post #74
_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 e…

GTK is barely cross-platform. It's an utter pain to get anything usable in either Windows or macOS. It also doesn't look native on either platform, especially Windows though, because of the default Aidwata theme.
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