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points by vmg12 2 days ago | 0 comments

Electron is bad, just because Rust is not a good language for building UIs doesn't make electron not bad. People that pick electron (and Rust / gpui) just completely ignore the entire host of other options that are available (I suspect because they want to avoid thinking).

[–] hendrikmans 2 days ago

Give me some examples, including their cross-platform story (including mobile).

[–] ogoffart 2 days ago

I'm working on Slint. It is a declarative UI language that compiles to native code, the application logic can be written in Rust, C++, TS or Python, and it is cross platform, including mobile. Has accessibility through AccessKit. A live preview, so iterating on the UI doesn't mean recompiling Rust.

Compared to Electron, there is no browser, so binaries are a much smaller, use less memory, startup is fast. And the attack surface is also much smaller (no XSS)

[–] bigstrat2003 2 days ago

Cross platform is not an actual achievable goal if you wish to have a pleasant UX. One size does not, in fact, fit all.

[–] the__alchemist 2 days ago

Could you please explain why? In the context of a PC application. What OS-specific features do you think should be included (keyboard shortcuts?) that can't be copmile-time feature-gated by OS? I would guess the vast majority of functionality is not OS-specific, between Windows, Linux, and Mac.