points by jdw64 9 hours ago | 0 comments
Many people dislike Electron, but there's a reason it's still widely chosen. It runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows. With C++ or C#, you have to build differently each time, and cross-platform support is difficult. And fundamentally, it brings over web syntax as-is more than other frameworks, making front-end styling convenient.
I'm well aware that Electron has a large RAM footprint and installation size, but doing a polyglot architecture instead puts more cognitive load on you. Projects that mix multiple languages are a pain just to manage. I'd rather hope Electron gets better optimized.
[–] npongratz 5 hours ago
[–] Rohansi 7 hours ago
> I'd rather hope Electron gets better optimized.
Everyone always blames the browser. Why don't we blame [insert native app framework] for apps being slow too?
Everyone builds web apps using bloated frameworks and don't spend time optimizing any of their code. I wonder how much more efficient they could've made the Discord client without getting rid of Electron, just for a more meaningful comparison.
I'm not directing this at you, but to all developers using Electron and its ilk:
Show some empathy for your users and shoulder that cognitive load so that your users can have their hardware back. That's just courtesy, and a responsibility a good engineer takes on. There are so many more users than there are of you, their aggregate gain from your efficient software far outweighs whatever extra work is necessary to do the decent thing.