I can't think of anything good that has come out of electron. Seriously. Maybe slack (haven't used it) but that is probably about the worst use case for electron imaginable and would be utterly trivial to implement in a proper language natively.
> would be utterly trivial to implement in a proper language natively.
Have you tried to develop a cross-platform app for Windows, macOS and Linux recently recently? I do not know what you mean by "trivial", but using HTML/CSS/JS is the fastest way to develop UIs, and so, apps/programs. No contest. (about performances or resources management, that's a whole other story).
And using different techs for each platform to have a native app is not what I call trivial for developers in terms of complexity.
It is the fastest yes, and it is by far the worst.
With javacript you have to constantly fight the language, the frameworks the performance etc. This will actually end up taking more time and effort than doing it properly in native languages once you get past the proof-of-concept stage.
Having a cross-platform core and then doing a platform specific GUI for each platform is a bit of work up front but hardly a big hurdle all things considered.
The advantages are that you actually get an app that looks and behaves the way it is intended on each platform. And an app that actually can be user friendly. Did we all just stop and say, hey, users suck. Why should we care about them? Let's give them an ugly mess that doesn't perform.
That by itself is a tragedy, but what is astonishing is that it is done for no good reasons.
I have high hopes webassembly will allows us to move away from javascript while keeping the cross platform bit. Not convinced it will address the complaints about electron which I understand rather come from the use of chrome/html/css in term of resources.
I agree that webassembly could make the situation much better.
Some of the appeal of electron is code-reuse and being able to use something other than javascript will make it easier to share code with native software rather than web pages. That would be a huge benefit in my eyes.
#4 please! The days of GAIM/Pidgin felt like the golden age of chat apps, at least as far as the user experience was concerned. Just one centralized app could manage all the disparate protocols without ads or millions of analytic scripts tracking every mouse movement. And it barely took up system resources.
Also, you'd be surprised how fast 4gb gets used up by the time the OS, the browser, and various Electron apps take their cut. I can't browse the web while having Slack and Spotify open or things start thrashing. I think it's past the point of ridiculousness when a simple chat app takes more memory than a full featured IDE like IDEA.
It comes down to, do you care more about development, or do you care more about your users, and the app's ability to fit in with their chosen desktop, follow that desktop's paradigms, etc?
Electron has really raised the bar for how easy it should be to package and publish a cross-platform native-enough app.
If something like Slack is "utterly trivial to implement in a proper language natively", why was Skype so awful for so long, to the point that they've now switched to Electron?
For multi-platform to be worth anything it has to be good for something. Why would I care that an app I don't want to use can be executed on several platforms?
VSCode has been cited dozens of times on this thread only, and is probably one of the best Electron apps. I personally like Insomnia, Postman, Nylas, Discord, Git Kraken.
VSCode is currently mentioned three times (including your comment) in the entire discussion here, of which one predates my comment. You said something about bad faith?
But yes, VSCode is probably the exception. But they have had to spend a truly impressive effort to combat the shortfalls of electron and are to my knowledge the only ones that might have succeeded in making something relatively performant.
If that is what is required to make electron decent then few arguments in favor of it remains.
I think quite a lot of Electron app users see value in being able to use the desktop app on their work pc and switch to a web version in their travel laptop. Also there is a lot of value in being able to just register on the web and start using the app until you find that you need a feature that is only available on the desktop, because of fewer restrictions, and only then switch, lowering the barrier to entry considerably.
Electron apps are good because they are as bad as a web site?
Yes I get that different sets of features on different platforms is an issue. But often that is half the point, if everything could be done on a website there is in the vast majority of cases no need for an electron "app".
I can't think of anything good that has come out of electron. Seriously. Maybe slack (haven't used it) but that is probably about the worst use case for electron imaginable and would be utterly trivial to implement in a proper language natively.