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potata
6y

Lately I've noticed a lot of people complaining about webview apps (electron and so on)... While I see their arguments for resource hungry apps, slow and unreliable - I strongly think that it's just complaining for no reason....

It's slow - yes
It's stupid to make web work in native - yes
But guys, isn't it awesome that technologies allows us to do such things? Even a simple web developer can quickly prototype an application on mac/windows/linux/android/iphones - even if it's not a great one, you still don't need to learn all the corks and quacks of the languages... You just need to get it out there!

So, I'd like to say that we should actually appreciate things we have more, even if it's as stupid as emoji coding language :)

ps. I really admire the emoji language as it's amazing on the spectre of what is possible.... :D

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  • 0
    6y
    @24th-Dragon Depends on the perspective :) An app that uses 500mb of ram is nothing. Free ram is WASTED ram, so why not put it to work? Of course, I do agree with you, when an app that literally has a single page uses 3GB of ram - it's stupid but on the other hand, I've had a job in product service where native app used 10GB of ram as the developer forgot to clear the ram and everyone was still happy....
  • 1
    6y
    @potata "An app that uses 500mb of ram is nothing."

    I'm not bothering about RAM usage, I'm worrying about energy consumption.

    You think an Electron app that takes 5 seconds to start and feels slower in every situation is great for battery life?

    The only Electron app I've seen so far that doesn't feel like bloated garbage is VS Code, and I usually even avoid that one because once that program managed to start up and display the basic UI I have already opened 5 files in Vim.

    And I'm just talking about desktop apps here, if your app is slow on the desktop it's straight unusable on mobile and you're gonna have a really bad time convincing me to use it.

    But hey, with wasm on the rise we might see fast Electron apps. Native code executed in a VM in a browser instance...nothing screams efficiency more than that...
  • 0
    6y
    @deadlyRants That is exactly my point, we are complaining about batteries, energy and so on but come on, it's the start of something new... Technology has to evolve and early adapters do take a hit in many ways :) This is the beauty of our nieche
  • 4
    6y
    It's slow - yes

    ...what else do you need? That's the only argument I need to avoid these damn things unless necessary.
  • 0
    6y
    @AlgoRythm People say php is slow, people say java is slow but still somehow they are popular :)
  • 1
    6y
    @potata "it's the start of something new..."

    New what?

    Early adopters are usually early adopters because they get something new that's never existed before. But Electron apps offer nothing except worse performance for the same kind of features.

    As long as there is no clear advantage for the user there's also no reason to use it.
  • 2
    6y
    @deadlyRants Reason to use it? One language to develop apps for web and devices :) I'd say that's an advantage, no? Or you want to tell me that it would be an advantage to learn all the DIFFERENT languages to adapt to each platform individually?
  • 0
    6y
    @24th-Dragon but it's still used a lot :) Just saying.

    In any case, never judge a tool at it's start... It may not be perfect now but it may get perfect later :)
  • 1
    6y
    @potata With "reason to use it" I mean from the perspective of the user. The user doesn't give a shit if an app was easier to develop, but worse performance does matter in that regard.

    And I don't see what's wrong with learning different languages. I'd take any excuse to not use JS but that's just me.
  • 1
    6y
    As a user I despise Electron apps for their look and performance, but as a developer I love Electron. Being able to publish an app cross platform saves a lot of time and energy.

    IMO, a poor performance app available for your platform of choice is better than no app available for your platform of choice. For small teams / teams of 1, Electron seems like the obvious solution to get something out there. But if you or your team have the resources to build something better, there is no excuse for not doing that.
  • 2
    6y
    No, it's fucking not great when stupid cocksuckers can throw their bloated crap into the wild instead of FUCKING LEARNING to get their shit together first!
  • 3
    6y
    Electron shouldn't be considered a solution for multiplatform needs anymore than Wine or VmWare imho.
    It just results in bloated apps, and gives developers the idea it'a fine to be lazy... Even worse, it gives managers the idea it's better not to waste time on a good product while you can have a shitty one faster.

    It's great for demos, PoCs and such, but not for the real thing. I mean, you may just as well ship your product within a minimal linux VM if you really don't care about developing a multiplatform solution.
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