• AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space
    1·
    1 month ago

    The thing is that Electron apps don’t even look good compared to native apps. They’re slow and janky and, once you’ve seen a few of them, your impression is “the company didn’t care enough to build a native app”. In that sense, an Electron webpage in an app has the same connotations as AI artwork on a Substack essay: it looks slick if you’ve never seen one before, but cheap and shoddy if you know what it is.

    • leisesprecher@feddit.org
      0·
      1 month ago

      I’m still convinced Electron only exists because there’s a huge surplus of mediocre web devs.

      Electron solves hardly any problem that QT, GTK or all those other UI frameworks didn’t already solve 20 years ago. But for QT you need at least a few developers with passing knowledge of something other than js and css. And those guys are expensive.

      OR, it is a huge conspiracy by Micron et al to increase demand for memory modules.

      • Farid@startrek.website
        1·
        1 month ago

        If you’re talking about an app that exist solely as Electron, then you might be right. But the primary benefit of Electron is that you can distribute your already existing webapp as a downloadable app, which reduces the amount of maintenance significantly.
        Also, when it comes to UI diversity and customization, nothing beats HTML+CSS.

        And as you mentioned, there’s a looot of webdevs. Electron empowers those people to easily create applications. Which they did, they created many useful apps. An application that isn’t perfect resource usage-wise is often much better than no application at all.

        Think of Minecraft. Java is arguably the worst language to use for a chunk-based 3D game. But it’s still better than no Minecraft at all.

      • AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space
        1·
        30 days ago

        Writing the same app in Javascript for a DOM browser is quicker and easier than writing it in a native GUI toolkit, as you don’t need to think about life cycles or memory management as much. Of course, nothing comes for free, so the cost is borne by the userbase needing more RAM and faster CPUs to get the same work done. Which is philosophically in the same tradition of offloading negative externalities as dumping toxic waste in rivers.

    • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      1 month ago

      It’s been a hot minute, since I’ve been to the GTK side of town, but I’m aware of Geany and GNOME Builder (I believe, the latter is focused on developing GNOME apps, but not sure to what degree).

      Well, and I guess, there’s also gVim and Emacs, if you’re into very keyboard-driven editors…