Electron

No one is except Macbook developers.

>web technology = browser

>>59849048
>literally runs chrome
>not browser

> Leveraging modern web technologies to open desktop app production to millions of developers
> This annoys people for some reason

i don't understnad why someone doesn't just make a CSS-like language for UI
that all these apps are using the browser for anyways.

pango did it, MS did it with haml or whatever.

>>59849188
Electron applications are shit in comparison with proper native applications. They fail to integrate with the host platform, they are slow, they hog memory and drink power. It's fine to make those trade-offs – in some ways, it's better that you can get an application at all than the alternative of 'no support for your platform'. But let's be honest here – there is nothing preventing e.g. Spotify or Slack from building native clients for each platform they support, and I find it difficult to believe that the costs would be prohibitive.

>>59848984
Go back to red dit with your blog post.

>not using a browser to run your desktop application

>>59849188
>0.999999999999999999999999 = 1

I genuinely see nothing wrong with this. It will get faster as it gets more adoption. JS isnt going to die anytime soon so you might as well embrace the genius of leveraging the web toolkit on the desktop.

>>59848984

computers were first developed as convenient middleware for telephone switching systems we've really come full circle haven't we

>>59849188
Quality > Quantity.

>>59849228
This.

>>59852121
>It will get faster as it gets more adoption.
Moore's Law is dead. JavaScript by itself is already pretty damn fast and there's not much more to optimize there.

The performance issues are in the web stack itself, and those aren't fixable without abandoning it completely and starting over. The web stack is abstract layer upon abstract layer upon abstract layer...all of which are overly complicated...all encoded using two bloated, retarded, CPU intensive protocols.

It is what it is: a pile of shit. But unlike some past piles of shit Moore's Law can't save it.

>>59849228
>HN copypasta
fuck off loser

>>59849228
Outdated cog. Go back to your java is the future shit

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>>59848984
> moving a serious HN discussion to /g/

>>59852396
>>59849228
These.
Pushing thousands of CSS nodes for a button through CPU cache hierachy is slow, who'd though.

>>59853091
Hate to tell you web """dev""", but even Swing applications are way more responsive and easier to implement. Even more so if you need custom widgets.
>>59853177
You're right, I almost closed my reddit tab in shock.

>>59849188
>Leveraging poo to open desktop app production to millions of indians

>>59848984
name a better alternative

javafx? hahahahahhahahhahahahha. fuck off, thats what I am using at my workplace and i much rather would have some sweet typescript + react.

>>59856055
Qt
>javafx? hahahahahhahahhahahahha. fuck off, thats what I am using at my workplace and i much rather would have some sweet typescript + react.
I don't even know JavaFX but I'm sure it's just because you're mongoloid.

>>59848984
my time > your device's resources

It's why sublime text or vim shits on every other editor (maybe except visual studio)

>>59856090
my time > your software

>>59856090
You're on 4chan, so that is definitely not true.
I could go so far and say your life < my device.

There is less of an appetite for shitty software on the desktop than in the browser. The public expects webapps to have limitations on functionality and reliability. They get rightfully upset when desktop programs act in a similar manner. The hordes of code campers cranking out poor quality webapps won't be able to make the transition to desktop quality standards.

>>59848984
You're right, let me just grab that fully featured cross platform UI toolkit that's not bloated.

oh wait.

>>59856138
grafting nodejs and chromium embedded framework together generates enough bloat to make Qt look sleek

>>59856138
>oh wai-
Qt, /thread
It's not bloated, it comes with an actually working widgetset among other things at a tenth of Electrons size and RAM usage while being fast and responsive.

>>59856197
QML/QtQuick looks pretty neat for throwing shit together quickly

Electron was circlejerked into popularity by the hordes of otherwise-useless web faggots that infest San Francisco these days.

It's a nice idea for turning your web "app" into a desktop prototype to see if it has legs with users but then if they want the desktop experience it's time to invest in having it done right

>>59849228
>...I find it difficult to believe that the costs would be prohibitive.

In Sillicon Valley, you too can make 300k writing shitty Electon apps!

>using a markup language to build a GUI

if youre building a web app that you want to license to multiple companies, some of them might have different requirements as to where the app runs. It may seem / be stupid, but this happens all the time. Using electron you can sell to any companies that require the product to be run as a desktop application.

>>59849188
would you trust CEF to run your pacemaker?

>>59856547

I've seen things like node-webkit used to basically sandbox the app. It's not the worst idea in the world when it comes to security.

We're reaching maximum bloat.

Time to burn it all down and go back to text.

>>59848984

>b...but without that hipster web"dev" Starbucks niggers won't deliver they wonderful apps

Using Javascript is the only way to get easily portable all platform development (Web, mobile, native).

Electron is shit though. From what I've heard, React Native is probably better since it uses native OS calls instead of embedding a Web browser

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>>59848984
Yes OP. This level of autism is going through the roof. Fucking millenials who don't even know how to properly code a desktop app in C or C++

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>>59856830
This

>>59849228
Do you always cross post to HN?

>>59856933
>>59856830
>implying even that will stop the bloat

Nothing will stop the bloat outside of some awful cataclysm.

>>59849188
>leveraging buzzwords

>>59849222
>>59856055
Just use Tcl/Tk. It's lightweight and works on every major desktop platform. The main downside is that it's ugly on Linux/BSD.

http://tkdocs.com/

>>59856922

don't know why autismos keep getting triggered over this

if you don't like it then don't use it, nobody is forcing you

>>59848984
It's 100% retarded.
It's absolutely pathetic how we all have supercomputers at our disposal today, yet people still manage to ship these absurdly unoptimized applications that idle at 20% CPU time because all they know is JavaScript, HTML and CSS.

Cordova on mobile, electron on desktop operating systems, it's all the same. It delivers an alien feeling far away from the native UI and has horrible performance to boot.

If you are too stupid to manage memory, then at least learn C# to share the business logic and then target mobile and mac with Xamarin, Linux with GTK# and Windows with WPF or UWP. That already improves your users' experiences a lot and as it turns out, C# is pretty much what Typescript aspires to be and XAML is to applications what HTML is to documents.

>>59849228

Nobody's arguing that Electron is a good choice for performance. It *is* a low barrier to entry gets more people into development, and considering different areas of development, which will advance everything. Being able to realise ideas and prototype quickly is more important than ensuring everything is as optimised as it can possibly be.

>>59851353

Close enough.

>>59852394

Competition === Quality

>>59856558

No, but I wouldn't trust Microsoft to do so either.

>>59860326

"Modern web technologies" is a straightforward and common description for what Electron runs on. Is there another term you'd prefer?

>>59851353
This is true

>>59861442
>idle at 20% CPU time because all they know is JavaScript, HTML and CSS.
Please, it's not the fault of js, html or css. It's just code monkeys.

>>59861559
>Is there another term you'd prefer?
"bloated and useless framework that people will reinvent the minute its popular due to its unusability" would be accurate but too long compared to buzzword

>>59861710

Thanks for your input.

>>59861622
Not only. CSS is a batshit retarded, inefficient way to style elements.
Expressions like

.sidebar ul li a {
    text-decoration: none;
}

Are incredibly inefficient. If you look at how those are implemented, it has to get every single anchor element on the page, traverse the dom upwards for every single one to see if it encounters a list element, if yes, then further traverse the DOM upwards to see if there's an unordered list, and then if there's any element whose classlist contains "sidebar"...

And if you have hundreds of these rules and thousands of DOM nodes, you get the janky shitty experience we all know and hate on the web and web-based applications.

The workarounds are shit too, verbose shit like BEM which makes file sizes explode or shadow DOM which requires you to copy the style tags to every shadow root where you need it.

HTML sucks for applications and that's no surprise, as it was written to describe simple documents. The DOM wasn't made for highly interactive applications that swap and change nodes all the time and it shows.

And JS... well, it's actually gotten a whole lot better ,yeah. But we're probably getting really close to the limit to where it can be optimized. That's why WebAssembly was made, after all. Not having to parse the language from a text source every time and having static typing is going to help a lot.
At least when we can eventually use Web APIs from it.

>>59852121
>embrace the genius of leveraging the web toolkit on the desktop
kek

>>59851353
No iditot, it's 0.999...=1.
Fuck this board, fuck you, fuck your mama

Well browsers have become very complex, almost like mini-OSes, so embedding a program in one may not be such a bad idea.

Instead of writing the same shit over and over again, you might as well let a browser window manage all that shit and focus on features.

>>59862776

> expecting too much of brainlet JS devs

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>>59862806

>>59862806
>>59852121
>It will get faster as it gets more adoption.
It won't.
There is a lower limit of cache misses you can optimize away by hopping random CSS and HTML nodes.

>>59849188
If native developers (Java, Python, etc.) have to make a web app, they learn HTML, CSS, JS and a serverside language/framework. They don't write every single webpage in Java or C++, compile it to JS with Emscripten, and then ship a collection of 3MB webpages. It doesn't happen, because it sounds fucking ridiculous.

Many web developers, on the other hand, refuse to learn anything besides JS or whatever language they're familiar with. Look at the Node scene. It's fueled by sheer laziness. These people insist on writing their backends in JS. They write web applications in JS, bundle Chromium into a massive binary executable, and call it a native application. I'm not even going to get into the meme framework fuckery. It's completely and absolutely absurd. Why anyone would even insist on using JS when there's just SO MUCH MORE is beyond me.

>>59862929
That's not true. I'm a JS dev and I started off with C++.

Your analysis is way too superficial and simplistic.

>>59863079
> I started off with C++
Then you decovered you'll always be a failure at programming and became a monkey.

>>59862806
Or perhaps we should think about making our OSes actually do the work.

>>59861559
>Nobody's arguing that Electron is a good choice for performance. It *is* a low barrier to entry gets more people into development, and considering different areas of development, which will advance everything.

When are we going to STOP with this fucking meme? We do not need "moar people in development." And having "moar people in development" is not advancing anything in the industry, it is setting us back. In some cases way back.

We need BETTER developers.

>Being able to realise ideas and prototype quickly is more important than ensuring everything is as optimised as it can possibly be.

No. Wrong. The industry is flooded with failed ideas and crap. We need solid applications.

And another thing: it's not any easier to "realize an idea" or "prototype quickly" in the web stack than it is in other RAD tools which compile native code. In fact I would say the web stack is slower and much more cumbersome than many of them.

Web stack on the desktop is popular because of all the script kiddies and web dev pajeets who can make "real desktop apps!" using the bits and pieces of knowledge they picked up as code monkeys for shitty web sites.

>>59863099
blablabla

Did it ever occur to you for every 100 JS jobs there is maybe 1 C++ job and that requires at least 3 years of experience in my country?

Basically nobody employs someone without experience in C++ here, so it's impossible to get a job with it.

>>59862806
this is Java level of retarded.

>op
>using a fucktoilet to make your shitposts

stay in the past, FUCKKID

>>59861442
This!

>>59861622
No, it is the fault of HTML and CSS. Code monkeys make it worse, but there's no optimizing the web stack. See >>59861818

>>59862929
>Many web developers, on the other hand, refuse to learn anything besides JS or whatever language they're familiar with.
Yep.

>Look at the Node scene. It's fueled by sheer laziness. These people insist on writing their backends in JS.
I don't necessarily have a problem with server side JS. JS is just a language and while I have some serious issues with it, from a performance/memory perspective it's actually better than fucking Java and it's not tied to Poosoft like C#/VB.

I don't like JS (again, serious issues). But I don't see how it's any worse server side than PHP.

>They write web applications in JS, bundle Chromium into a massive binary executable, and call it a native application.
THIS I have a major fucking problem with. It's lazy and stupid and imposes all of the inefficiencies of the web stack on the desktop.

HTML+CSS was a major fucking mistake. And it's not one that's easily fixed because we are literally encoding the sum total library of human knowledge as HTML+CSS. Tim Berners-Lee made TERRIBLE choices when he invented HTTP. In his defense, he imagined a web of simple, static, hyperlinked, styled text documents. Not the cluster fuck of HTML, CSS, and dynamic JS+DOM we have today.

>I'm not even going to get into the meme framework fuckery. It's completely and absolutely absurd. Why anyone would even insist on using JS when there's just SO MUCH MORE is beyond me.
It's more an issue of why would anyone insist on the web stack when there's a fast, efficient, native API provided by the OS.

>>59863279
>I don't get a job
>I think it's because I lack experience

You are so naive it hurts, also do FOSS you retard.

>>59863332
No, you retard, this is not the fucking USA, nobody gives a shit you fucked around with FOSS in your free time.

They want to see real production shit, like shit you made for a company, shit that sold. If you don't have that, we're sorry, we're looking for someone with more experience. That's how it is in the real fucking world, not in your cushioned 1st meme world, where your fucking Fed just prints more money to make you feel you have such a huge purchasing power, you fucking fat mongoloid.

And fuck FOSS, FOSS doesn't put food on table. Fucking meme pieces of shit.

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>>59863430

>>59863453
Did I hurt your fweelings?

>>59849222
Didn't mozilla do this? All their programs are designed with XUL I think, it writes like CSS. That's how people edit their firefoxes in all these desktop threads by writing their own userChrome.css

>>59863588

Somewhat, but XUL is shit and one of the major issues behind Firefox's UI perf

>>59863475
>so butthurt you could cook a egg in his head
>"did I hurt your feelings?"

No, but you should take your rabies meds, Pajeet.

>>59862776
0.9 = 1

>>59856882
React Native is phones only but MS started ReactXP to do the same on windows desktop (and I assume it'll make an appearance on mac/linux later when someone wants it badly enough)

and Qt's QML/QtQuick uses JavaShit too and is probably easier if you're expecting to call on a lot of native code

>>59861559
>Being able to realise ideas and prototype quickly is more important than ensuring everything is as optimised as it can possibly be.
Except nothing ever leaves the "prototype quality" stage and web faggots continue shipping bloated rubbish for years

>>59862929
>They don't write every single webpage in Java or C++, compile it to JS with Emscripten, and then ship a collection of 3MB webpages.
No need when the flavour of the month JS framework will bloat your shit out to 3+mb before you add a single line of user-facing content...

>>59863099
JS is easy money these days senpai, it's vile but every idiot is offering good money for it

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>https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/22900
>13% cpu usage on idle due to flickering cursor

>web devs making desktop applications
What could possibly go wrong?

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>>59848984

>use slack at work, electron based
>idle in offline mode, 11% CPU
>use spotify, electron based
>idle in offline mode, 7% CPU
>needing CPU to literally do nothing
>total of 120 threads to do nothing

k

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>>59863430

>>59865818
>spotify
not electron, they do their own thing with c++ and chromium embedded (they actually host cef builds now too)

>>59865786
css animation is such garbage

>>59849222
you can do the exact same thing with Qt5/QtWebKit/QML, hopefully the Electron meme dies quickly

>>59866743
the linux version is based on nw.js

>>59849222
Qt has supported CSS for a long, long time.

GTK themes are CSS now as well.

>>59866884
>css is such garbage
fixed

>>59849188
>consume 5% idle
Yes, no, fuck these guys

So what is the alternative for multi-platform native desktop applications that can handle different screen resolutions?

This thread is a repost from hackernews

and its comments are reposts from hackernews comments

>>59867880
>not reading both for a double dose of autism

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>>59865818
yet slack's valuation is currently at over $4,000,000,000
> capitalism is wonderful