undefined | Better HN

0 pointsSneakerXZ7y ago0 comments

But why Electron? There are other cross-platform solutions with great performance.

0 comments

There are no equivalents to electron. You either use a browser, or you get stuck in someone else's lacking UI, like qt. Electron just works, and that's why it's everywhere.

IloveHN847y ago

Qt actually performs better than Electron and works everywhere and

d0m7y ago

What you want is cross-platform:

  - Web (IE, Safari, Firefox, Chrome, and older versions of those browsers)
  - Web responsive (When you access it from small screens or access the web from your phone's browser)
  - Android (old devices to recent ones)
  - iOS (old devices to recent ones)
  - And, eventually, get to a desktop app, ideally on windows, mac and linux.

Say you're the tech lead and you need to make a decision about the stack to support all these platforms, and you're a team of 2-3 devs, yourself included. What stack do you pick?

1 more reply

langitbiru7y ago

Seconded this. The downside is you have to use C++ to beat Javascript performance. You can use Python of course but it is kinda slow.

1 more reply

throwaway666667y ago

I agree with you that on desktop the situation is a bit different. I 've only played around with UI on OSX, and for some reason it is way harder than native ui on ios (old NextStep api vs UI api). Fonts are handled differently. The coordinate system is different (starting from the bottom left corner if I remember correctly). Coding for multiple screens; like tracking pointer position on windows on different screens is awkward. Lots and lots of legacy stuff.

Perhaps windows is better? What about linux? :p But I see why people are disliking the native ui situation on desktop.

devwastaken7y ago

Native UI is nice for system dialogs and programs associated with the system in some manner. I wouldn't want a harddrive formatting software to be using some transitioney css+js.

But I would want my media player, or chat application, or something that's meant to be a media-based experience to be well presented.

paulie_a7y ago

I took a look at a large list of apps that uses electron. I found three that would actually have significant user bases. It might be used everywhere, just no one is using the result.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

devwastaken7y ago

There are no equivalents to electron. You either use a browser, or you get stuck in someone else's lacking UI, like qt. Electron just works, and that's why it's everywhere.

IloveHN847y ago

Qt actually performs better than Electron and works everywhere and

d0m7y ago

What you want is cross-platform:

  - Web (IE, Safari, Firefox, Chrome, and older versions of those browsers)
  - Web responsive (When you access it from small screens or access the web from your phone's browser)
  - Android (old devices to recent ones)
  - iOS (old devices to recent ones)
  - And, eventually, get to a desktop app, ideally on windows, mac and linux.

Say you're the tech lead and you need to make a decision about the stack to support all these platforms, and you're a team of 2-3 devs, yourself included. What stack do you pick?

1 more reply

langitbiru7y ago

Seconded this. The downside is you have to use C++ to beat Javascript performance. You can use Python of course but it is kinda slow.

1 more reply

throwaway666667y ago

Perhaps windows is better? What about linux? :p But I see why people are disliking the native ui situation on desktop.

devwastaken7y ago

Native UI is nice for system dialogs and programs associated with the system in some manner. I wouldn't want a harddrive formatting software to be using some transitioney css+js.

But I would want my media player, or chat application, or something that's meant to be a media-based experience to be well presented.

paulie_a7y ago

I took a look at a large list of apps that uses electron. I found three that would actually have significant user bases. It might be used everywhere, just no one is using the result.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse