Re:Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)
by aidenn0 on Tuesday April 11, 2017 @12:09PM
(#14089444)
The "nonsense" part was that "nobody" was writing desktop apps for the past 5-10 years.
Re:Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)
by nilliams on Tuesday April 11, 2017 @01:25PM
(#14090288)
Well they were exaggerating but I think they had a point, til recently on my Desktop machines I only cared about having a web-browser, terminal (+ Steam at home).
Lately there are more UI-ish apps I value having everywhere including desktop (Spotify, Hipchat, Whatsapp, VSCode). I'd also love a decent cross-plat podcasts app.
I think it's clear there's now more demand for certain types of consumer-ish desktop apps (chat apps & music apps especially) than there was a few years ago.
> The underlying issue here is that Electron reduces the barrier to entry for cross-platform development. Precisely.
> The trade-off — and there is a trade-off — is that Electron applications are shite in comparison with proper native applications.
But native applications are shite in terms of portability.
> But let's be honest here – there is nothing preventing e.g. Spotify or Slack from building native clients for each platform they support
See the part where the original post said "it's massively expensive, both in terms of actual dev time per feature (easily 10x the cost), and also in finding specialist developers who know these dated technologies". The costs may not be "prohibitive", but they certainly would multiply effort and resources, and divide profit.