You've answered your own question as to why people write then.
> What value does electron add to the user?
It adds a lot of value to Linux and to a lesser extent Mac users: before a electron a lot of apps didn't have a version for these platform at all.
What value does _this_ add over a web app?
I've been an exclusive Linux user since college so I'm aware of the disadvantages of app/service unavailability (I remember the dark days of running Netflix in a windows VM that I barely had enough RAM to run...).
But what's the advantage of using the Slack app over a browser tab? This is a sincere question, since enough people reference the benefit of faux-native wrapped webapps that I assume there's some value.
I seem to be the only one in my company who doesn't use Slack's app, and I'm always shocked when I see a colleague's computer freeze and have them say "ugh it's almost definitely the Slack app". I work in autonomous vehicle engineering, so these are _monster_ machines I'm talking about, capable of running the entire car's stack locally. The only advantage I can think of are desktop notifications, but 1) I'm pretty sure browsers support those and 2) is that really worth using an app that's amateurish enough that it freezes your computer regularly?
I prefer web versions of those apps on Linux than electron. Sorry, I want to run just one browser and it is not Chrome based one.
And for sure Electron apps don't allow that ease of cross platform development as one thinks, I would argue that it is on the same level as a native app with good abstraction library (see Telegram client source on github).
It is more that they don't want to hire desktop developers (or just ones that want to learn something else than JS).
The current state is, you either use something that looks like Windows 95 in all platforms, or web app.
What the web made possible is to anyone to create a decent custom UI with little effort. I still remember how messed up was to create a custom component for Java Swing, which I believe is still one of the easiest to do. How would you do that for QT? GTK? WxWidgets? etc
Actually even WinForms supports them, even though too many are happily doing fixed canvas positioning without using them.
However, I think the Telegram Desktop client is not Electron either, it is just regular C++ compiled on different systems.
So a cross-platform is quite easy, Electron one would need to be tested for different webviews on each system.
Is it crazy bloated and resource hungry for what it does? Undeniably! Does it matter? Not for me.
Electron resource use can be painful for apps that are running constantly, like Discord, VSCode and Slack. For utilities like Etcher, who cares.
https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/189091/220387 https://eklitzke.org/the-cult-of-dd
I do wish they had a command-line version that just ran node without Chromium, but there is a use-case to have a simple foolproof application like this; these days there are a lot of people who need to image drives like this and would be best not to mess with dd on their first time.
And dd doesn't exist for Windows so you've got to use some tool or another like this.
It might be because it is slower and doesn't overheat my usb sticks, I don't know, but if nothing else works you can try etcher.
(Not sure how I found out, can have been something I read or a recommendation by a colleague 3 a 7 years ago or something.)
My 6 year old MacBook runs slack, Xcode, android studio, safari, chrome, messages, vs code, vim, iterm2, preview, battle.net and hearthstone all the time without issue, really.
I think for the average user, they'd rather have more features across platforms more quickly than a smaller resident memory footprint and install size.
The point is that its effectively a web app.
> What value does electron add to the user?
They have a desktop app faster than if it was being built natively.
If you just package an existing website into an Electron app that is a waste of time and user resources. Electron is intended to combine a web-based presentation/UI layer with a Node.js layer that supports access to native resources, unlimited storage, persistence outside the browser, etc. If you are not making meaningful use of these capabilities a PWA would be sufficient.
Overall, I do prefer native apps, although there are examples out there such as VS Code that have achieved UI excellence without it. Although, I really only like that on macOS... on Windows I prefer the older Windows Forms style rather than the new Modern UI, and on Linux there is a bit of style mismash between Qt and GTK apps already.
Exactly, one can look at Telegram app, it is clean, polished and open source client written as a native app that works across many platforms (and one of few that has Linux client).
These two viewpoints cannot be reconciled.
Every month when this Electron discussion comes up there are so many who dismiss the egregious resource usage outright on the basis that it's trivial for modern computers. I'm one of those people who use Thinkpads in 2021 for my personal computing and have no problems with it. I will never buy a Mac, and I don't want to unnecessarily spend hundreds of dollars on a modern system when refurbished ones from a decade ago work so well. I avoid Electron apps on the basis that they flatten my battery quickly. I switched from using vscode to vim on my x200 and my battery life tripled, I'm not even exaggerating here either.
The environmental issue doesn't make sense IMO, but increasing hardware requirements does have real impact on accessibility.
Sure, your ceiling lights use less energy than your fridge. That's not a justification for everyone to completely ignore turning them off when not needed.
Probably true.
> affects the global climate in a negative way
If electricity consumption of all computers in the world doubled because of Electron apps, the total annual electricity consumption would increase by 0.01%. So probably false.
Problem is: how to test that? Even with the most straightforward tests, there are cheaters. Appliances have a special "eco" mode to meet the specs that most people won't use because it barely does the job. And for cars, well, VW have shown us how far companies are ready to go.
I am not sure what the point is of Electron: a shitty-resource hungry app that literally is a wrapped web-app. Instead of writing platform specific apps that leverage the power and capabilities of those platforms, we get a jack of all trades and master of none. Electron is a business decision, not an enlightened technical one.
What value does electron add to the user? I would argue none. That Slack can’t find the resources to write actual Swift for a Mac App is just amazing to me. Instead we are essentially interacting with a lowest-common-denominator web app. Is a chat app that hard to write natively? We’d get better performance, a smaller footprint, and a more polished, platform-specific product.