> Can you imagine using an actual productivity application in the browser?

I'm not sure what type of applications you're referring to, but if you're including word processing in that, then I can't imagine not using either Google Docs, or whatever might one day come along and be a reasonable alternative. If I'm using a word processor, it's because I want someone else to be able to read and, quite often, contribute to what I'm creating. That is far, far less painful using Google Docs than Pages or whatever the alternative might be.

I mean things like: Photoshop, Blender, video editing software, MuseScore, Ableton, etc. And of course, text editors / IDEs :P

> If I'm using a word processor, it's because I want someone else to be able to read and, quite often, contribute to what I'm creating.

Well, the vast majority of things I write, I write by myself. When I have to collaborate I (begrudgingly :)) use Overleaf / Google Docs.

Photopea is a browser based photoshop; it is very good. VS Code is an electron based IDE, also very good (and there are various web variants as well). There was some kind of high quality online video editor my old landlord (who has a small video production company) used to edit 4k video with his macbook air. I don't know about audio, though I suspect there are more than a few options - yet probably less than for everything else, I'm not sure how good those physical device interfaces are now.

Aa for 3D stuff; it looks like solid works have some kind of cloud platform. How much of the workstation load is there I don't know.

I for one would not call VS Code an IDE. Too many features missing imho...

such as? it has step-through debugging, automatic code building + running, source control integration. What else?

I'm guessing elisp...

Those are not productivity applications, they are all tailored to specific purposes. The only one that I can say might be considered a productivity application is text editors/IDEs, but even then it's tenuous. No one is going to call Blender or Ableton a productivity application

Isn't VS Code the most popular IDE currently?

Sure, as a local app that happens to use Electron instead of Qt. How is that relevant?

Most likely. It's not the best IDE but it is likely the best free one. Out of the box VS Code is pretty much good to go while others are either paid or take a lot of config.

I have attempted to use vim but I just can't be bothered working out how to turn it in to VS code. If I have to decide between multiple ways to install plugins with their own tradeoffs, its already too much work when vs code just works.

Emacs is also free :-)

No. At least according to this: https://pypl.github.io/IDE.html

1. Visual Studio

2. Eclipse

3. VS Code

It's a code editor, not an IDE. ;)

With current state of the plugins, this distinction no longer makes any sense.

I was editing a Word Document in MS Word just this afternoon. It was very unresponsive after sentence selection.

I decided to convert it to ePub, and edit it in the Calibre ePub Editor.

Fast again. Responsive.

I will convert it back to .DOC when I finish.

You can collaborate on office docs in Office365, Teams and Sharepoint. Also, Google will convert Word. Quite a few people and organizations still prefer the richer feature set and combined suite in Office, or even iWork. Excel is still king of the spreadsheet and doesn't look to be going anywhere.

Electron apps definitely have performance issues and I do not defend them. I just also want to make sure we're recognizing that apps like MS Teams are doing a lot more than MSN Messenger did back then. Whether you use/need those features or not, the apps are much more capable. Our computers have gotten an order of magnitude faster for sure, but the workloads they're tackling have not stayed flat.

> I just also want to make sure we're recognizing that apps like MS Teams are doing a lot more than MSN Messenger did back then.

Can you elaborate? MSN Messenger did text chat, voice chat, video chat. I don't see what more features MS teams has that explain the order-of-magnitude increase in footprint.

It's more than one OOM, closer to two. From what I remember, MSMSGS used few dozen MB at most, since typical machines of the time had between 64 and 256MB of RAM. Meanwhile, I've seen Teams go over 4GB simply being idle, and others have reported much worse.

Teams does have quite a few extra features: multiplatform, easy meeting recording, media embedded in text chat (quite useful for my current work), shared editing of Word or Excel documents within calls, sharing of Powerpoint presentation controls within calls, per-channel wiki (a bit anemic, but it's there), pretty extensive Sharepoint integration, crazy extensibility...

The downside is of course that you pay for all of that even if you don't use it.

>Teams does have quite a few extra features: multiplatform, easy meeting recording, media embedded in text chat (quite useful for my current work), shared

So like Kopete in 2005?

Pay, how? I thought Teams came for free with every Office365 license? Do you mean paying in CPU cycles?

More in terms of memory usage. Both are system resources, so yes.

> Can you imagine using an actual productivity application in the browser?

I can't, yet many people do.

I am curious if people would generally consider an editor / IDE a productivity app. If so, VS Code's popularity seems to be more than "many people do", in certain segments, it's the leading development environment [1].

And oddly, if we consider it an IDE (I would, if the relevant extensions are installed for whatever you are doing), it seems to use less resources than most of the others I use on a regular basis, while seeming more performant. It's really an odd app.

[1] https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#technology-_-...

Personally I don't view browser based and Electron apps as equivalent. I don't really use any Electron apps, but to me they aren't as annoying as software which run within my browser window.

Sometimes I just close my browser, because to many tabs have built up. I also want a Dock icon, PWAs and Electron apps will provide that and allow normal cmd+tab to work.

PWAs are worse than Electron apps, because they die when you exit your browser. Google Chat is the worst, they had a standalone app, but now it's a PWA. So I either have to have Chrome running (a browser I don't actually use) or a window or tab open with the web-version.

Electron apps are generally fine, from my perspective, they use more RAM and don't feel completely native, but in lack of better options they're completely fine.

Yes, I can get behind this argument, it's significantly different from the standard opinion that Electron apps are trash quality in terms of performance. VS Code is generally either seen as a counter to that argument, or as the exception that proves the rule; nevertheless I am frequently left unsatisfied with such arguments. My core point is: the norm seems to be lazily written native apps, to the point that well written Electron apps can compete, assuming that the app is non-trivial. Clearly having an Electron app for a task list is unlikely to be a good idea, but as a core productivity tool that is open for months at a time, it's fine.

Coincidentally, I stumbled upon StackBlitz [1] a long time ago, and was generally very impressed with it. It is essentially a very slick, online version of VS Code optimized for rapid prototyping, or small team projects. I could easily see people working with it as a main IDE. The argument then would be whether your browser of choice provides a nice enough environment for it to rival your OS when it comes to pinning tabs, navigating between them, etc. I would agree that it's unlikely to be an awesome experience, but with some work, it could be good enough. I mean, I guess a large percentage of people use Gmail via the web interface, and what is email if not the quintessential productivity app.

[1] https://stackblitz.com/

Under the hood, Electron is powered by the Chromium rendering engine and NodeJS. So why do you view browser based and electron apps as different? Because you cant see the browser menu bar?

Because they run as separate processes. I frequently just close all my browser windows, which would exit any browser based apps. Electron app are their own thing, and lives outside my browser window. Electron apps also have their own dock icon and exist independently when I tab through my open applications.

That's also why I strongly dislike PWAs, they DO NOT exist independently of my browser. They are very much tied to the browser (well Chrome), which seem illogical, given that they have their own icons/launch thingy and pretend to exist as their own process.

I get that Electron and browser based apps work more or less the same, but I interact with the two types applications in a very different way. That's what I care about, the interaction, the underlying technology is irrelevant.

Because you're likely editing local files with an Electron powered editor as opposed to files on some other server.

I work at Google and I do all my work in chrome, email, chat, IDE, ssh, docs/slides/sheets, etc. I used to use iterm and vim but during wfh I converged all my work into the browser and it's been pretty convenient accessing everything from the same interface.

I know Google is not like most places and that a lot of web apps suck, but when the web apps work well, it's pretty nice, at least for my workflow