I used to do programming assignments on an Eee PC with 2GB of RAM, running Xubuntu and using Emacs as my editor. While modern netbooks generally have 4GB, and cheap laptops 8GB, it's not guaranteed that a student will be using a modern computer.
Dev environments that waste RAM keep people from learning how to program, and disproportionately affect anyone using cheap hand-me-down hardware.
I'm not a fan of electron, heck, is go as far as to say I don't like it, but those statements are just unfair.
I run a bunch of electron apps on Linux every single day of the week for years now and I honestly can't say any of them have ever crashed.
Yes they may take up a bunch of RAM, but how many software engineers have less than about 16GB, and what's that RAM there for, if not too run my tools?
I can't say I've ever gotten over a few gigabytes of usage in a normal work day (not running any VMs for example). I don't use Chrome nor am I a tab-hoarder.
Whether I like electron itself or not, the told built in it seems to get the job I need done just fine. Who cares if it takes 3-4 second to open, once per day?