Re:Show HN: I rewrote my Mac Electron app in Rust
by encom on Thursday May 29, 2025 @03:02AM
(#44123728)
All those parameters mentioned are exclusively for developers. End users don't care and will get a worse product when you choose Electron instead of doing it properly.
Re:Show HN: I rewrote my Mac Electron app in Rust
by Sammi on Thursday May 29, 2025 @04:45AM
(#44124169)
End users care that they get a product at all. Which they won't if it's too costly to make. There is a balance that is appropriate for each project. Or else we should all be writing machine code by hand.
Re:Show HN: I rewrote my Mac Electron app in Rust
by pkolaczk on Thursday May 29, 2025 @05:50AM
(#44124482)
Rust has been shown by Google to not be any less productive than other mainstream languages though.
Re:Show HN: I rewrote my Mac Electron app in Rust
by aaronblohowiak on Thursday May 29, 2025 @09:22AM
(#44125862)
Link? Iād love to learn more!
Re:Show HN: I rewrote my Mac Electron app in Rust
by Sammi on Thursday May 29, 2025 @12:52PM
(#44127860)
[citation_needed]
Re:Show HN: I rewrote my Mac Electron app in Rust
by brailsafe on Thursday May 29, 2025 @05:00AM
(#44124247)
> All those parameters mentioned are exclusively for developers. End users don't care and will get a worse product when you choose Electron instead of doing it properly.
A sensible take wouldn't pick one or the other as unilaterally better regarding the abstract context of what a good product is. The web as a platform is categorically amazing for building UIs, and if you chose continued to choose it as the frontend for a much more measurably performant search backend, that could be a fantastic product choice, as long as you do both parts right.
Re:Show HN: I rewrote my Mac Electron app in Rust
by Arch485 on Thursday May 29, 2025 @04:47AM
(#44124179)
This is something I think a lot of people miss about Rust - outside of slow compile times and personal preference, there is no reason not to choose Rust over JavaScript/TypeScript (unless of course you're working in the browser). It does everything JavaScript can do, but it does it faster and with more stability. At the end of the day, these features pay out huge dividends.
And this isn't Rust zealotry! I think this goes for any memory-safe AoT language that has a good ecosystem (e.g. Go or C#): why use JavaScript when other languages do it better?
Re:Show HN: I rewrote my Mac Electron app in Rust
by codr7 on Thursday May 29, 2025 @04:52AM
(#44124210)
Rust's type system gymnastics compared to most languages goes quite a bit beyond preference. I can't see the overlap at all with dynamic scripting languages, two completely different tools for completely different problems.
Re:Show HN: I rewrote my Mac Electron app in Rust
by mplanchard on Thursday May 29, 2025 @09:40AM
(#44126025)
TS has one of the more gymnastics-heavy type systems, IMO, and I think many if not most JS shops use TS.
Re:Show HN: I rewrote my Mac Electron app in Rust
by codr7 on Thursday May 29, 2025 @10:36AM
(#44126540)
TS is gradual though, Rust is all or nothing.
Re:Show HN: I rewrote my Mac Electron app in Rust
by HumanOstrich on Thursday May 29, 2025 @06:05AM
(#44124547)
> there is no reason not to choose Rust
Sounds like Rust zealotry to me, followed by a mild attempt to walk it back.
Re:Show HN: I rewrote my Mac Electron app in Rust
by Capricorn2481 on Thursday May 29, 2025 @04:54AM
(#44124219)
A world of difference between the borrow checker and a garbage collector.
It _would_ be bigger and eat more RAM and CPU. But that does not imply "shittier".
There are parameters like dev time, skills available in the market, familiarity, the JS ecosystem etc that sometimes outweigh the disadvantage of being bigger/slower.
You're pointing out the disadvantages in isolation which is not a balanced take.