[zamalek]

Apart from VSCode, I'm also not a fan of Electron - but I do understand why people use it.

> When GTK and Qt both provide js api capabilities, what else is there to gain?

It's the HTML5. How would you write an xplat editor with GTK or QT? The obvious answer is to use Scintilla and after some Googling surrounding getting that right, you're successful! Now you want to start innovating the editor, with both the speed and bravery that the VSCode team do. Now you have problems.

As much as I despise HTML5, it does provide a canvas that behaves consistently across platforms (so long as your browser is consistent, which Electron is). I can't see why you'd use it for a music app or so forth, but rendering a text editor is a surprisingly difficult task - it does present genuine benefit in this field.

You could use OpenGL or Vulkan, but then you'd spend your life writing the UI framework and wouldn't have the xplat layer that NodeJS offers.

[jrq]

So what electron developers appreciate is an easily accessible markup+canvas?

Text editors are a great example, they're very difficult to get right.

I wonder why more desktop GUI platforms aren't equipped with something similar to html5->native markup.

Thanks for your comment, that clears up the question of appeal for me a bit. I can see how much frustration is saved in a project like vscode by using electron.

[zamalek]

> html5->native markup.

I'm personally a bigger fan of XAML (done right, with MVVM) for that purpose, but it's unrealistic because XAML is dead. So ultimately I agree, there should be a browser of sorts for highly trusted apps. Electron is a runtime, it shouldn't be bundled with every app that uses it.

[pjmlp]

Maybe I should tell that to the guys that have paid my bills for the last 4 years.