It's not so much the greatness of JS that attracts people, but having access to the DOM and browser based rendering. HTML/CSS is the very best possible declarative syntax for building interfaces ever devised really. The alternatives are way less flexible and cross platform.
HTML and CSS are actually a pretty terrible syntax for building interfaces, which is unsurprising given HTML is a document format, and CSS is designed to style documents. If they were really the best possible syntax, you wouldn't have so many popular frameworks.
Rather, HTML/CSS/JS is what you're stuck with if you're treating the web as your platform, which is tempting when your code is really just a front-end for a remotely hosted system anyway.
Electron is the result of people trained in web development turning their hands to desktop development, but not wanting to learn something completely new.
>Electron is the result of people trained in web development turning their hands to desktop development, but not wanting to learn something completely new.
"Learning something new" has a massive cost when you apply that to an entire engineering team. A tool that can leverage existing resources to make people proficient in a new area simply through new technology would be a huge value added IMO.
My argument basically comes down to the alternatives. Have you tried them? Native iOS development was a nightmare without deep mobile expertise until React Native and the like came about. Windows/Linux/Mac cross-platform apps were in the same place before Electron. IT's far from perfect, but ask anyone today what they'd prefer to build an interface with and it's most like HTML/CSS. Especially for highly graphic intensive, responsive layouts, there's almost no competition really.
> Native iOS development was a nightmare without deep mobile expertise until React Native and the like came about.
Doing things well requires expertise.
> Windows/Linux/Mac cross-platform apps were in the same place before Electron.
Seriously?! Qt predates Electron and is a far superior solution. Of course, if you only know web development, your existing knowledge doesn't translate over easily, but the reverse is equally true.
> but ask anyone today what they'd prefer to build an interface with and it's most like HTML/CSS
Only if they are already experienced in web development. Otherwise, Qt Quick is much better, taking the positives from CSS, without the downsides of using a document format to layout a UI.
> Especially for highly graphic intensive, responsive layouts, there's almost no competition really.
Seriously, Qt Quick is far better. Though on the desktop, you'd be better off not building a "highly graphic intensive, responsive layout" and instead adhering to the established norms.
Well, I think it would be pretty easy to take the best ideas from HTML/CSS and make something MUCH MUCH better that would be completely incompatible with these- See for instance subform (https://medium.com/subform) The problem with this of course is that these alternative systems aren't widely supported, but at some point I expect one of the AFGAMs to publish and push one of these alternate layout systems and attempt to get higher adoption.