[SquareWheel]

>Electron is only the best way to do something when someone knows only javascript and web dev but doesn't want to learn a new language.

Why is there always someone ready to jump in with this elitist nonsense? There's plenty of reasons to use a web stack even if you know other languages. It's inherently crossplatform, has an extensive library, and is extremely quick to iterate on.

Slack and Discord building in Electron means they only need to maintain one codebase across web, desktop, and mobile. They don't need separate teams for building in Java, Swift, and C#. They only need to write a new feature once. Crazy, right?

This "web programmers are dumb" attitude is nothing but elitist rhetoric. Cut it out.

[sixstringtheory]

I keep seeing this "extremely quick to iterate on" point being brought up in defense of Electron. Slack released threads 2 years ago and we still can't post snippets, images, or use many slash commands inside them. Their last genuinely new features in the last year were synced DM drafts and the little lock badge on workspaces you're signed out of. Where's the iteration?

Meanwhile, almost daily I hit so many issues with the macOS application that I have to walk away from my computer in frustration. It makes my working life miserable due to its poor performance and bugs, and it encourages awful organizational and communication habits.

[SquareWheel]

It's a bit anecdotal, but I imagine Slack is being careful because they are targeting businesses. Discord is a similar platform which iterates new features extremely quickly.

[asdff]

If that is the case, Slack should want to maximize features, even to the point of excess redundancy, so users can tailor their business product to the specific needs of their business. People don't work productively being boxed into one way of doing something, people work best if they are free to find their own ideal way of doing that thing or are able to tailor the product to the unique tasks they work on.

Think of all the different code editors developers use. Some are straightforward, some have a steep learning curve, yet the good ones are good because users can customize them toward their own personal preferences.

[derefr]

> There's plenty of reasons to use a web stack even if you know other languages. It's inherently crossplatform, has an extensive library, and is extremely quick to iterate on.

The GP's point was that, in the year 2019, none of these features are unique to the web.

• For "frameworks", there's Silverlight, Adobe Air, Haxe, and—strangely enough—Flash itself, which still works just fine if your goal is to ship a standalone "projector" app rather than something that runs in a browser.

• Or you can use a cross-platform scripting language (e.g. Python) with a cross-platform GUI toolkit (e.g. QT, WxWidgets.)

• Or you can use a not-cross-platform language (e.g. C#) but just use the (pretty large) subset of that language that is compatible with a third-party cross-platform runtime (e.g. Mono). Before you laugh, this is exactly how many companies code games to be cross-platform: they just write them for Win32 but constantly test them under Wine to ensure they aren't breaking Wine compatibility. Then they ship one native version and two virtualization-layer-wrapped versions.

• Or—horror of horrors—you can just use Java, and use the various Java-to-native-X compilers to target mobile platforms like iOS. (It worked well enough for Minecraft!)

[Pfhreak]

> none of these features are unique to the web.

The web has all of them, I have yet to find another platform/language that meets all the same criteria.

Combine all of the above with a rich toolchain and extreme dev tools portability -- I can be up and running on basically any machine in minutes. As well as ease of deployment (at least for hobby projects).

All of those other platforms are, for me, less in one of the axes I care about. I've developed extensively in Python, C#, and Java for both personal and professional projects and while I like developing in them for many, many reasons, when I need to start a new project I nearly always find myself reaching for Javascript as the starting point.

[SquareWheel]

>For "frameworks", there's Silverlight, Adobe Air, Haxe, and—strangely enough—Flash itself...

With the exception of Haxe (and maybe Air), these are all dead or dying technologies.

Options 2 (Python/QT) works great, but is certainly more development hours and still requires platform-specific code.

>It worked well enough for Minecraft!

Minecraft was rewritten in C++ for mobile. It doesn't use Java.

[tyteen4a03]

Minecraft (Bedrock, the engine used by Android, iOS and modern console versions) is written in C++ with custom renderers for different platforms it target. They don't compile their Java code to native code.

[saagarjha]

> Slack and Discord building in Electron means they only need to maintain one codebase across web, desktop, and mobile. They don't need separate teams for building in Java, Swift, and C#.

Did you know that Slack has native iOS and Android apps, as well as a cross-platform C++ "LibSlack" run by another separate team?

[SquareWheel]

I didn't. Are you saying they're not simple containers?

[saagarjha]

Not quite sure what you mean by "simple containers", but yes, they're native apps written in Objective-C and Java IIRC. And here's some more information on LibSlack: https://slack.engineering/libslack-the-c-library-at-the-foun...

[nv-vn]

Qt is also cross-platform, easy to use, and has a giant library to work with. You can use it with virtually any language you want. Plus it runs on mobile.

[wesammikhail]

and lets not forget, it looks like this:

https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtwidgets-mainwindows-application-exa...

You didn´t really counter the parent´s post with an argument. You just pretended to do so by suggesting an alternative that is incompatible with the requirements he had in mind because you think you know better...

[nv-vn]

Qt is really trivial to style. That's like showing a blank HTML page without any CSS and discounting HTML because of that default appearance.

[ahartmetz]

"It looks like this"

That just shows how little you know. One style in one configuration looks like that.

[pjmlp]

Yep, when all that one has is programmer art.

Doing web apps without CSS skills won't look much better.

[saagarjha]

> and lets not forget, it looks like this

What are you trying to show here?

[sime2009]

> You can use it with virtually any language you want.

huh!? When did this happen?

Spoiler Alert: It didn't.

[dtech]

Qt is not suitable for building web pages/apps.

[bdcravens]

> This "web programmers are dumb" attitude is nothing but elitist rhetoric.

I don't think that's the attitude. The attitude is that they are lazy/stubborn, not dumb. I personally believe most developers are smart enough to keep learning. Whether or not they are willing to put in the work is the question.

[Gibbon1]

> Why is there always someone ready to jump in with this elitist nonsense?

Because it's absolutely true. You'll know it once you watch a web dev try and work on desktop app.

[SquareWheel]

People working outside of their comfort zones generally don't know all the answers. That goes both ways. I recently watched a desktop developer reach for a Java servlet because they didn't know Javascript.

[Gibbon1]

I think thee is also definitely a problem where if you don't use the right/current fad/popular stack you'll have a lot of trouble hiring people to work on your stuff.

Especially true since front and back end web stuff is so huge and high paying. problem comes when those stacks are a very poor fit for the problem at hand. But sure you could get an old neck beard to write that in C++ instead of java/Ruby or Node.js. Great you only need a single core embedded processor and it doen't even get hot! And yeah then who's going to maintain it?

[happy_man]

"They only need to write a new feature once. Crazy, right?"

Yeah!, why you old farts want me to learn about the stack, the heap and all of that OS architecture crap?, I don't need or want that #$@&*, I barely can keep up with all the JavaScript frameworks/libraries/toolkits that came out last week!

[JustSomeNobody]

Wait a minute. I have seen the argument for Electron because devs "get" to use one language they already know. So, let's just take a step back and reset...