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by vijaybritto 2507 days ago
The massive success of Electron apps shows that users don't really care about native controls. Even though electron is terrible in resource usage it enables unmatched development speed for teams. If libui or other libraries can give this experience then most teams won't hesitate using it!
3 comments

I liken Electron to McDonalds. Gets the job done in a pinch but is awful in every single way. (edit: spelling)
If my app is only as successful as McDonalds, I'll take it.
Electron is successful like McDonalds. McDonalds's customers, not so much?
Exactly!
What success?

It helps when sometimes there isn't any options to start with.

I use Slack as job requirement, outside work I keep my PC Electron free.

Same applies to VSCode, only because of TypeScript and Rust, otherwise it wouldn't be on my computer.

Success as in being the UI for a multi billion dollar company like Slack. It's undeniably terrible but what other options do we have? I don't think any tech is gonna withhold against the web! I'm actually willing to switch to any platform that can offer amazing development experience at the same time being super performant.
The Web means using the browser that I already have installed.
Depends a little on what you mean by “native controls”. The web platform doesn’t provide all of the controls the underlying OS provides (e.g. a list view), but it does provide some of the most important and common ones. A text box, for example, has the native look-and-feel by default—and feel is the most important part of that, for things like caret behaviour, keyboard shortcuts and touch behaviour; and you can customise its look easily. It’s not the native implementation, but what the browser implements matches the native implementation.