[nwienert]

Again you just hand waved “native”. The UI definition here is in Lua, it then calls a backend that renders to the system, not sure if that part is C or not.

But... this setup may be a lot simpler, but no different from Electron in that they are both scripting languages that eventually use C to render.

Also, you can’t just cherry pick an example. It’s very possible to write pretty fast interfaces using v8. Certainly going straight html/css is slow, but that’s not necessary and VSCode is a great counter example (not crazy fast, but faster than many “native” apps).

I think the HN crowd has invested so much emotional energy into hating electron they literally can’t think straight about it, including just admitting that this is no more native than any electron app.

In fact, if you take native to mean some combination of “using OS APIs” and “accessibility support and behavior similar to the OS”, then electron wins hands down because of the latter part: font rendering, text selection, input controls, copy and paste, everything mostly just works like native. It’s the Lua app that I’d say is far less native. It’s just a bit faster.