[factorialboy]

Electron is hated on Hacker News. I personally critique it quite a bit.

But here are a list of things that Electron does better than any other desktop GUI framework.

1. Skills portability. Just use HTML and CSS to build your layouts. Hundreds nee thousands of web developers become instantly desktop developers, at least when it comes to UI development

2. Non natively cross platform. Your app looks exactly as you designed it across all major platforms. Down to the last branding design element. Without any additional effort.

3. Vast CSS, Node and JavaScript library ecosystem.

4. Flexibility in UI. I have yet to see a traditional UI library have the flexibility of CSS + markup.

5. Good enough native integrations. Users don't lack any of the major native integrations.

I am sure there are downsides of Electron. But unless a pure native library challenges some of the pros of electron, it will continue to grow in popularity.

[mekster]

And what are the downsides to Electron apps? All I hear is file size is bloated and slow but slowness is likely to be the fault of the developers who use frameworks blindly without knowing what they're doing and can be improved.

You can see some web sites can be snappy...