[jeroenhd]

Electron is amazing for developers; less so for the end users.

You get faster iteration and more features at the cost of humongous system resource usage. Running several Electron applications, each with their own slightly-outdated Chrome engine, is terrible for battery life and available system resources, but you do get fully-featured applications in no time.

If your users run 32GiB of RAM and at least 8 cores, then Electron should probably be the obvious choice of platform. For most applications, though, I don't think this approach is necessary or even a good idea.

[sneak]

It can also download and execute arbitrary javascript from the web, outside of a normal browser sandbox, effectively turning every app into a potential vector for system takeover, because it is RCE by design.

[elxr]

Yup, as a developer, being able to build a UI once and have it work pretty much identically on Linux, Windows, and MacOS is a huge time saver.

But whenever I actually use an electron app; the startup times and half-baked keyboard support (I know this is the dev's fault, not electron's, but it is much more common on electron apps) always remind me that this isn't the best way to make desktop apps.

[thiht]

> less so for the end users

Speak for yourself. As a user I love Electron apps for all the features they bring out of the box to developers. The alternative to a full featured Electron app is not a full featured native app, it’s no heavy client at all, because almost all the native frameworks suck in more ways than Electron does.

Also I don’t give a crap that my applications all look the same as long as they make sense. And most of the criticism of « buttons that don’t look like buttons » seem just like hidden nostalgia to me, I’ve never seen a button and wondered if it was a button. There are tons of discoverability issues in modern design, but the look of buttons is just not a problem.

[movedx]

You've just described your self as a developer, not an end user. End users are Sharon in HR or Bob in the warehouse.

The comment you replied to is referring to end users who are generally not-technical people and just want to get work done.

Your comment, instead, talks about the developer friendly features of Electron.

[slewis]

They’re arguing: better for developers is better for users. Developers get to spend more time on building features and less on the accidental complexity that comes with supporting all of the competing platforms and frameworks.