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by seabrookmx 26 days ago
I don't understand why people care about Electron? Evaluate the quality of the software based on its own merits IMO. VS Code, Slack, Postman, Obsidian.. I use this software every day and my only complaint is Slack's RAM usage (which honestly has no negative effect on my machine, but just seems silly for a messaging app).

Claude is a buggy mess because it's slop, not because it's electron. Heck, it runs a full Linux VM under the covers without asking.. it's insane.
2 comments
JumpCrisscross 26 days ago
> don't understand why people care about Electron?

Most Electron apps are crap because they transparently communicate the developer prioritizing their own efficiency over the trade-offs to UX choosing a cross-platform platform entails.

In most cases, I don’t care that an app looks crappy as long as it works. For Anthropic, however, the irony undermines its argument that Claude is ready to replicate developers.

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rumori 25 days ago
Native apps suck too. i cannot list 10 native mac apps that are truly great, including Apple’s own. To me these days native on desktop means web, not Appkit. I can resize the whole interface with a common shortcut, I can select text trivially, native Mac apps constantly fail to do both. Developing native apps for the Mac is a mess, with immature SwiftUI, the absolute garbage liquid glass is on the desktop, the outdated Appkit framework and iOS based Mac Catalyst. Electron is a sane choice and good enough for Figma, Slack, Notion, leading apps in their respective categories.
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seabrookmx 25 days ago
It's not any better on the other OS' either. MS hasn't had a sane native app strategy in a decade and the GTK/QT divide remains on Linux.
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trollbridge 25 days ago
Electron apps (or web based apps) tend to chew up RAM and otherwise be slow, which is a problem these days when computers now come with 8GB of RAM.
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