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Comment by pron | Hacker News Reader

I recently had to write a desktop GUI app, and chose Electron[1] because I figured that for once I'd try something new and hip with lots of OSS libraries because it wasn't too critical and I needed to pass it on to someone else and figured there are lots of frontend web devs around. Well, it's kinda OK, but man, that thing is held together with spit and baling wire, and you feel like it's all going to come down with the slightest breeze. The previous GUI app I'd built was in Java/Swing, and while I wouldn't call the experience particularly pleasant, at least it felt solid.

[1]: + TypeScript + Polymer

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What I mostly hate in webdev is exactly that, helding together with spit and baling wire, a pile of HTML tags meant for document publishing, CSS and JavaScript, while pretending the browser is a proper application VM.

Than switching browsers, including the same one but a different version, and start implementing workarounds. Multiplying this experience for each browser/version/OS required by the customer.

It's at least better than it once was, heck everything is better with modern Javascript etc., transpiling from TypeScript, tooling or whatever. But yeah, the issues with the underpinnings is in my opinion still funny enough exactly as readily apparent as ever.

The only thing that pleasantly surprised me while working on that project was Typescript and its IDE support (vscode). Java is still easier overall, but given what they have to integrate with (untyped libraries and legacy code, separate type declaration files) it's pretty damn impressive.

And it's not just web. I also used Julia in that project, and while the language itself is really awesome for numerics (especially as I had to migrate a lot of existing Matlab code, which is a pleasure with Julia), good luck trying to package a standalone app (especially if you're using native libraries). Oh, and the startup time? It's funny how some people complain about the JVM in that regard.

Every once in a while I try to pull my head out of the JVM world to try other stuff, see what else is out there, and people seem to be putting up with a lot of pain that's downright unacceptable with more established tech. I'm guessing people may be coming over from scripting languages where they're used to this stuff (and they may it jarring to work on the JVM). Even when things aren't that bad, like with NPM, they're miles behind the sturdiness of the Maven ecosystem (which is far from perfect in itself).

Julia's startup time is the biggest issue holding people to leave Python behind, as I understand from some talks I saw online.

Still I am hopeful that they will overcome them, as Julia is an interesting language for those of us that know Dylan.

Oh, don't get me wrong -- Julia is a great language and I hope I get the chance to use it again. But its biggest issue right now isn't even the startup time, but the fact that you can't even write a self-contained application with it (well, you can, sometimes, and with great care).

>Julia is an interesting language for those of us that know Dylan.

Interesting. I had tried out Dylan briefly (in one of my occasional spells of trying out multiple new / different languages), but long ago - and at that time I did not understand it much, maybe due to knowing less about some of the advanced programming language features and their benefits than I do now. Can you elaborate a bit on Dylan's features and the connection with Julia?

I worked for a (casino) gaming company that thought electron would be appropriate for a production slot machine. I expressed serious doubts that JS was the right language for a graphics appliance, but I didnt want to take control of the situation. A few months later, there was memory fragmentation and leaks that nobody could figure out. That company went belly up shortly thereafter.

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