Given that Visual Studio Code is also built on Electron but poses none of the resource issues (in spite of being a much more complex application - ide v/s chat client), makes me think the problem lies with the application and not the platform
The reality is that Code takes multiple seconds to launch on my machine (a MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM), while GVim or Sublime or any native editor is subsecond. Granted, it does perform well enough once it's up and running. But startup time is probably an order of magnitude worse, and ongoing resource consumption even far less competitive.
Code shows that it's possible for a good Electron app to be better than a bad Electron app. But that's not a proof statement that Electron is in the same league is native.
There's some truth to this, but I also prefer it to (my previous workhorse) Sublime. Which is a 100% native app, unlike Atom.
> The reality is that Code takes multiple seconds to launch on my machine (a MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM)
Something is wrong there, it really shouldn't. 1 second, maybe, if you're loading a large complex folder or something but unless you've got a crap ton of extensions I've never seen it be that slow.