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Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

Native apps are often written in web technologies via Electron. It all depends on what you need and what access you can get. Plus, someone has to maintain the browser and its packages, so there will always be need for systems developers.

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An Electron app is not considered a native app

Sure, but they compete with native apps is the point the parent was making. They download, install, update, configure, and use features like a native app.

But they often don't perform like native apps, both when it comes to size, speed, and look and feel.

Most users are not so discerning. Once Windows ships with a native JS engine (perhaps Chakra), will streaming Electron-based apps without traditional "installation" be possible?

Windows already ships with a JS engine - it's a supported language for UWPs. I don't think you can stream them, though.

Windows has supported "Electron" apps since Windows 95, when Active Desktop was introduced.

Thankfully it has been largely ignored until web devs decided to start using Electron.

Not on Hacker News perhaps, but certainly by the rest of the world.

Certainly not.

To the vast majority of users, anything in a browser is a web "site" and anything bundled with the OS or requiring an installer (including Electron apps) are "apps".

To the vast majority of users a virus is anything that's adversely affecting their system, should we use that definition too? The vast majority of people call the common cold the flu (around here anyway), should doctors change the definition of influenza to the layman one? All industries have their own terminology specialized terminology and they don't change it based on what naive end users think.

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