Show HN: Vuido builds desktop apps using Vue.js without Electron

Another benefit of web apps, is that with some effort it can run everywhere, where as an app container like electron needs to have separate builds for each platform.

> my laptop has 1TB HDD + 256GB SSD, and 24GB of RAM. I can definitely spare 50MB of disk space and 200MB of RAM.

How much cache does your laptop have? All this RAM usage completely thrashes any caches anywhere. Page caches, disk cache, etc.

Slack alone takes a heavy toll on my laptop. Combine it with any heavy website on FF (which has gone insane on mac since Quantum) and the laptop is ready for take-off.

Not to mention that we are slowly putting a ±$1k price tag on "comfortable computing". People who spend <$300 on a computer are absolutely screwed, even though they have orders of magnitude more power than a device which took humanity to the moon (to use a hackneyed comparison).

I find using developer computers as a measuring stick a painfully elitist perspective. In an ideal world, software developers would be banned from spending more than $250 on hardware. Ever. [for their current workstation]. That would do more to change the face of software than any processor improvement ever did.

> Many times it's either an Electron app or no app at all, as many companies wouldn't bother supporting Linux if Electron didn't make it so cheap and easy.

I agree with this. However, focusing on first order consequences can be deceptive. Perhaps it is precisely the existence of Electron that suffocates any budding competition for more performant but slightly more involved alternatives?

Besides, without Electron, we'd have more native Windows apps, and running Win32 under Wine on Linux is still often better than Electron.

Yeah, once. For a game, or a movie. But not 100 times for utilities I am actively using. Imagine, any given application can be run together with dozens, hundreds of others. Just like any given website is rarely the only website that's open.

Looking towards resources you can waste is the wrong approach. Look for waste you can do without, period.

The difference in battery life between Chrome + Slack + Atom at work, and Safari + Sublime at home is huge. Quitting Slack often gives me an hour more battery.

Also I don't know any no technical friend using more than 4GB on their computers.

What happens when every developer decides user resources are practically infinite, so every application uses as much of everything it wants to all the time?

What does the current landscape of javascript on the web look like? Not exactly a model of efficiency and speed, for more or less that reason.

Either way these solutions are all rubbish.

Also with memory usuage which was mentioned elsewhere in this discusssion.

The idea is maybe it could be done better. On the other hand maybe Electron has made great strides over last year or so, it would depend on how much progress has been made.

Cross platform code is great but in the end doing that while getting something out the door end to end multiplatform as fast as possible is key, while at the same time not having performance significantly worse than it would normally be for the same code in an off the shelf browser.

FTA: "Just like Proton Native, Vuido is based on libui, which is currently an alpha version, but I think that it looks very promising."

This causes me to favor other lowest common denominator idioms as well, like python 2.7 over 3, unconfigured vim, bash on windows, etc. When this isn’t possible, I favor technologies that allow me to synchronize configurations across platforms quickly and easily.

JavaScript is barely acceptable on the web, but again it’s a necessary evil as you can’t easily use anything else.

But why use an inadequate tool on the desktop? The perceived time you save upfront would backfire later on.

Now I’m not saying go and spend a year learning another language just to make a side project (by all means use JS or whatever you’re familiar with), but if you’re making a production-grade app, PLEASE use the right tool for the job and it ain’t JS.

I, for one, am sick of JS & Electron contaminating apps I use daily like Spotify, Slack, Signal, Telegram, etc. I wouldn’t mind it too much if this was a niche thing and there were alternatives, but there aren’t. JS on the desktop should die.

an approach that assesses the truth of meaning of theories or beliefs in terms of the success of their practical application

You can have your ideal language, we'll just keep building great stuff in a good enough language.