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Comment by stephenr | Hacker News Reader

Would you prefer no one said anything, and the OP wasn't aware that their technical choices will affect whether potential customers use their app?

This isn't like "I don't like .Net so I'm not going to use any web app or service that runs on the Microsoft stack". The technology choices they make affect how it runs on each individual user's computer, and that will affect some people's decision to use (or not) the app.

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It's not that you're wrong to point out the shortcomings of Electron, but it's boring and it leads to endlessly repetetive threads that derail what could have been interesting conversations.

Perhaps it's better to assume that people who are working with Electron understand its limitations and have made an informed decision to use it because it suits their requirements.

To be fair - I didn't go on a long rant about it, I didn't really say anything about it originally. I asked what it was (as they mentioned they'd be going cross platform), and as they were kind enough to answer, I assumed they'd appreciate a response.

The only reason I went further is because someone specifically asked.

I agree it can get repetitive, but I also think it's naive to assume the developers using it know all its limitations.

I might be a pessimist, but i believe it is way more likely that people who are working with Electron are doing it on powerful workstations, mostly worked with the web stack and want to reuse their knowledge and many of them have no idea (or forgot) about the performance differences between an Electron application and a native application on a mid-range (let alone low end) computer.

With that in mind, even if nothing will change for those who already have invested their time in Electron, this repetition might at least steer some who are at the edge towards better solutions than Electron.

I might be even more pessemistic than you. The people who want to use Electron are, as you point out, mostly web developers who want to try their hand at a desktop app. I don't think any number of "Electron sucks" warnings are going to cause those people to abandon JavaScript and learn Objective-C or Swift or C#.

Most people care about the features, there's a really small amount of people for which the tech stack matters. Negligible, I'd guess.

So no, you're not doing anyone any favours here, just spreading negativity.

Most people do not care about how something was made, but they do care if their computer feels sluggish, their hard disk fills up and - if they are using laptops - their battery drains fast.

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