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Comment by 00deadbeef | Hacker News Reader

It looks nice but it being Electron and subscription-based means I won't buy it. I'm pretty happy with Quiver.

I get the sentiment against Electron, there are horribly bloated applications out there which are a direct consequence of how (badly) Electron was built and designed.

However, this particular application appears to work exactly as intended and uses all of 150MB of RAM and 0.1% CPU on my (admittedly quite beefy) laptop. Maybe, just maybe, this is actually a pretty well-built application? I understand if someone won't use this program because it doesn't scratch their particular itch. But, not using something solely because of the techniques used to build it, seems a bit elitist to me.

Windows 98 needed 16 MB RAM and 120-295 MB harddrive storage. Why would a note taking app need more memory than an entire OS?

Because browsers are their own OS pretty much, and shipping one per application is not ideal.

Because aesthetics do matter, and if you want something that looks nicer than Windows 98 and have the RAM to spare then why not?

I made a new default Mac application in Xcode just now and ran it. It settled in at 17.1 MB, according to Activity Monitor's Memory tab. It's not "a note taking app". It's every app. Welcome to 2019.

Can we stop this kind of non-constructive criticism? Nobody here would ever choose to voluntarily go back to Windows 98 or anything similar from that era.

Using this same logic we'd be demanding that Netflix run over a 56K modem. It's a completely not realistic.

I would very much like to see your cloud syncing solo-developed markdown note taking app with HTML rendering available for Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS that uses under 16 MB of RAM. Or maybe you could point me to something of the sort that existed in 1998.

I'm sure you've got a quick link to that so I'm looking forward to trying it out.

Your comment snapped me out of the RAM-obliviousness in which I usually live and work. I know memory is plentiful on modern PCs, but 150 MB of RAM for a note-taking app!?

Its a note taking app that renders HTML. Arguably, this is an ideal case for an electron app. 150 MB for a internet connected, syncing, HTML rendering note app doesn't seem unreasonable to me

Markdown generates extremely basic HTML. Browsers twenty years old render Markdown output satisfactorily. This sort of application is the ideal place to use a webview provided by the host operating system.

Anyone can be an armchair quarterback, but this solo developer has made seemingly a great product that people really like.

I don't think it matters very much what underlying frameworks are being used, especially to the end user.

If it's so easy to implement this natively on five platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android), please send us your link to your native cloud-syncing markdown note taking app, I'd really like to see it.

> I don't think it matters very much what underlying frameworks are being used, especially to the end user.

Every Electron text editing app I've used has noticeable input latency and hitching compared to native on my system.

> If it's so easy...

It's practically part of the human experience to have opinions about technology you haven't personally developed. The author can build their software however they want. I just won't use it.

If you have no plans to try this product I wonder why you claim it has performance issues or should have been architected in a different way, and why you're wasting all of our time by vocalising assumptions about an application based on its underlying technology.

I haven't been able to find any other five-platform markdown based note taking app with plugin support and cloud sync, so I'm still awaiting your link to a superior native alternative. It seems like Electron itself specifically enabled this application to exist.

If you can detect the input lag in Visual Studio Code I should commend your superior reflexes and genetic makeup.

> I wonder why you claim it has performance issues

It's true, I haven't tried it. Perhaps this solo dev has succeeded where large teams with more resources have failed.

> I'm still awaiting your link to a superior native alternative

Sorry; I thought you wanted one that I'd written. I've used SimpleNote for years. It's got dozens of clients, many of them native; I use NValt, Resoph Notes, and the official iOS client. It supports markdown. It doesn't support plugins, but you didn't want that until just now.

> If you can detect the input lag in Visual Studio Code

I use VSCode extensively for a large Angular project on a Macbook Pro with a 4K screen. I get trivially reproducible hitching, often when autocomplete kicks in. It doesn't require superhuman senses to see. The console is also easy see lag on; just use it to edit a commit message with vim during a rebase. Character input speed is easier to notice if you've been using Sublime or Vim immediately beforehand. It's not a deal-breaker; VSC is unparalleled for Angular development. I wish it was snappier, though.

Interesting choice: Simplenote's Windows and Linux clients are written in Electron.

https://github.com/Automattic/simplenote-electron

> simplenote-electron is the official Simplenote desktop app for Windows and Linux.

I'm only being annoying and flame-war-ish to you about this because I'm somewhat tired of "framework hate." Case in point, you still use VSCode because no better alternative exists for Angular development. So, I still criticize your initial comment where you chose to proclaim that this app that you haven't tried should be written differently, even though it's written the same way as an application you rely on.

It might be interesting to read one Electron developer's take on the issue:

https://medium.com/@felixrieseberg/defeating-electron-e1464d...

My "framework hate" directly stems from experience with applications written in the framework. "Rely on," is different from "enjoy."

Electron is a trade-off that prioritizes developer productivity over end-user experience.

Checkout vnote, found it today actually.. checks all the boxes. Seems pretty good and built using c++ https://github.com/tamlok/vnote

The built-in Notes.app takes over 100 MB here. Yes, that's apparently what apps take these days.

Why does it matter? 150 MB is pennies now.

Caring about resource utilization like it's 2000 is an absurd exercise, I really wish the community would stop.

It’s not the ram for me but how long electron apps take to open that gets me

https://happenapps.com in case anyone else, like me, wanted to check it out. It's Mac only.

Mac only w/ electron? What is the point of using a slow fake-webrowser if not for compatibility?

No, Quiver doesn't use Electron and is Mac only. Inkdrop is cross-platform.

It does use electron.

"At that time, I was new to develop apps on top of Electron and ReactJS. As Inkdrop grew, I have learned a lot of good practices from it. I found that it can be improved much better in terms of implementation."

Inkdrop uses Electron but Quiver doesn't.

amen, this app just serves as another example of nobody wanting to make true native desktop stuff anymore.

Thing is its easier than ever with QML and C++... : (

https://medium.com/commitlog/electron-is-cancer-b066108e6c32

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