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Comment by mugsie | Hacker News Reader

They would, but the Pi Zero is a much better UX for people who don't deal with microprocessors on a regular basis. It has SSH, I can get in and look at logs from my desktop, wifi is standard. It all adds up - and for something like this, the power draw is not an issue, and the cost is minimal.

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This is the hardware equivalent of bloated webpages HN tends to dislike :P

It is - but the same applies to a lot of webpages - would people create them if they had to lovingly handcraft every html tag on a page? :)

They would probably create them less, but suggesting people to sometimes hand-craft HTML tags for less resource usage and more speed isn't bad, is it?

I still do all/most of my html css js by hand in Notepad++, @davchana at Gitlab. Yes, just a hobby, but still.

I think the relevant distinction that should be made is that a bloated hardware project is only going to be seen and experienced by one person, whereas a bloated website is slow for all.

It costs six bucks and runs something very close to stock Debian, which greatly eases software development.

Yes, and Electron allows people to use JavaScript and CSS which simplifies cross-platform software development.

I hate Electron apps as much as the next person, but it's indisputable that to get a simple desktop app deployed, Electron is easier, and to me that signifies that it serves a purpose, at least in the prototyping space.

I have like 10 ESP32's lying around my house, they're fun to tinker with, but my Raspberry Pis get a lot more attention from me because there is a substantially lower cognitive overhead with them than the ESPs. If I had a plan on selling my stuff, then yeah, the Raspberry Pi might be overkill and I'd consider going for an MCU module. However, for a fun little DIY project, I don't see how an RPi is a problem.

EDIT: Realized I forgot to mention another point; not everyone really wants to muck with pointer arithmetic for simple things; this app was written in Python, and as far as I know, the ESP32 chips are mostly C/Arduino; I realize that there exists NodeMCU and such variants, but due to the Raspberry Pi being "Just a computer", you have access to virtually every language under the sun.

Actually esp32's are quite fun and easy to program with micropython. Something like this project should be pretty straightforward and would arguably much easier than a pi. For micropython there is only the python code, no docker containers, Linux maintenance etc. And remote development can be done over a an http repl or even using jupyter notebooks (still have to try but just read about it). Doesn't get much better than that I think

> I hate Electron apps as much as the next person, but it's indisputable that to get a simple desktop app deployed, Electron is easier

Easier than what? Considering you have to use the already ill-suited for UI HTML/CSS/JS cesspit, I'd say Electron is a lot worse for the "simple desktop app" than something like Lazarus.

I've never used Lazarus. I was comparing it to "traditional" GUI toolkits like Qt and GTK+.

Using the PI Zero over an ESP doesn't negatively impact the experience using it. Whereas a very bloated website is going to be slow to load and use. I think there is a significant difference.

And constantly compiling and flashing the ESP gets old after a while.

Yeah, this is a pain. I'm glad we have the OTA library, though. Saves so much time.

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