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Comment by speedgoose | Hacker News Reader

I have a recent computer with enough ram and the feeling of electrons apps on GNU/Linux and Windows is quite good. I'm not sure the majority of people do notice a difference anymore.

For sure if you run electrons apps on a old potato pc with less performances than a new smartphone it's not ideal but I feel like most companies don't really target users in this situation.

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I use VSCode every single working day, and it's electron-based app. It's the best cross-platform app I've used

VS Code is the example I always use when someone is hating on Electron too - yes, it's possible to make slow, memory-hungry Electron apps, but VS Code shows it doesn't have to be this way. Honestly, VS Code is so performant you would think it was a native app.

I love VS Code but I wouldnt go that far. Sublime Text is far snappier - but I use VS Code anyway.

The real lesson is that performance matters but its not the only criteria for a successful app.

RAM and the performance are not a problem with me too since I use the latest MacBook 16". The reason I concern is the feeling of using the native app. Buttons, Labels, SplitView, Multiple-Tab,... are pretty much the same what I use with Finder and Calendar and I'm really happy about it. I believe that the author would have a plan to write native Window and Linux apps soon.

I don't disagree that it makes economic sense in a lot of cases to go with these kinds of tools. I wonder though if this is really the direction we want to go as an industry. Do we reach some tipping point eventually? when our software is so inefficient that these things do start to matter again? Will we eventually hit hardware limitations that force us to rethink this practice? Maybe eventually there is some holy grail of cross platform productivity and performance to be had.

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