Comment by fermienrico | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fermienrico | Hacker News Reader

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If you noticed how insanely Slack freaked out and handled the service outage. The application just got stuck, didn't know what to do, I see a faint 503 error message which looks like a webpage nginx error displayed right in the app. Clearing cache didn't help and the app just quit.

Electron apps are a nuisance and should be eradicated from this planet. We've come a full circle -> Bloat the web -> Create javascript frameworks -> Build SPA/PWA apps -> Invade the desktop land -> Gain traction because "its crossplatform" and now try to reimplement GUI elements from some fancy_new framework that is developed by people who are entirely unqualified for it. Throw away all the work that's done by OS developers and designers that are getting paid as professionals to develop guidelines like this: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

The modern tech stack needs to be refactored just like they refactor silicon architecture every 10 years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb2tebYAaOA

Edit: People talking about would native app handle this better? Sure. I argue that it wouldn't just get rid of all UI elements and drop the entire DOM on the page, the UI just crashed. And everytime I open slack it seems like its doing something else entirely. There is a massive difference in quality of native UI libraries and Bulma for example, and its not just the library, you gotta rely on React to redraw things and it depends on 4 billion npm dependencies. The web truly sucks. And it is now eating into desktop apps.

Ah the ol' "It's Electron's fault because Javascript"

Add it to the HackerNews bingo card

you need to add something about how Javascript is not a real language and it was hacked together in 2 weeks to make it legit

Could the desktop Slack app have a better failure state? Sure.

But if you look at their native iOS app it doesn't have a failure state _at all_. It sometimes shows that it's loading and sometimes doesn't. Never once though does it say there has been a problem.

The problem is bad software in general, not a specific technology.

I dislike the web bloat as much as anyone, but how exactly is Electron to blame here? Yes, the 503 error message is frustratingly obscure, but how is that the "webs" fault?

If you had a native app here, it'd still be talking to an API returning some version of a 503.

I appreciated the honesty. Instead of looking at an infinite spinner, or a tiny toast error message, or whatever cute thing a designer might come up with... Plenty of "nice" error handling muddles whether or not the issue is my network or theirs. But I clicked my slack tab in Firefox it was nothing but a big ugly 503 page. No need to guess about what's wrong.

This is one of those stances that I see on HN all the time but never feel myself.

Like, nothing about this outage affected my opinion of Electron apps at all. And in general I like them, as a developer and as a user. They're polishable with so much less effort.

As an OS engineer, I hate them. They cause problems and inefficiencies behind the scene that are pretty significant. I can see how you wouldn't say so from another position, it's a bit like propelling a passenger aircraft with controlled nuclear explosions: "It flies so effortlessly!"

This. slack is a significant CPU / power drain. Just watch `top -u` on macOS.

I've been an native application developer for 10 years, but there is absolutely nothing about the issue you mentioned that can't be solved by just slightly better error handling and a nice error message.

It's pretty straight forward to build that into an Electron app.

There are things that native apps can do better, but this example isn't one of them.

I've been an application user for 10 years, and everytime I come across an app, if it is developed using Electron, I instantly can tell by how it operates. Everything just feels sluggish and god awful. It is like I am dropped into molasses and my legs are tied. Simply put, Electron apps are shit.

> Throw away all the work that's done by OS developers and designers that are getting paid as professionals to develop guidelines like this

Their work is complex to use and provides limited benefit to the company. Any company dump Slack over its use of Electron? I doubt it.

Eh, reminds me of VB6 back in the day. Anytime you make it easier to build software it’s a good thing.

If an app gains too much traction with bad tech they can always go back and fix it later. Twitters fail whale comes to mind :-)

In what way would a native app be better suited for catching errors?

Theyre just drawing the DOM that I see in a browser. Instead of gracefully failing, the entire UI just fell apart in one swoop.

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