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Comment by LeFantome | Hacker News Reader

It is web designers and JavaScript devs not wanting to acknowledge that desktop dev and C++ exist.

I use an old 2008 iMac running Linux frequently and it runs remarkably well. Firefox and MS Edge are certainly the apps that bring it down from a memory perspective ( it only has 6 Gigs ). Electron apps like MS Teams are right up there though and make it chug even more than the browsers do.

To be fair, I have dozens of tabs open including beasts like GMail but I certainly have to restart the browsers from time to time.

Compiling huge C++ code bases is a memory nightmare as well.

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Not wanting to acknowledge they exist, or not wanting to do them because they find them less proeuctive? Different issues.

Less productive.

I started with C++, did that for about 5 years, then got sucked into web where I've been for about 20 years. In a funny turn of events, my company has adopted C++ and now I'm writing C++ again. I don't hate it, but 15 minutes to compile/boot a server or 5 minutes to run some tests is kind of unpleasant. And the occasionally UB bug or dangling pointer. It's just really outdated. Enough so that I don't want to relearn how to build a GUI in C++. I'll wait a few more years for Zig or Carbon to mature.

You don't have to. You can write a UI in QML.

Use Lazarus IDE and Freepascal and report your findings.

Then I'm learning an IDE instead of a GUI lib. Same diff, not interested. I'm happy with CLion.

"Productive" is a nice euphemism for "I'm a web developer and can't be bothered to learn anything that isn't Javascript".

These same companies are writing custom SSD drivers and cutting edge Rust backends for the absolute best performance. I think it's pretty safe to say they picked Electron because it's the best tool for the job, not because the worlds devs are all too lazy.

Try hiring a frontend dev sometime and come back to me with that theory.

> they picked Electron because it's the best tool for the job

Yes, but things they're counting as "best" include considerations other than performance and resource usage. Not that they're wrong in doing so -- everything's a tradeoff, after all, and engineering is mostly about selecting tradeoffs.

But as a user, Electron apps tend to be pretty bad, and so from my point of view, Electron is as well. I tend to avoid them as a result. But my point of view as a user is very narrow.

I'm a web developer but I've also worked in C (no plus) and other stuff. I fully acknowledge it exists; I actually would love to use it.

But then I'd be reaching way less people than with the web. My web apps can be tried without installing anything, work on mobile and tablets and on any desktop (except may be cool weirdos using iMac g4s).

The web allows me to reach more people; if I'm working on apps that help make the world a better place (or so I think), that feels more important than the RAM they use (even though using more RAM might be driving more e-waste, thus also making the world a bit worse on that count.)

spreading shit, basically

> Compiling huge C++ code bases is a memory nightmare as well.

Not unless the company is penny-pinching when it comes to developer PCs.

>Compiling huge C++

Use ccache and clang. Also, with Linux you can set ZRAM and convert these 6GB in something like 9-10GB.

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