Many of those ways just obfuscate the source or encrypt some files; they don't prevent the Electron packaging format from being opened. While that reduces most of the reasons for "cracking" the app open, there's still often useful information to be gleamed by doing so.
Entirely useless distinction. Although if for you "crack open an app" can mean "see a bunch of opaque blobs" then sure.
The article posted on Hacker News is called "Cracking Electron Apps Open". The article deals with none of the libs developed to make it hard to crack open Electron apps. So it feels like clickbait and perhaps this will save someone a click.