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Comment by pdntspa | Hacker News Reader

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pdntspa

It's not an electron app, for one

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That's nice but in practice it doesn't mean anything.

Here's a comparison of both apps with the same video file open and the same clip cut:

Startup time (time between double click and window appears and ready):

- Losslesscut: 2 seconds

- VidCutter: 12 seconds

Time to load the video file:

- Losslesscut: 1 second (to be fair it doesn't show thumbnails)

- VidCutter: 3 seconds

Memory usage:

- Losslesscut: 368MB

- VidCutter: 455MB

Idle CPU usage:

- Losslesscut: 0%

- VidCutter: 0%

Network requests:

- Losslesscut: 7

- VidCutter: 0

Installed size:

- Losslesscut: 455MB

- VidCutter: 178MB

Source, kinda (the memory shown is the sum of all subprocesses. taken when idle so no ffmpeg subprocess included.):

https://imgur.com/a/DwrNdxT

Vidcutter's startup time isn't PyQT, that initializes nearly instantly. Considering how both defer to ffmpeg a lot of these stats dont mean anything

They are a direct response to the GP post's offhand quip about Electron. GP found the difference relevant, and I believe you're GP, but I am confused now given the change in interest.

My point is that startup time may not have anything to do with the GUI. It is not a good metric. I could write both an electron and pyQT app that takes minutes to start if it has other shit it needs to be doing. I haven't used electron in years but pyQT apps start up instantly, therefore this app must be doing something else.

If the two apps were programmed identically then you might have a comparison.

Most people don't care whether an app uses Python with Qt or Javascript with Chromium. They care about more about useability and features.

The "most people" argument is moot. I have outlined by arguments elsewhere in this thread

Well, people don’t build apps for the very few users that don’t like JavaScript web crap but are fine with Python Qt crap.

> pyQT apps start up instantly

????

Have you written code with it? I am working on a pyQT project right now that is interactive pretty much as soon as python starts up

You said electron sucked. That might be, but vidcutter, the subject of this thread, isn't proving your point. Just goes to show that who writes the code has more impact than the tech stack when it comes to such tools.

I don't know if all the numbers are accurate but it's true that vidcutter does weird things. I think it extracts ffmpeg to the temp directory on every start for whatever reason (it's not like it's a portable executable, it requires installation so why not extract it then?).

I can't explain why it uses more memory or how they managed to make it look alien despite using QT (so much for accusing electron of not looking native).

Network requests:

- Losslesscut: 7

Whyyyy

Because everything needs to phone home these days?

That's frankly quite disturbing to see. A program like this has zero need to even touch the network.

Eh... Updater would be fine.

Here's what's blocked and what I think it's doing based on the code.

    2023-08-21 12:33:28 | losslesscut.exe | Block | Out | 140.82.112.5 | 443 | <-- Github, update check
    2023-08-21 12:33:30 | losslesscut.exe | Block | Out | 54.192.51.72 | 443 | <-- https://losslesscut.mifi.no/config.json + 
    2023-08-21 12:33:30 | losslesscut.exe | Block | Out | 54.192.51.122 | 443 | <-- https://losslesscut.mifi.no/config.json +
    2023-08-21 12:33:30 | losslesscut.exe | Block | Out | 54.192.51.66 | 443 | <-- https://losslesscut.mifi.no/config.json + 
    2023-08-21 12:33:30 | losslesscut.exe | Block | Out | 54.192.51.52 | 443 | <-- https://losslesscut.mifi.no/config.json +
    2023-08-21 12:33:30 | losslesscut.exe | Block | Out | 172.217.13.206 | 443 | <-- Google, Unknown

In the code there is also: https://losslesscut-analytics.mifi.no/

Typical.

It uses PyQt. I'm not sure I'd put much money on it being faster than an Electron app. The only other PyQt app I have used is Cura and that is ridiculously slow. Takes like a minute to start up and you can watch it loading the controls when there are a lot of them.

I'd take Electron over that tbh.

I've been writing some code in PyQT and it's been rather pleasant and performant. A lot of decent GUI apps are written in QT. Python is just slow.

I will take that over some stupid app cramming an entire instance of Chromium down my throat any day.

I've been writing some code in React.js and its been rather pleasent and performant.

Yeah but it's web tech. Desktop apps should feel like desktop apps, not a glorified webpage

React Native it is, then

Why so in love with React? There are a million other ways to write good GUI apps without involving Facebook's clockwork

Why so in love with pyqt? There are a million other ways to write good GUI apps without having to distribute a full python and qt environment.

Why?

Perhaps I'm missing something, but I only care about the functionality and not whether the button should have round edges or the background having the right shade of grey. The consistent "feel" is nice to have (cough winform/wpf/uwp cough), but I would take "web-ish" applications over no application/crappy native application anytime (especially with Linux)

Native's not crappy, it's the best and most supported. We just happen to be in love with the web aesthetic and cross-platform. And that decisionmaking is mostly made by MBAs who see tech as a means to a financial end and not for the joy of writing good code

Web shit is fucking ugly, it eschews platform native conventions, and it just feels cheap.

But when I load up a winforms-esque app with toolbars and a statusbar and all the nice accoutrements we're accustomed too behaving in the way we are accustomed to... now I feel like I'm going to get shit done.

Literally the only electron app that feels serious is VSCode and the amount of optimizing MS has had to do has cut into seven figures

What makes Python native and JS not?

n.b. just because CPython exists doesn't mean Python is native.

n.b. native vs. web is colloquially a discussion from 00s macOS and 10s mobile about fidelity to the platform's standard UI toolkit.

n.b. when people shit on Electron its because of RAM use and lack of fidelity to the platform toolkit, and the waste of have a full JS engine compiled into an app, ideally they'd all use some base WebView from the system instead of Chromium

I am talking about using the platform's native windowing controls.

> ideally they'd all use some base WebView from the system instead of Chromium

Ideally they don't use any of that web trash and use something that favors the native platform conventions

This is some weird flavor of moralizing technology. Normal people literally do not care or even notice.

Have fun copying that error message from a non-selectable label widget...

Platform native dialogs almost always let you copy text with CTRL+C

And winforms labels have a selectable mode.

What's the difference between Javascript and Python? Neither are "native" to any operating system.

Last time I tried VidCutter it was incredibly slow. So slow that it seemed completely glitched sometimes. It was such an incredibly slow and laggy chore to do anything in the app I could not keep using it.

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