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Comment by ajkjk | Hacker News Reader

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Probably something to do with remembering when machines with double-digit MHz clocks would render a vaguely complex UI literally instantaneously and that feeling of irritation that comes from experiencing consistent and frustrating UI lag on a machine with literally 5000x the poke

This. I ran ICQ on a machine with a single core 200 mhz processor and 32 MB (yes that’s an M) and it was fast with more features than Slack.

In what way did it have “more features than slack”? This feels more like “had other features that I like”

ICQ having more features than Slack isn't really a point of contention, ICQ could do about a zillion things.

I mean it is. I’m contesting it. So unless you have some quantifiable data it is in contention.

I like ICQ. I used it. But I really just don’t agree it had “more” features. It had _different_ features. And those features are just kinda wildly different because of how business and the internet had changed. I just really do not think it is a useful point to try and imply is a weakness of slack somehow.

I don’t understand why you feel the need to defend Slack? Half the time I start a huddle the sound doesn’t work. That was a solved problem in clients in the 00s. File uploads? Better be JPG or it’s a 50/50 shot of it uploading correctly (HEICs? Good luck). The new design moves everything around and somehow makes it harder to find huddles. Discord on the other hand, also an electron app, has pretty much flawless audio/video calls.

Please read the following:

https://whyisthisinteresting.substack.com/p/why-is-this-inte...

You just kinda had to be there. It was ever changing but snappy.

I was there but thank you for the condescending assumption.

You’re quite welcome.

Had more features than Slack?? Bro, you had to give someone a number to address you--it couldn't even map your account to an email address.

ICQ having an ICQ-only usernumber that you couldn't cross-resolve to anything else was definitely a feature, and a super nice one.

And? I prefer this over Slack having six different ways to log in, having access to my email address to spam me, and then still not letting me see which servers I belong to in aggregate.

For a pretty trivial software at that

Have you tried listening to any of the myriad complaints people have with Electron?

no because they've either only dealt with crappy software, or think a single mediocre piece of software is better if it's cross platform, and anyone who disagrees with them is wrong.

I've also seen plenty of people who talk about how great electron is while also complaining about modern software requiring more disk space, more ram, more cpu time, or their laptop batteries dying as if always on wasteful software isn't the bulk of the reason.

Seriously for most electron apps you could have a twenty+ year old machine capable of running all of them without breaking a sweat if they were native apps, that can't open them all at the same time as the crappy electron apps they are today.

If you find the UI tools from web tech easier for your business purposes then make a web app, but stop forcing shitty perennially out of date copies of chrome on everyone. I guarantee you aren't pushing out updates as rapidly as google is, and that means you're missing security fixes. This last point is something I'm serious on: if you cannot push out a chromium update for your app within within say 24 hours of google shipping a chrome update you should not be shipping an app built on it.

Lol, yes. Do you know why people use Electron, though?

Programmers/companies use it to save time and costs. Sure.

(Poor Slack has profits of 300m$/year; they cannot possibly do this better!)

But endusers? They don't care about the tech, so if you ask them; 'how about a non laggy version that doesn't eat all your memory and cpu?' You think they would go 'no no, please let me use Electron'?

> Lol, yes. Do you know why people use Electron, though?

Because it's forced on them, really.

I'd gladly use slack through some kind of bridge (it used to be possible).

I would choose it for a new project over any native stack in a heartbeat. I think a lot of engineers would agree with me.

Because it’s forced upon me by my employer?

Yes

I find myself continuously blessed to run slack on a daily basis and literally never encounter an issue with it being an electron app. My laptop must be magic or something!

I don't either (well, at times the ui has slight annoyances...).

But then again, i'm using a 3500 euros, company-issued macbook pro (m1 pro, 32gb). Working well on this kind of hardware is an incredibly low bar.

Yeah, same. Well it has issues, but they're clearly due to the code being a mess and nothing to do with it being Electron.

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