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Comment by adamsol | Hacker News Reader

It's clearly a matter of taste. I, on the other hand, can't stand Qt or apps that try to look "native" in general. At least on Windows, it feels like going back to the previous century. The modern look, known from websites, is the only one that works for me, hence I use Electron. This way I also have full control over the UI and it looks the same on every OS.

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> I, on the other hand, can't stand Qt or apps that try to look "native" in general.

100%. That's why I said "at least" and it's the feeling I have with Electron too. Electron apps (nor Qt ones) do not really feel native, and in that case, better to either go full native (so it doesn't feel like an imperfect approximation) or just deliver a web app that you can use on a browser?

The in-between ends up in a gray area that never feels quite right. But I agree it is in part a matter of style and expectations.

Though I also agree the Win32 look is terrible and outdated. GTK and Cocoa on Linux and macOS are really great and good looking native technologies. I've seen more and more projects target GTK on Windows instead of Win32 for this reason.

I feel comfortable with web technologies, and a large part of this project was using Monaco Editor as a powerful diff viewer, so I'll stay with my current stack. I'd be happy to make a pure web app, but I don't think it's possible with something like a Git client, since it needs to call system commands. Maybe there are some hacks available for local apps, but why would that be better than just using Electron. Yeah, it takes some space, but what is this compared to, for example, any modern computer game.

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