JavaScript on the server, only when I can't say no for whatever reason, like being forced to search for another job as consequence of it.
Instead of rewriting JavaScript tools in Zig, Rust, Go, whatever cool compiled language of the month, use the said language directly.
I do agree that it's time to write frontend not in JS. It has been time for 10+ years even but oh well.
No reason for me to feel attacked, I pointed out that what you said doesn't make much sense in terms of how long have these languages been around.
"Instead of rewriting JavaScript tools in Zig, Rust, Go, whatever cool compiled language of the month, use the said language directly."
Meaning use Zig instead of JavaScript, use Rust instead of JavaScript, use Go instead of JavaScript, use "whatever cool compiled language of the month" instead of JavaScript, or if you prefer for the last example, use "whatever compiled language takes your fancy" instead of JavaScript.
Clear enough?
If not -- then clear. If yes, then this is getting even more confusing.
Given that boring languages like Java, C#, OCaml, Haskell are kind behind their times for cool kids to rewrite stuff, that leaves the unamed cool programming language of the month as option, whatever that language may be.
An enumeration of three choices followed by a generalization reads like the three choices are examples of the generalization, not disjoint.
And seeing that a writer commented something similar to my comments upthread, I am not very inclined to assume I can't read English.
Still, your point is taken, I just can't help but think I am sensing some slight... shall we call it non-preference... towards a few programming languages.
...Oh? What's that? I am hearing something faint in the distance, like... "their devs are not using JS well", maybe?
Tell you what. If a technology can be held wrong, then it's a bad technology. Which, yes, encompasses most technology nowadays. You heard me.
Electron/JS is a herd just running in one direction, personified.
The fact that something is popular does not imply quality, not at all. Most of the time it implies that everybody settled on it and does not want to hear otherwise for various reasons (in this case: money, as employers are never going to give you the requisite time to build stuff with Qt or others).
The kind of argument you're making would be much more convincing if there were relevant examples of Qt-based apps that provided a superior user experience to the Electron apps you're criticising.
I don't personally find Electron apps laggy in general. VSCode is very responsive, for example.
> The kind of argument you're making would be much more convincing if there were relevant examples of Qt-based apps that provided a superior user experience to the Electron apps you're criticising.
That's arguing in circles and it's the chicken-and-egg problem. Toolkits like Qt get less and less mindshare because Electron is desired and is encouraged by employers. I can't speak for Qt in particular btw, just using it as an example here, but my point is that it could be the best UI toolkit ever but since it takes a little more time to spin up an app with it then the business will want you to not use it.
Hence, I can't show you those Qt apps.
I feel that in these discussions people just blindly trust popularity to be an indicator of quality. I have a huge problem with that mindset and my career has seen the exact opposite, many times. Hence my comments. And if you want to take away just one thing from our discussion, it's this: please don't mistake Electron's popularity with the idea that Electron is the best UI toolkit.
I'd argue that QML is an order of magnitude easier to develop than any other web frameworks (yes, you do have to get familiar with it, and if you made some apps before you could re-use some essential, battle-tested components). I hope to maybe share/sell some of mine some day.
I'm not sure what to answer regarding the browser experience. WASM isn't really there, isn't it? I haven't had a chance to test it on my own apps yet tho. I recently had a thought that maybe that Qt Company should also target HTML/CSS/JS generation of a QML file. Another, more interesting thought would be for browsers to be able to process and render QML files natively (but that won't happen without substential market share).
So again: the chicken-and-egg problem.
Basically, nothing is going to improve until somebody rolls up their sleeves and does all the hard work for free and do better than Electron -- or a corporation will push for it, it's always one of both. Then everybody else will flock to them.
That's what I observed several times during my life and career.
>Toolkits like Qt get less and less mindshare because Electron is desired and is encouraged by employers.
But why is it desired? I've used Qt before (a long time ago) and know enough C++ to be dangerous. I'd still avoid using Qt simply because I already know how to make UI's in HTML+CSS. I can't say that replacing those tools with a manually-constructed C++ object graph – or with an unfamiliar markup language (QML) – strikes me as an appealing option. Most of the people carping about Electron apps on HN don't want to make a UI in Qt either! It is becoming one of these legendary magical technologies (like Lisp) that is much praised and yet too little used for its flaws to be common knowledge.
Past experiences. I've seen much smoother and faster apps more than 20 years ago. Surely they weren't using black magic.
> But why is it desired?
Because it is slightly quicker to start an app with it and because people want to have a web variant of it (runnable in the browser) if/when necessary. Those are actual selling points and I agree with them wholeheartedly -- I object to Electron's lagginess however. They can and they should do better.
> I'd still avoid using Qt simply because I already know how to make UI's in HTML+CSS.
Well yes, that's one of the factors -- people default to what they already know. But zero mention is given to the numerous problems with the DOM model of making UIs as well... a topic way too big for me to have any desire to delve in, again.
Inertia. A bad thing starts being used widely because of 2-3 desirable traits, and when it gains enough critical mass nobody wants to criticize it.
Well, I do.
Me too, but they didn't have all the whizzbang UI features that you get for free from a web stack. I could live without most of those, but users do expect all that stuff to work these days.
If the Slack devs are as sloppy as you say, then we ought to be thankful that they’re writing JS and not C++!
Lag is something that some people care about a lot. I actually think that most users don’t notice it or care very much, up to a certain point.
I specifically asked not to focus on examples but OK, I guess you really had to get it off your chest. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The topic was not "Electron vs. Qt" at all.
> I actually think that most users don’t notice it or care very much, up to a certain point.
Good for them, to me it's a mood and productivity killer. And no I'll not change my mind on this, ever.
Broader point is: the people who worked on Electron, Slack etc. should have really done better. But I have witnessed how job security almost always leads to sloppy work.
I didn't know they were the same. Fascinating actually, thanks for making me aware of it!
1. High RAM usage.
2. The bloat will accelerate as more abstractions are added to web frameworks.
3. Battery usage - the most noticeable issue for me. I've yet to empirically test this, but my guess would be that Electron apps use substantially more power than native apps. I will test this theory eventually.
I also created a native block editor (like Notion's) in QML and C++: https://get-notes.com
I really hope that I can show that Qt with QML is a viable alternative to the inefficient resource hogs that are Electron/web apps.
Can't really comment on Slack and Teams - I've obviously used both, but haven't been a heavy user of Teams and never was in a large "corporation-wide" Slack instance. I have, however, been a heavy user and developer of a Slack competitor. Not surprisingly, it had a lot of problems, but most of them stemmed from a) clumsy handling of megabytes of chat logs, b) a codebase that grew organically out of a startup project and needed a major rewrite, c) misallocation of resources (for the longest time, everything Electron-related was handled by a single developer in a satellite office). In my opinion, we would have had the same performance issues and bugs if it had been developed in any other language. We actually had some Qt apps that we deprecated and rewrote in JS as part of the main client - there was no user-noticeable performance drop, but significantly fewer crashes.
It was already mentioned that people can do better apps with Electron than others. Not surprising.
My objection is that the possibility to make laggy and bad apps exists. It should not exist.
As for what problems a Slack competitor faces, well, I am not interested. That's the dev team's problem and not mine. I want a lagless Slack.
I see. Then the only way forward is to stop all software development altogether and enjoy memories of apps that we used 20 years ago when we were much younger, and fantasies of apps that we could build with newly acquired wisdom, but will not.
Progress is way too slow and blindly follows local maximii. That's not OK. That's the part I am expressing displeasure with.