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Oh look, another Electron app. How original… (files.catbox.moe)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world
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[–] 146 points 7 months ago (40 children)

Because why go for native performance when you can go for minimum effort on all platforms.

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  • [–] 71 points 7 months ago* (6 children)

    When all you have is a hammer JavaScript, everything looks like a nail web page.

    Kids these days don't bother learning languages that actually compile to native apps.

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  • [–] 49 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    All of my degree was in C, C++, C#, Java, etc. and the one class I had that did web applications did Java backends and middleware with PHP frontends. It wasn’t until I got into the industry that I had to learn Angular, Electron, React, Django, etc.

    I don’t think it’s the devs making these decisions.

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  • [–] 21 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    It's the minimum effort that translates to minimum time that translates to minimum cost for the business. Why hire another developer for a mobile app (or another platform) when you could just have the same web dev write it. Or without hiring another dev, why have the same dev need to build up tooling in another language when you can just reuse from the existing platform

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    It is the devs. Management says they need it fast then the devs say "fuck you here's your browser tab app".

    I deam of a dev job that would let me actually write a good app..

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago (18 children)

    Because you want a cross platform solution?

    I get that electron can be slow, bloated, etc, but the amount of ire it draws is overboard.

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  • [–] 26 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    Yes but sometimes, for example core parts of windows 11 like the start menu, don't need to be cross platform and should be native, not a pwa

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  • [–] 10 points 7 months ago (11 children)

    Having built applications with Microsoft's mfc, Java's swing, the omnipresent Qt, and whatever nastiness Mac was using in the early 00's, electron is worth the silliness. Trust me. Trust me.

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  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 child)

    the omnipresent Qt

    So weird. I spent more than two years of my career working on a Qt app (not by choice) but I've never met another human being who has ever even heard of Qt. Nothing else has ever made me so certain that I'm clinically insane.

    My favorite thing about Qt was the use of C++ for the back end and Javascript for the UI layer. It lets companies take advantage of the, uh, four people in the world who are good with both languages.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

    As an engineer, Swing is great! Granted, I wouldn't use it to deliver a polished UI to users.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    The individual things themselves weren't really the issue. Swing was by far my favorite.

    The issue was cross platform ui development. If you didn't target Java, swing wasn't viable.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago* (1 child)

    Swing was by far my favorite.

    Nice. My team constantly gripes about it but I'm all, "...it's a well designed UI toolkit...?" I can make it do anything. It took me weeks (as a newbie) to try to lay out UI components just so with the new hotness and at the end I had to give up and move on. It would've taken me five minutes to do it with Swing.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago

    Swing is what all these xml layout tools have been trying to replicate, honestly. Some get close, but far too few.

    It warmed my heart when GWT basically copied swing for its layout. Made that super easy to learn.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    the amount of ire CPU cycles / frames / watts it draws is overboard. Lol

    (Trying to be funny not aggressive lol)

    For real though, I think it's just because it epitomizes that "Hardware is fast now so throw sluggishly interpreted high-level code at it and don't even bother with optimization" mentality.

    Like I remember when people would bash Python over this, but Electron apps make that feel way overblown now.

    (Also Python did nothing wrong :( lol)

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (13 children)

    Why have a consistent Wayland experience when each application can run it's own Electron version with varying degrees of enforced Wayland flags, and/or such an outdated Chromium version Wayland is just jank.

    Edit:

    Was trying to say that most of these CEF/Electron applications all need their own separate Wayland specific (Chromium) flags to have better Wayland support/integration. And the older Electron applications typically use an older Chromium as base, having even worse Wayland support... Was not trying to make this a "Wayland bad!" kind of post.

    TL;DR: Electron applications have wildly varying level of Wayland support/integration, don't have any Wayland issues other than specific CEF/Electron apps!

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  • [–] 27 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    Wayland isn't the problem. Chrome just doesn't behave well with it. I haven't had any Wayland-related issues with Firefox.

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  • [–] 11 points 7 months ago* (3 children)

    Yeah, maybe it was just badly worded by me...

    most (if not all) Wayland issues I currently have are related to Chromium, and especially CEF/Electron applications that are based on older Chromium versions. Weren't trying to say that this is an inherent Wayland issue, considering most of the applications works as expected.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

    Ah I see. I understand now! I thought you may have been one of the people that is still saying X11 is superior, even though Wayland is very usable now.

    Ive been hitting weird issues in Chrome too, and had to disable GPU compositing to fix them. Unfortunately I have to use Chrome at work - we're not allowed to use other browsers, as only Chrome has the endpoint security functionality they require (provided by Chrome Enterprise Premium). No other browsers have or can provide the same features.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    Always that reflex against Wayland - as someone who has switched to Linux not so long ago i have a hard time with the mindset long time Linux users have against Wayland. I understand that it might be annoying if someone is used to his X-Server and that some tools that people are used to for a decade will get left behind. But as a new user I do not have anything negative to say about Wayland. It behaves nicely with my multi-monitor setup and VRR, has no issues with my Nvidia graphics card, and Xwayland covers tools that can't or won't migrate. Using Pipewire allows Steam Remote Play. In the year or so since i switched to Linux, the stability has changed from "it's ok, but annoys me sometimes" to "rock-solid".

    Y'all have to recognize that there is a new generation of Linux Users around, which does not have nostalgic feelings towards X, and for those Wayland is simply the normal way things run. Whining will not change that.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (2 children)

    Very much pro-Wayland in my case.

    Just saying that certain CEF/Electron apps (especially those running on older Chromium version) are what is causing certain Wayland specific issues, hence my issue is on the application side (Steam, Spotify etc.), not on Wayland's side... My bad for the badly worded post which made it seem like the classical "Wayland bad!" posts.

    I haven't touched X11/Xorg in years, nor am I planning on reverting back to it anytime.

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