Post 722029 by tjk@oldbytes.space
 (DIR) More posts by tjk@oldbytes.space
 (DIR) Post #722022 by algernon@trunk.mad-scientist.club
       2018-10-23T21:37:02Z
       
       0 likes, 1 repeats
       
       People like to say #Electron is shit (and I would normally agree), and that one should just write native applications. This is so short-sighted elitism that it makes my blood boil.
       
 (DIR) Post #722023 by algernon@trunk.mad-scientist.club
       2018-10-23T21:37:33Z
       
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       Let me illustrate with an example: you want to write a GUI keyboard layout editor for a very much non-standard keyboard. How would you do it natively? Forget the wire protocol, that part is easy. How do you *display* the keyboard's layout? What if you want to support more keyboards? With wildly different shapes?Doable? Yes. Easy? Nope.
       
 (DIR) Post #722024 by algernon@trunk.mad-scientist.club
       2018-10-23T21:38:59Z
       
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       On the other hand, with Electron, I can just drop an SVG, a bit of JavaScript, and voila. The whole interactive keymap thing took like ten minutes (in reality: an hour, because I redid the SVG too).
       
 (DIR) Post #722025 by algernon@trunk.mad-scientist.club
       2018-10-23T21:40:33Z
       
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       Context: I'm terrible when it comes to JavaScript. I'm much more at home in C and C++. I know GTK+ and GNOME libraries a lot better than anything JS. I even know a bit of QT.Yet, I still wouldn't do it natively (tried it, gave up very fast).
       
 (DIR) Post #722026 by algernon@trunk.mad-scientist.club
       2018-10-23T21:43:17Z
       
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       It is doable, but it is tremendously more development effort. I'm very happy if the Electron haters have that many resources, I don't.So I'm grateful for Electron, and I will use it when it is the most appropriate tool for the task. I will use native toolkits when that makes sense, and I have the resources required to make it work. But then I'll only support Linux, because that's the only platform I can reasonably test on.
       
 (DIR) Post #722027 by algernon@trunk.mad-scientist.club
       2018-10-23T21:45:08Z
       
       0 likes, 1 repeats
       
       So yeah, go on and refuse to use Electron apps, its your choice. But don't spew hate on those who develop with it. Many have very good reasons to do so.
       
 (DIR) Post #722028 by algernon@trunk.mad-scientist.club
       2018-10-23T21:47:49Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       "But it doesn't look native!"Well, boo-hoo. GIMP doesn't look native on my GNOME3. Neither does Chromium or Firefox. Or Emacs. Or any QT application.
       
 (DIR) Post #722029 by tjk@oldbytes.space
       2018-10-23T22:22:04Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @algernon I gave up on common appearance 10+ years ago. I don't use electron apps unless necessary because my machine can't handle the resource overhead. And they're not bad machines...