6
Xoka
4y

Ughh! ElectronJS apps are heavy and slow as shit! I wish, there was a better alternative

Comments
  • 8
    There are.
  • 0
    @Root speaking of which, what do you think are the best alternatives to Electron? Assuming a cross-platform app development framework is what we're looking for here..
  • 1
    @miksaraj QT?
  • 5
    So, bit of a plot twist, electron can be memory efficient and fast, most people writing electron apps just write bad code.
  • 3
    I'm sure I'll get lynched for suggesting it, but heck, even Java is usually a darn site less resource hungry for desktop apps than Electron.

    Qt with (language of choice) is probably the ideal though.
  • 2
    I feel dirty and wrong for suggesting Java, but Java.

    You can write cross-platform in straight C, too.
  • 1
    Proton native
  • 0
    Has anyone tried .net core + avalonia? They claim their last version is production ready. I have one WPF app I wish to move crossplatform and am also stuck on what lang/framework to choose.
  • 0
    Actually, my first priorities are:

    1. Easy to setup environment: Which electronJS serves. No need that bloated Visual Studio Community whatever edition and that SDK thingies

    2. Easy to make apps: I don't need to learn a new technologies. I can work on whatever I already know, like ReactJS or any JS libs/frameworks

    3. Fast: Which ElectronJS is NOT!

    Many people say, "Most electronJS apps are slow because of BAD code" which I don't really agree! VS code, Postman etc are still slow as shit! Pretty sure, they wrote AMAZING codes.

    If any framework gives me the above mentioned features/freedom, I'll consider them as a "BETTER solution". Otherwise, its another horrible nightmare to setup and use
  • 2
    @Xoka there are alternatives. It's just the case of what you're willing to sacrifice to get e.g. speed. I think Qt would really be the alternative you could at least consider here: it's by default faster than Electron and let's you work in JS or some of the other languages I glanced from your profiles. No doubt there will be tradeoffs, though, but it's up to you to decide what's it worth for you.
  • 1
    @dontbeevil I like Uno s well, but I think it still lacks the linux support.

    @Xoka in that case there is probably nothink better than electron for you specifically, maybe Proton Native but not sure how mature it is. Everything else either doesn’t support all platforms or requires an SDK installed, or requires significant learning.

    Java/Kotlin: requires jdk and IDE, writting java without IDE is just nope.
    C#: requires .net core SDK. Visual studio is not necessary, probably you can do with vscode.
    Flutter: requires SDK, I think desktop support is still limitted though.
    Qt with whatever language (i like python here): requires QT installed.
    Go: the GUI story with Go is sad, very sad indeed, no real mature framework.
    Rust: don’t know about rust gui much, but here significant learning is a factor.
  • 1
    The best alternative: make it CLI only
  • 1
    If you REALLY want/need to use web technologies to make a native app, here's an option: https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri

    Personally, I use Rust with GTK for my cross-platform apps.
  • 2
    First, look at Discord, which is made with Electron and is not so bad in terms of performances.
    Then, there's a LOT of library to make interfaces, for almost every languages.
  • 0
    @olback I tried Tauri but it requires to download Visual Studio and SDK
  • 0
    @Xoka All compiled languages do though.
  • 0
    @Tounai fair point there! I use Discord quite a lot and didn't notice a lag for a while. There devs basically didn't use idiotic dependencies and made choice thoroughly, as a result of multiple tests it's performant enough for live chat application.
    Discord is pretty much native-ish fast compared to VSC, that is far complicated application. And of course you'll find out how much it depends on, since it's OSS and it makes heavy lifting for extensions.
    No wonder when you see yet another rant about Electron. It's an easy target for criticism because of Node.js ecosystem that encourages you to install more and more, but it's also obviously because of bad dependencies allocation and O^2 code made by developer - even for todo+smth application.
  • 2
    @Tounai Discord might use Electron, but almost all computation is done in Rust/Go.
  • 4
    @olback
    Which is how you make a fast and memory efficient electron app 😉
  • 0
    Maybe a PWA ?
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