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Comment by mrmondo | Hacker News Reader

Hi, is this a native (objective c / swift) OS X or just a web frame?

What are you main goals as far as being different from Paw, which is what I use and love thus far?

*edit: oh and congratulations on getting your app out there :)

Thanks for the question! Insomnia is an Electron app built with with a mix of React and Elm. As an independent developer wanting to reach all platforms, Electron was basically the only option for me. And, as a web developer, it's been a super productive development environment.

The goal for Insomnia is to build a REST client that's easy to learn and a joy to use. I looked into other REST clients before starting Insomnia and found them to be cluttered and complicated. Paw was my favourite, but I needed something cross-platform so was unable to use it.

As someone with macOS and now a linux machine, Insomnia will be a perfect replacement for Paw.

> As an independent developer wanting to reach all platforms, Electron was basically the only option for me.

I'm not saying you made the wrong choice, but why do you say that, given the various options for cross-platform development (Qt, Mono, etc)?

Python with PySide (Qt) is always my cross-platform choice. Though I suppose if the OP is a web developer then Electron (JavaScript) would be easier to learn.

I think he meant the only option as a web developer. Maybe he doesn't know C++ and C#, and it's not that easy with a web-oriented mindset to start writing desktop apps in C++ (it's not easy the other way either, I had a friend who after years of programming in Delphi started with the web by absolutely positioning every single HTML element).

When someone asks in which lang should he implement a webapp/SaaS/whatever, the first comment is to use the tech he knows the most. Why so much hate when the same principle is used for desktop app development?

heh, yeah I think he meant that as in that's where his experience is. For me it would be 'As a ops engineer, I wouldn't generally host Javascript apps' to spin it around the other way you know?

Personally my laptop needs to run two browsers an ide and a couple of other programs - as well as a local instance of what I'm working on. This leaves ram+cpu for 0.5 electron apps one runs but now my system is a slug... So I'll not be able to use this which is a shame.

Something like qt is just as cross platform without the performance penalty... So I am sad you took this choice :(

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