Comment by __d | Hacker News Reader

Comment by __d | Hacker News Reader

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There are two paths that can be taken: expedience or elegance.

As you point out, Electron is quicker to develop, easier to develop, works for several common platforms, and with a modern device it will perform adequately. It's the expedient choice.

Native applications are potentially slower to develop, harder to develop, and probably won't work on another platform. But they'll integrate better with the system, and be orders of magnitude less demanding of resources. It's the elegant choice.

An argument can be made for both approaches. Neither is "right", nor "wrong". Some people drive a Kia, some drive a BMW.

I prefer elegance in my software. But I don't "hate": I respect your choice to prefer expedience, if that's what you choose.

Elegance comes with an unexpected benefit: battery life. If we turned all common applications into Electron equivalents, the battery life would become abysmal with no benefits. If we turned all Electron applications into native equivalents the battery life would increase.

This compounds with scale, so it's using some additional electrical power per each user.

Also you can try and analyse it also as related to the number Electron applications per machine.

> Elegance comes with an unexpected benefit: battery life.

I'm not really sure that's particularly unexpected.

Thanks for answer.

> I prefer elegance in my software

Do you mean in the software you develop, consume, or both? Do you reject Electron apps only on the basis of being Electron?

Both: develop and consume.

I don't reject Electron apps, but where there's a native equivalent, all other things being equal, I'll almost always prefer it.

It's perfectly possible to write a horrible native app, which demonstrates no elegance whatsoever. It's also possible to write an Electron app with a focus on elegance in UI, UX, and functionality. And of those two choices, I'd almost certainly choose the Electron app.

But trying to do elegance in Electron is handicapping yourself: you're basically fighting against the system to do something that would end up being easier to do with the native toolkit.

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