smaragdus wrote: ↑Wed Aug 22, 2018 9:19 pm
Lately you have been pushing more and more
Electron trash, why do you do that? For me it is wrong to advertise this terrible "framework".
As a fan of software more broadly, I've been very pleased with some changes in the overall industry both from companies and individuals over these last ~20 years. The move towards open source, the reduced dominance of Windows, and an improved conversation on security. Certainly I've also been very frustrated by some decisions, but it's always been a gray area in terms of ideal circumstance. Portable software on the whole has fixed 4 of my most hated issues, those being:
- Reasonably independent from the Internet (usually)
- Ease to backup or sync with other machines
- Ability to run from inside a secure volume (like VeraCrypt)
- Self contained (all the files you need are inside the folder)
By virtue of #4, portable software has always had more bulky installs, which is fine with me. For example, I have at this moment 8 instances of
FFMPEG.DLL on my machine, which is a little absurd, but I prefer having extra junk to dealing with the dependency hell that other platforms have to deal with. That's not to say that Electron doesn't take it to a whole new annoying level by throwing what is basically an entire copy of Chrome into every damn program, but I'm just saying it's not entirely new.
As to why I keep posting about Electron-based programs here on the site, ultimately it comes down to tools I need or that I'm interested in, and lately just coincidence I've been pigeonholed into two classes of programs: text manipulation and chat tools. Both of these have been sadly leaning on the Electron framework to do everything, with little sign of change on the horizon.
To be clear, I'm not happy with Electron and I'm not happy with this direction in development. I've brought up this topic with associated developers and continue to advocate for better, non-bulky software design, but right now this is unfortunately where the stuff I need is located. Hopefully that changes in the near future.