Because why go for native performance when you can go for minimum effort on all platforms.
this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2026
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When all you have is ~~a hammer~~ JavaScript, everything looks like a ~~nail~~ web page.
Kids these days don't bother learning languages that actually compile to native apps.
All of my degree was in C, C++, C#, Java, etc. and the one class I had that did web applications did Java backends and middleware with PHP frontends. It wasnβt until I got into the industry that I had to learn Angular, Electron, React, Django, etc.
I donβt think itβs the devs making these decisions.
It's the minimum effort that translates to minimum time that translates to minimum cost for the business. Why hire another developer for a mobile app (or another platform) when you could just have the same web dev write it. Or without hiring another dev, why have the same dev need to build up tooling in another language when you can just reuse from the existing platform
Exactly, that and the βwe are a [insert product name here] shopβ mentality. The things I have had to fight for over the years are mind boggling.
It is the devs. Management says they need it fast then the devs say "fuck you here's your browser tab app".
I deam of a dev job that would let me actually write a good app..
Why have a consistent Wayland experience when each application can run it's own Electron version with varying degrees of enforced Wayland flags, and/or such an outdated Chromium version Wayland is just jank.
Edit:
Was trying to say that most of these CEF/Electron applications all need their own separate Wayland specific (Chromium) flags to have better Wayland support/integration. And the older Electron applications typically use an older Chromium as base, having even worse Wayland support... Was not trying to make this a "Wayland bad!" kind of post.
TL;DR: Electron applications have wildly varying level of Wayland support/integration, don't have any Wayland issues other than specific CEF/Electron apps!
Wayland isn't the problem. Chrome just doesn't behave well with it. I haven't had any Wayland-related issues with Firefox.
Because you want a cross platform solution?
I get that electron can be slow, bloated, etc, but the amount of ire it draws is overboard.
Yes but sometimes, for example core parts of windows 11 like the start menu, don't need to be cross platform and should be native, not a pwa
Especially since they had already native code in previous windows...
the amount of ~~ire~~ CPU cycles / frames / watts it draws is overboard. Lol
(Trying to be funny not aggressive lol)
For real though, I think it's just because it epitomizes that "Hardware is fast now so throw sluggishly interpreted high-level code at it and don't even bother with optimization" mentality.
Like I remember when people would bash Python over this, but Electron apps make that feel way overblown now.
(Also Python did nothing wrong :( lol)
Having built applications with Microsoft's mfc, Java's swing, the omnipresent Qt, and whatever nastiness Mac was using in the early 00's, electron is worth the silliness. Trust me. Trust me.
As an engineer, Swing is great! Granted, I wouldn't use it to deliver a polished UI to users.
The individual things themselves weren't really the issue. Swing was by far my favorite.
The issue was cross platform ui development. If you didn't target Java, swing wasn't viable.
Swing was by far my favorite.
Nice. My team constantly gripes about it but I'm all, "...it's a well designed UI toolkit...?" I can make it do anything. It took me weeks (as a newbie) to try to lay out UI components just so with the new hotness and at the end I had to give up and move on. It would've taken me five minutes to do it with Swing.
Swing is what all these xml layout tools have been trying to replicate, honestly. Some get close, but far too few.
It warmed my heart when GWT basically copied swing for its layout. Made that super easy to learn.
Reminder to talk to your doctor about a colonoscopy
Ugh. Cancel reminder, ready to take my chances with rectal cancer...
Understandable
the omnipresent Qt
So weird. I spent more than two years of my career working on a Qt app (not by choice) but I've never met another human being who has ever even heard of Qt. Nothing else has ever made me so certain that I'm clinically insane.
My favorite thing about Qt was the use of C++ for the back end and Javascript for the UI layer. It lets companies take advantage of the, uh, four people in the world who are good with both languages.
Hah! Yeah, qt has some really neat interfacing. And it is in so many places you wouldn't expect it to be...
I'll admit I'm not versed enough as a developer to grasp this so I'll take your word for it.
... I'mma just build my cross platform programs in Godot and nobody can stop me. >:)
I won't, Godot is perfectly cromulent.
I know it's easy to dunk on Electron... but have any of yall written any desktop apps with native frameworks? I wrote a small GTK4+Vala app once and I discovered desktop frameworks are very different than developing webapps. Customizing the look, feel, interaction of elements, and general mechanics, seems like a toooon of effort. (It kinda seems like you're not supposed to customize it.) Web development is waaaaaaaay more friendly towards customization. Which as a company, you want your app to look like your company, not some generic OS bundled app.
And then you have to repeat all that effort for crappleOS and Wangblows?... And then you gotta hope that it's even possible to do the thing you want in different OSes. Sheesh.
I mean, I'd be happy if everything was native apps, but I also understand why people don't tend to choose that route.
That's kind of the point of the frameworks though? Electron apps suck not only because of resource footprint, they don't look and feel native, if they have any accessibility it's usually custom and different for every program. Too much customization is bad.
I remember the times before UI toolkits took over. These programs had soul and were beautiful in their own way, but you had to learn how UI elements worked in each of them separately. The same thing happens with web apps now. Tab and the other usual keyboard shortcuts rarely work, controls are all custom.
100%, but man these are making me nostalgic.
Honesty Electron is fine as a concept
The problem lies with the implementation. I see no reason why many of these apps couldn't just be links to a website.
This edit is really well done.
I get that it sucks. Are there any alternatives, where I have one codebase for all platforms?
Have you heard of Java? Or any other language that abstracts away the GUI gluecode. Or don't just even go electron and provide a web app instead.
Java apps are even worse than electron. Not to mention you need to install Java to run them.
Mhm... Install 300mb once to run any Java application or 300mb for each and every electron app.
Its an easy choice.
As if the Java app won't be even uglier than electron and still weigh in at 300 mb for each. Not to mention introducing security issues on your machine with the jre
There's a reason people stopped making consumer apps in Java
Uglier? Debatable as there are different UI Toolkits that can actually look beautiful and you don't have to reimplement controls like you would in an electron app.
And you certainly wouldn't introduce new security issues with different and outdated v8 engines that are bundled with your electron app, no sir.
Because Java totally doesn't exist for every platform ever
Everyone should have to make one native app before being allowed to make fun of electron/webviews.
Counterpoint: Every developer should have to test their app on a machine with 1 GB of RAM and a dialup modem before inflicting their bloat on the rest of the world.