It's a total resource hog, slow, and crashes a lot. At least that's been my experience.
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16GB is just barely ok for serious software development
- Thread starter senttoschool
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This isn't the only reason.
The other reasons for using Electron are:
- Cheaper cost to ship software to multiple platforms which decreases software cost for users
- Faster to have platform feature parity. Build the feature once, get the feature on every platform. It's very difficult to do this if you do it natively.
- One team to ship all features which means less planning needed, faster iteration, fewer platform specific bugs.
- Faster feature release. See above.
- Be able to have the same experience as you would on web when you don't have access to a native app. IE. Slack on Web is virtually the same experience as desktop.
That’s all covered under my one point. It’s all an advantage for the vendor not the end user.
I hear constant howls of pain from users and IT teams about it on a daily basis so I wouldn’t say that 0.5 seconds is reasonable.
No, your one point simply implied benefits for shareholders. This is just false.
It's actually about generating value for users when using Electron.
When it costs less to develop the software, you can charge users less, undercutting competing software.
When it's faster to release features to users, users can use the features earlier.
Not hard to understand.
You hear constant howls because you're in an extremely niche forum. None of my normal friends and family give a damn if it's Electron or not.
Yeah companies give out 16GB base models, which are more limiting than the CPU nowadays. Personally, I use a 64GB model and still run out of memory sometimes.
I think a lot of software is a lot less memory aware and consumes a lot of memory nowadays... Nothing to blame because O don't think about memory optimization in my dev either..
I think a lot of software is a lot less memory aware and consumes a lot of memory nowadays... Nothing to blame because O don't think about memory optimization in my dev either..
I hear howls because I’m deploying 20,000 seats of electron apps across 500 organisations.
No one is happy or assumes that the laggy crapfest is how computers are.
There’s at least one point of end user benefit to Electron applications. Not all but many support extensions. VS Code, for instance, has an extensive array of extensions. And the fact that extension APIs are easier to design for a web stack application than a native application (and the extensions are easier to write) does make it a useful end user feature. But I totally get that it’s terribly inefficient to run multiple Electron applications, it would be like firing up a new instance of Chrome for each site you want to use. (Instead if just duplicating each rendering process in each tab, you’ve got the Chrome launching, UI bits, all the stuff that usually lives in the main Chrome application and is shared by all open tabs and windows.)
Well, Electron allowing for delivering updates faster can be useful in finance enterprise software, where the alternative may be an 18 month release cycle because of all the certification needed. But that’s an advantage to enterprise end users exclusively.
But I can speak from experience that, if it can’t be rolled up into webpack, it’s a lot harder to get it working with Electron. As a consultant, I had to write an Electron app that used React. The best approach would probably be to use static rendered React, but the second best approach was to install Node and React server on the machine the Electron app would run on (which was best for development, but would have sucked for the actual release, which wasn’t my job). But static rendered React is tricky and isn’t really designed to make it easy to push local web apps. I imagine they’d tell you “just use React Native, instead”, but the technology stack I was assigned to work with necessitated React and Electron.
Well, Electron allowing for delivering updates faster can be useful in finance enterprise software, where the alternative may be an 18 month release cycle because of all the certification needed. But that’s an advantage to enterprise end users exclusively.
But I can speak from experience that, if it can’t be rolled up into webpack, it’s a lot harder to get it working with Electron. As a consultant, I had to write an Electron app that used React. The best approach would probably be to use static rendered React, but the second best approach was to install Node and React server on the machine the Electron app would run on (which was best for development, but would have sucked for the actual release, which wasn’t my job). But static rendered React is tricky and isn’t really designed to make it easy to push local web apps. I imagine they’d tell you “just use React Native, instead”, but the technology stack I was assigned to work with necessitated React and Electron.
Yes ofc, got 32gb m1 PRO for 3 years now.
Developing in c# power shell and python
As an active developer I never expect to run an entire environment locally. I also don't make monoliths. Given that I'll personally use resources, such as cloud, to handle services I need that are support vs active development. I find it insane to expect to need something like an M1 Ultra Studio to write an election app. Spoiler alert, you don't.
That’s true, M1 Pro works perfectly fine but 24/32GB is the sweet spot for it.
I’m running out of RAM with 16GB then I’m just using vscode and visual studio and tabs etc
It Most likely would work with a m1 but the lack of dual display and 16GB of ram as max make it impossible to use.
Yes, and I did also mean that I’m “stuck with it” for three year (until apple care+ expires then I can buy a new one
Can you clarify what you mean by 'running out of RAM'? I am also running out on my M1 MBA (14GB used out of 16GB) just by doing my general tasks such as web browsing and the likes, but I do not see any measurable performance hits. I think by design MacOS is to use all available memory (why waste it if you've got it‽).
Oh and for reference, you can run dual screen on an M1 - via a Display Port splitter. It's not a solution, but a bit of a workaround if it helps at all.
The ram pressure in active monitor are hitting yellow and sometime red with 16 for me
Fair enough - same for me, although I don't notice any difference or performance impacts, which for me is what makes the difference.
I recall back in the old days (Snow Leopard, etc) running out of memory was a fairly poor experience. Doesn't seem to be as bad now..
It’s because it’s swapping to the super fast disk
I’m working on my machine and as I replacing it every 3 years I’m just choosing the one that fits my needs when I’m replacing the old one.
When I did buy the 14” it was the M1 Pro with 32GB that did match.
Well of course, my friend! We are now blessed with faster storage to help with this memory swapping problem. I think also that memory management is far better now.It’s because it’s swapping to the super fast disk
I’m working on my machine and as I replacing it every 3 years I’m just choosing the one that fits my needs when I’m replacing the old one.
When I did buy the 14” it was the M1 Pro with 32GB that did match.
More memory = good. I wish I had the cash to afford an upgrade
That really doesn't sound right. I definitely not saying it's not possible but I've never seen anything like that. If I were to guess it's likely Chrome (or your browser) eating a lot of resources. I use VS Code and Chrome/FireFox, lots of node instances, docker, VMs, etc. I do very well and don't hit memory pressure on mine. I Have even worked on some creative. I'm not sure what I could be doing that is working so well.
Same and this is not even using VMs. And I don't have more than 2 Rosetta apps which are chat apps... So yeah next time I'm getting 32GB.
I’m using the following;
Skype for busniess
Teams
Vscode (with some extensions)
visual studio
Two 4k displays
Calender
VMware horizon
Royal tsx
Safari
Microsoft outlook
Microsoft edge
And maybe some more.
Ofc if I kill some apps then it’s going down but I do prefer to have my apps that I’m using during the work day open.
So that’s why I’m using 32GB instead of 16GB
Couldn't agree more with OP. I run multiple windows VMs at a time. Each has VSCode, VS2022, IIS, multiple custom windows services, implementing and debugging WPF apps, web apps, node, react, and a giant no-code platform I architect plus have a million things happening on macOS too. Multiple monitors plugged in. I couldn't imagine attempting my job with 16gb. I have an M1 Max with 64gb ram. It is usually up to whatever I throw at it so far but secretly I wish it had more RAM =] especially being unified.
Stop using Chrome, keep it only for final testing and use a more performance focused chromium variant like Opera GX or MS Edge for the heavy work, you'll save a lot of ram the can be better used. Im doing quite a lot more that you on my base m1 Air and it works fine.