[827a]

Electron isn't that bad. Apps like VSCode and Obsidian are among the highest quality and most performant apps I have installed. The Claude app's problem is not electron; its that it just sucks, bad. Stop blaming problems on nativeness.

[bigstrat2003]

VSCode takes 1 GB of memory to open the same files that Sublime can do in just 200 MB. It is not remotely performant software, it sucks at performance.

[hyperrail]

I too thought VSCode's being web based would make it much slower than Sublime. So I was surprised when I found on my 2019 and 2024 ~$2,500-3,000 MacBook Pros that Sublime would continually freeze up or crash while viewing the same 250 MB - 1 GB plain text log files that VSCode would open just fine and run reliably on.

At most, VS Code might say that it has disabled lexing, syntax coloring, etc. due to the file size. But I don't care about that for log files...

It still might be true that Visual Studio Code uses more memory for the same file than Sublime Text would. But for me, it's more important that the editor runs at all.

[AreShoesFeet000]

Maybe Electron isn’t that bad. Maybe there are some great Electron apps. But there’s a big chunk that went unsaid: Most Electron apps suck. Does correlation here imply causation? Maybe not, but holy fuck isn’t it frustrating to be a user of Electron apps.

[bdangubic]

it is not that most electron apps suck, the ones OP listed suck

[vsgherzi]

I think you’re missing the point a little friendo, it’s not that electron is bad it’s that electron itself is an abstraction for cross platform support. If code can be generated for free then the question is why do we need this to begin with why can’t Claude write it in win32, SwiftUI, and gtk?

The answer of course is that it can’t do it and maintain compatibility between all three well enough as it’s high effort and each has its own idiosyncrasies.

[linsomniac]

I don't know about whether Electron fits in this case, but I can say Claude isn't equally proficient at all toolchains. I recently had Claude Code (Opus 4.6, agent teams) build a image manipulation webapp in Python, Go, Rust, and Zig.

In python it was very nearly a 1-shot, there was an issue with one watermark not showing up on one API endpoint that I had to give it a couple kicks at the can to fix. Go it was able to get but it needed 5+ attempts at rework. Rust took ~10+, and Zig took maybe 15+.

They were all given the same prompt, though they all likely would have dont much better if I had it build a test suite or at least a manual testing recipe for it to follow.

[ozim]

To build gtk you are hit with GPL which sucks. To build Swift you have to pay developer fee to Apple, to build win32 you have to pay developer fee to Microsoft. Which both suck. Don’t forget mobile Android you pay to Google.

That is why everyone jumped to building in Electron because it is based on web standards that are free and are running on chromium which kind of is tied to Google but you are not tied to Google and don’t have to pay them a fee. You can also easily provide kind of the same experience on mobile skipping Android shenigans.