
Ask HN: Looking for honest testimonials of Electron vs. Qt vs. GTK - sylvain_kerkour
Hi,<p>Electron is the target of a lot of hate on developer&#x27;s forums. Nonetheless a lot of app are created with it everyday and you won&#x27;t make me believe that these developers are just &#x27;stupid&#x27; (the words of people hating electron, not mines).<p>This is why today I&#x27;m looking for honest testimonials of people having built apps with Electron and &#x2F; or Qt and why they chose one rather than the other, if they have regrets or if there is some pitfalls.<p>Best regards
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semireg
I built an electron app using the react boilerplate to get started. My app
uses a handful of native node modules that let me interface with Mac and
windows environments in a fairly seamless way. My app is sold directly from my
website using a custom licensing system I built using express, GraphQL and
JWT. I also sell on the Mac App Store and Microsoft store. Tooling such as
electron-builder make packaging and multi-channel distribution possible, but
it’s still a lot of work. You can check out my app at
[https://label.live](https://label.live). I’m happy to answer any questions
about my experience.

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scambier
I'm currently building a note-taking app on my free time, with syntactic
coloration. I had the choice to go with Electron and CodeMirror, or spend all
my time learning new tools (and most likely give up after two weeks). I went
with Electron.

Haters gonna hate (often with valid arguments), but my todo list doesn't
stagnate and I am (and feel) productive.

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sylvain_kerkour
Thank you for the feedback!

This is also my impression, the developer experience of electron is just so
great!

On the other hand, looking at the Qt website I believe there is a misalignment
between the need of the developers and what the Qt Company is pushing.

~~~
scambier
> the developer experience of electron is just so great!

We're biased though. I'm sure Qt developers who love working with would be
miserable with Electron.

> On the other hand, looking at the Qt website I believe there is a
> misalignment between the need of the developers and what the Qt Company is
> pushing.

Yeah I'm not sure who this marketing is aimed at. Developers turned managers?
It's "too shiny" to keep me interested, but IMO too technical to interest
product owners.

