
Ask HN: Which app that shouldn't use Electron.js, yet it is? - acrophobic
Hi guys,<p>As we all know, Electron.js is a powerful cross platform desktop app framework. Unfortunately, it&#x27;s quite bloated and heavy on resource which make it not exactly suitable for some app. Thanks to this I&#x27;ve taught myself to use GTK, Qt and QML to build desktop app.<p>Right now I think I&#x27;m quite decent on using QML (as in I could make a simple app and it works properly without crashing). So now I want to challenge myself by porting an Electron app into QML.<p>With that said, are there any Electron.js app that you know, that really simple and shouldn&#x27;t be using Electron, yet it is ?<p>Thanks !
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rvz
> are there any Electron.js app that you know, that really simple and
> shouldn't be using Electron, yet it is ?

I could do a lot with a very fast Git GUI client that is able to index at
least 50K - 100K+ commits that are pulled from its repository and to be able
to bisect and find a regression or to search for a specific commit in the
history.

Unfortunately I have tried GitHub for Desktop, GitKraken and a VSCode
extension "GitLens" which are horrendous for these tasks and essentially
destroy the disk and memory space on my MacBook and as a bonus for every
search it takes a couple of minutes to find the commit. I find them painful to
use.

This is the reason why several devs working with repositories of that
magnitude of commits use the terminal "git" command instead of these Electron
ones. I use Fork [0] and GitAhead [2] as my Git clients on Mac and Linux
respectively and I am very pleased that they both exist.

[0] [https://fork.dev/](https://fork.dev/)

[1] [https://gitahead.com/](https://gitahead.com/)

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itake
This to me just seems like Github Desktop and Gitlens are just poorly
optimized for large repositories. If the git cli can handle large
repositories, then so should the JS ones. There wouldn't be anything
inherently bad about using electron for this.

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gtirloni
That's a question that cant really be answered. If Electron made sense to the
author, then it should be used. If it makes efficient use of hardware
resources, that's another question.

You can get a list of apps here: [https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome-
electron/blob/master...](https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome-
electron/blob/master/readme.md#apps)

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catacombs
Slack. Ugh.

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juststeve
Instead of doing a port, you could assist in expanding the QML ecosystem?

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acrophobic
Unfortunately, I don't think I'm good enough to do that.

Besides, porting an app IMHO is a great way to learn a new language. It give
me a clear goal and let me focus on coding instead of making design decision.

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billconan
text editors and terminal emulators. Speed matters a lot.

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dmlittle
VSCode is built on Electron and it works fine. I don’t think it’s a matter of
whether you’re using Electron or not but rather how you’re using it.

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m3tr0s
GitKraken

