Its interesting that slack takes 1gb+ memory. Slack still uses the OS provided webview, right? That seems like the right way to do it (last time I used Slack, it was a 3mb download - glorious), but how is it using so much RAM? maybe its leaky?
As someone who uses Slack only in the browser and not as a native app, Electron is not the reason Slack is slow.
Electron doesn't help, of course.
But Slack seems to either cache a lot of stuff, or have memory leaks, or something. It's weird, because Slack seems to re-fetch data whenever I switch rooms, so I'm not sure what all that RAM is being used for.
Electron ships its own Chromium-based browser view. Using the OS provided one does sound like an efficient option, but then you have to deal with all the same compatibility testing (different browsers, different releases, running under different OSes and OS releases) that makes web development suck. It's trying to provide a web-based stack while abstracting away most of those headaches.
It also provides some Chrome specific functionality (loading Chrome extensions) that wouldn't work in an engine-agnostic system, though I don't imagine this is a commonly used mechanism. Extensions are more useful for shoving your own functionality into someone else's webpage, if you control the whole codebase surely it's not the best way to do anything.
> but then you have to deal with all the same compatibility testing
Which means they choose the wrong way to go about creating an app. If you have to bundle a huge secondary app just to run your main application, you've done something wrong.
My guess is Slack likes to keep pages around, and each workspace is a separate page that are individually pretty heavy. So if I'm logged into 4-5 workspaces that adds up quick.
Slack does not use the OS webview, it is Electron. I don't think it's a 3MB download - if it is it must just be an installer that installs the real thing? I haven't looked recently.
It has been years so youre probably right. Bummer. That explains the ram usage.
I do prefer the webview approach because I don’t need/want my chat app to bundle a browser :-/ Ive been a web and native app dev for a decade and do not agree that developer convenience could ever justify these sorts of choices. My webview backed native apps are all sub 1mb and I have no trouble developing them. I guess I just dont get it.
