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Cake day: August 20th, 2023

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  • Writing the same app in Javascript for a DOM browser is quicker and easier than writing it in a native GUI toolkit, as you don’t need to think about life cycles or memory management as much. Of course, nothing comes for free, so the cost is borne by the userbase needing more RAM and faster CPUs to get the same work done. Which is philosophically in the same tradition of offloading negative externalities as dumping toxic waste in rivers.


  • The thing is that Electron apps don’t even look good compared to native apps. They’re slow and janky and, once you’ve seen a few of them, your impression is “the company didn’t care enough to build a native app”. In that sense, an Electron webpage in an app has the same connotations as AI artwork on a Substack essay: it looks slick if you’ve never seen one before, but cheap and shoddy if you know what it is.