You mentioned "distribute software" but did not consider Electron for Node.
You can make an Electron app with JavaScript and ship the binary (or installer) on any platform. It's not a single executable file, but the user experience is the same.
I don't think there's an equivalent in Go that allows you build a desktop app like that (with frontend and backend both written in Go)?
You can do that with Java too. The JDK has jpackage, but if you want something better than I'm willing to sell that to you (or give it for free, if you're open source):
It can be used to ship servers, we use it that way for our own servers. It sets up systemd so you don't need to use Docker. But where it shines is desktop apps.
Windows users get a little 400kb EXE that installs/updates your app and then immediately starts it without user interaction required, so it's effectively a single EXE. Mac users get a bundle. Linux, well, Linux users get a deb that sets up the app+its apt repo, or a tarball. Maybe in future a FlatPak or Snap or something else.
It knows how to bundle and minimize a JDK along with your app as part of the release process. Works great for desktop apps.
It's for Electron too, same deal, easier than Forge in my humble and very biased opinion.
That was true in 2005. Modern Java UI can look pretty great. Two examples:
1. Start IntelliJ and check it out. It's Swing but it feels modern and fresh.
2. Go to https://www.jfx-central.com/ ... JavaFX was introduced years ago to add far better support for modern visuals. JFX Central is a website written with JavaFX itself - it runs server side and streams drawing instructions to the client (implemented using a mix of divs, svg tags and css). You can do this because JavaFX implements the CSS2 drawing model. The website looks modern, like any slick website would today, but you can also download and run it locally. It uses Conveyor to do that in fact. The desktop version looks exactly the same as the web version.
For me I use neither, I actually picked wxWidgets after all those desktop GUI troubles over the years, not ideal, but it's the best I found for myself.
I'm not so sure if the users of VS Code, Discord, Slack, etc would agree.
Yes it's bulky and sometimes slow, but it offers a lot of features and allow developers to ship features and updates really fast, while only needing one codebase for all platform.
I'm a user of VS Code and Slack and I'd be very happy if they didn't use Electron.
>Yes it's bulky and sometimes slow, but it offers a lot of features and allow developers to ship features and updates really fast, while only needing one codebase for all platform.
Like Slack having 1000x the memory and CPU use for 1/10th of the features a 200K app like ICQ used to have 25 years ago?
I feel vscode is quite good at hiding the fact it's not native, and felt quite snappy when I used it. Slack on the other hand feels painful slow and heavy (and very sensitive to network events like change of network or short disconnections, while native apps are generally much better add handling such glitches for some reasons)
I can't see users caring about it all being one single codebase and I don't think that they should. Every cross-platform development tool like this means awkward, non-native UIs. Maybe there's something to new feature development. But, I suspect the big players could be a little less profitable and deliver a better experience for their end users.
I've used Electron as a developer, too. While it may have been fast & easy at one time, I think that argument is losing merit. Electron had a lot of security holes and patching them has made common tasks harder. Security with Electron is a problem in general given its massive surface area.
Users definitely notice the performance issues. It's certainly not just devs complaining about abstract issues. Yes, people use these tools, but that's mostly out of necessity, not preference. Moreover, big players like VS Code have had to write swathes of the app in C++ for performance reasons.
I look forward to a return to optimizing for the user, not developer velocity. There will likely always be attempts at cross-platform toolkits and there may be a good solution in that space. I hope Electron isn't the best we can do.
> Security with Electron is a problem in general given its massive surface area.
I'm new to Electron development. I've read the docs recommending hardened runtime. Would it be sufficient for security? Can you give examples of such security issues?
Here I was referring specifically to pulling in a web browser as a dependency. Chrome pumps out security releases regularly for all sorts of issues. If you're essentially making Chromium the core of your application, you inherit those security issues (setting aside the fact it may happen in code paths you don't use). And, consequently, you need to keep up on updating Electron and distributing new builds to your end users, even if you haven't made any code changes.
I'm not suggesting every Electron app is a giant bag of vulnerabilities, just that you have a lot more to keep on than you would writing with GTK or UIKit. And, since everything is bundled with the application, you can't rely on OS updates to fix things for you. You need to cut a new release and distribute it.
If you follow the Electron recommendations on security you'll be on the right path. You'll just find common tasks have become harder than they were back when Electron was attracting people with its ease-of-use. I found trying to do type-safe IPC to be an exercise in frustration. If you read the old docs, tutorials, or books, you'll find IPC used to be considerably more free-wheeling. Locking it down is the right trade-off, I think. But there's been an accumulation of many small changes like that. As a result, I don't think the framework is nearly as easy to work with as when Slack or VS Code adopted it.
Thank you for your response. I have previously dealt with IPC for a different project and it was painful indeed.
But I found out that there is this new Preload module in electron that lets you use Node.js very easily via normal export and import. I'm using a popular starter template and it works great so far.
Haven't used VScode, but Slack absolutely sucks IMO (on Linux). I don't even want to install Discord, I use it from the website (but I'm pretty sure the Electron app would be similar to the Slack one).
> Yes it's bulky and sometimes slow, but it offers a lot of features and allow developers to ship features and updates really fast, while only needing one codebase for all platform.
So you are saying that it is bad for the user (bulky and slow), but good for the developer productivity. I really don't see how the users could like the fact that the developers are being more productive while making a worse app.
Using Discord for voice comms in CSGO on Ryzen 3600x w/ 32GB RAM had noticeable impact on my framerate, big enough that I refused to use for this purpose. No impact using Teamspeak. Both in Windows.
You can make an Electron app with JavaScript and ship the binary (or installer) on any platform. It's not a single executable file, but the user experience is the same.
I don't think there's an equivalent in Go that allows you build a desktop app like that (with frontend and backend both written in Go)?