Handle Perceived Performance

Electron is a mixed bag. Go online, Reddit, Hacker News, X, or anything public, you’ll see the moment an app is released with the mention of Electron, the pitchforks come out. Sometimes to an extreme. The internet loathes Electron, more so than most tools. Why is this? Electron’s historical usage has been plagued by poorly performing apps. Many apps that are resource hogs you probably use right now. The general level of performance has gone up over the years as maturity rises, but the stigma of poor performance has been attached to Electron for forever. Combined with an echo‑chamber effect, this leads to a general disdain for all things Electron. We as developers understand Electron can be un-performant, can be bad, and can have countless issues. But this can be applied to any set of tools we use, it’s not specific to any one thing. Choose any arbitrary language, framework, or library and the same could be said. An app built with Electron can be the greatest app you’ve ever used, or the worst. … So, why does Electron seem to breed poor‑performing apps? One word: accessibility. We as an industry lack native app developers. For every one native developer, there are eight web developers. If you’re one of the eight web developers looking to build a desktop app, you’re going to choose what you’re familiar with. This accessibility allows so many people to build desktop applications of varying quality. You’re bound to have a ton of horribly built apps, by developers whose core competency isn’t even the platform. Companies looking for desktop apps “for cheap” are going to push their dev teams to choose tools like Electron with no regard for technical effort. Someone out there is saying “we should choose Electron, it’s just building a website, we don’t even need more developers.” This is how we end up with poor performing apps.