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Comment by shawn_w

5 days ago

That Electron is a acceptable way to write desktop applications is a big reason I miss those old days.

I go back and forth on this all the time. Generally, I consider applications in browsers an example of the inner-platform effect because I believe native applications are typically better (faster, resource efficient, more consistent UI).

On the other hand, look at ChromeOS: a (previously) successful operating system based on the idea that nearly everything can be implemented in the browser. Microsoft even toyed with this a long time ago, when they made ActiveX controls and integrated Internet Explorer into the desktop. The browser provides a number of security benefits, and allows remote applications (Visual Studio code can be run in the browser, although it looks like the terminal doesn't work, which is a huge probelm).

Personally, I find VS Code's performance to be fine on extremely fast machines, and tolerable on slow machines, but I also think that a truly native VS Code (probably based on Qt) would be 100X better.