Comment by interf4ce

You're right, Electron is not inherently bad and apps need RAM. There's no getting around that.

The issue with Electron is that it encourages building desktop apps as self-contained websites. Sure, that makes it easier to distribute apps across systems and OSes, but it also means you've got front end web devs building system applications. Naturally, they'll use what they're used to: usually React, which exacerbates the problem. Plus it means that each app is running a new instance of a web browser, which adds overhead.

In real life, yeah, it's rare that I actually encounter a system slowdown because yet another app is running on Electron. I just think that it's bad practice to assume that all users can spare the memory.

I'll admit that my concern is more of a moral one than a practical one. I build software for a living and I think that optimizing resource usage is one way to show respect to my users (be they consumers, ops people running the infra, or whatever). Not to mention that lean, snappy apps make for a better user experience.