← Back to context

Comment by code_duck

10 hours ago

Google seems to prefer reimplementing every portion of an OS possible in Chrome.

If you want things to work every single time on a billion different devices this is how you do it.

  • Yeah, and then 100 different apps can repackage the browser engine as an Electron app, each weigh 300+mb.

    I saw this recently with Balena etcher. It's a firmware flashing app with about 10 buttons total. It's over 400mb because it's written in node and has an electron GUI.

    Good jerb.

    • When your flashing app starts getting bigger than the operating systems it's writing, you should start asking yourself some questions.

        ~$ du -h $(which dd)
        76K     /usr/bin/dd
      

      Etcher truly is the clowniest Electron app of them all.

      5 replies →

    • > It's a firmware flashing app with about 10 buttons total.

      What you're saying is it's the ideal kind of application for not obsessing over its background resource consumption, given that it's only going to be running for 10 minutes once or twice a year.

Indeed. The most goofy is their proprietary Print dialog. I think(?) they added it to gain a previewing pane, but Apple added that capability to the native print dialog about 10 years ago. Chrome still forces its old bespoke one though, and when you do the extra click to get the OS standard one, they apparently don't use the previewing API, so it's missing.