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It doesn't matter how much RAM you're saving and how much fun you're having "thinking outside the box": our company won't use your product because we won't excl

It doesn't matter how much RAM you're saving and how much fun you're having "thinking outside the box": our company won't use your product because we won't exclude from team communication our employees that choose to use Linux, or need to use Windows for financial software. It's absurd to me to have collaboration software that excludes people just for some technical clout.

reaperducer 4y ago
our company won't use your product I think you need to clarify what "our company" means, so we can evaluate the significance of your statement. Is "our company" 20,000 seats in 43 countries? Or is "our company" Jack, Joe, and Fred working in their bedrooms and collaborating over ICQ?
- rsstack 4y ago
  I worked at a Fortune 500 company with hundreds of thousand of employees, high five digits in an office setting. No interesting cross-functional team was pure-macOS (mostly Windows, some macOS, some Linux users in engineering centers outside the US). I worked at a 300 person startup. No interesting cross-functional team was pure-macOS (80% macOS, mix of Windows and Linux for the rest). I worked at smaller startups (<20), and they still weren't all macOS.
nemothekid 4y ago
Reply this so I have a quick link I can search whenever someone complains about companies only developing Electron apps.
- johnny22 4y ago
  but many folks (including myself) aren't counting apps specific to a platform like this one. You should have a set of quick links to cross platform apps that are native.
- cercatrova 4y ago
  HN has a "favorite" button if you click on the permalink of a comment.
- blub 4y ago
  I’ll reply here so that you can also quickly have access to the counter-argument: people complain about Electron because of quality issues. OP is arguing for Electron for business reasons. Which is why we’re generally exposed to so much mediocre software. Business is king and most companies do the minimum possible to get customers and grow. And if they for some reason do engineer to higher quality than their competitors, it’s quite likely that they will be outcompeted.
solatic 4y ago
There are a lot of smaller companies that start off as 100% Mac shops. On the face of it, this is a smarter choice for them. Not every shop is a Fortune 500 that needs to support some nigh uncountable variety of setups. But I do agree with you. Developing backend cloud applications is just easier on Linux. You will only succeed at prying Windows + Excel from Finance's cold, dead hands. Most companies that aspire to growth will get there. Why shoot yourself in the foot for 160 MB RAM savings?
antileet 4y ago
Having built desktop software - I found doing things cross platform is hard for various reasons. 1. You can't use any specialized features or APIs in one OS unless you implement it in all others. 2. If you use Electron you're basically building a webpage, which can only be taken so far in terms of user experience. While teams like VS Code have pushed the limits, you still can't do what this app is doing. 3. Increased test/QA surface area which becomes difficult - especially supporting Linux - which have relatively fewer users but you still have to properly invest time into supporting it, something startups cannot do. I really don't see the point of this product, but there are plenty of small to medium teams which are mac only, and it's better to be an interesting niche rather than yet another collaboration and huddle-type software.
golergka 4y ago
Our team develops an Electron-based app which is released on Windows, MacOS and Linux. I only own a macbook, but so far I haven't had a single compatibility issue — everything that works on MacOS also works everywhere else. And if we wanted to do a web app (which is a fantastic from business perspective for a lot of reasons), it would require some groundwork, of course, but nothing like doing it from scratch.
socialdemocrat 4y ago
Build native for every platform. The amount of work supposedly saved by using cross platform solutions is grossly exaggerated and frequently negative. Most development time isn’t typing code but actually architecting the solution. You will go through multiple iterations to get your UX right. Lots of things like graphics, GUI mock-ups, database design, file formats can be reused. In cross platform development one too often ends up wasting time on problems introduced by buggy layers on top of the native frameworks. Every time I have compare my development speed using native tools vs a lot of the cross platform web stuff, native wins hands down. But it depends on where your skills are. If you are more skilled with web technologies then your experience will likely be different.
- e_y_ 4y ago
  I think many companies have a chicken-and-egg problem when it comes to cross-platform development. They already engineers for iOS/Android/Mac/Windows and there's established workflows for creating native apps for each platform, so cross-platform experiments are at an inherent disadvantage. > You will go through multiple iterations to get your UX right. For high-level UX flows, this is where cross-platform frameworks could have an advantage, because you can iterate without redoing the work for each platform. It might even make sense to use a web framework for the initial prototype and early user trials, and then reimplement in native for performance/details once it's finalized. As a bonus, if you're willing to maintain the web version you could use it as your browser-accessible version.
  - aejae 4y ago
    Good points. I think there are two reasonable options: A/ use cross platform to iterate effectively B/ choose to iterate on only one platform, then build out other platforms as your ux stabilizes. We chose B but acknowledge it’s an unusual option, and there a 30% chance in our minds that we’re wrong /shrug
- embirico 4y ago
  (Cofounder here) This is close to our thinking. Comes from seeing how at Dropbox we started with a cross-platform approach on desktop. While it meant that we could quickly achieve consistency, it also meant that we couldn’t use platform-specific tooling on any given platform, like debuggers, without a bunch of custom tooling to fight through the intermediate layers. We want to try running small teams using the best stack for each platform.
aejae 4y ago
(Cofounder here) Agreed, we aren’t ready for your team yet. We’re starting with a small but opinionated target audience, and building out for other platforms from there. > just for some technical clout I think we both know that’s oversimplifying :)

reaperducer 4y ago

our company won't use your product I think you need to clarify what "our company" means, so we can evaluate the significance of your statement. Is "our company" 20,000 seats in 43 countries? Or is "our company" Jack, Joe, and Fred working in their bedrooms and collaborating over ICQ?

rsstack 4y ago
I worked at a Fortune 500 company with hundreds of thousand of employees, high five digits in an office setting. No interesting cross-functional team was pure-macOS (mostly Windows, some macOS, some Linux users in engineering centers outside the US). I worked at a 300 person startup. No interesting cross-functional team was pure-macOS (80% macOS, mix of Windows and Linux for the rest). I worked at smaller startups (<20), and they still weren't all macOS.

nemothekid 4y ago

Reply this so I have a quick link I can search whenever someone complains about companies only developing Electron apps.

johnny22 4y ago
but many folks (including myself) aren't counting apps specific to a platform like this one. You should have a set of quick links to cross platform apps that are native.
cercatrova 4y ago
HN has a "favorite" button if you click on the permalink of a comment.
blub 4y ago
I’ll reply here so that you can also quickly have access to the counter-argument: people complain about Electron because of quality issues. OP is arguing for Electron for business reasons. Which is why we’re generally exposed to so much mediocre software. Business is king and most companies do the minimum possible to get customers and grow. And if they for some reason do engineer to higher quality than their competitors, it’s quite likely that they will be outcompeted.

solatic 4y ago

There are a lot of smaller companies that start off as 100% Mac shops. On the face of it, this is a smarter choice for them. Not every shop is a Fortune 500 that needs to support some nigh uncountable variety of setups. But I do agree with you. Developing backend cloud applications is just easier on Linux. You will only succeed at prying Windows + Excel from Finance's cold, dead hands. Most companies that aspire to growth will get there. Why shoot yourself in the foot for 160 MB RAM savings?

antileet 4y ago

Having built desktop software - I found doing things cross platform is hard for various reasons. 1. You can't use any specialized features or APIs in one OS unless you implement it in all others. 2. If you use Electron you're basically building a webpage, which can only be taken so far in terms of user experience. While teams like VS Code have pushed the limits, you still can't do what this app is doing. 3. Increased test/QA surface area which becomes difficult - especially supporting Linux - which have relatively fewer users but you still have to properly invest time into supporting it, something startups cannot do. I really don't see the point of this product, but there are plenty of small to medium teams which are mac only, and it's better to be an interesting niche rather than yet another collaboration and huddle-type software.

golergka 4y ago

Our team develops an Electron-based app which is released on Windows, MacOS and Linux. I only own a macbook, but so far I haven't had a single compatibility issue — everything that works on MacOS also works everywhere else. And if we wanted to do a web app (which is a fantastic from business perspective for a lot of reasons), it would require some groundwork, of course, but nothing like doing it from scratch.

socialdemocrat 4y ago

Build native for every platform. The amount of work supposedly saved by using cross platform solutions is grossly exaggerated and frequently negative. Most development time isn’t typing code but actually architecting the solution. You will go through multiple iterations to get your UX right. Lots of things like graphics, GUI mock-ups, database design, file formats can be reused. In cross platform development one too often ends up wasting time on problems introduced by buggy layers on top of the native frameworks. Every time I have compare my development speed using native tools vs a lot of the cross platform web stuff, native wins hands down. But it depends on where your skills are. If you are more skilled with web technologies then your experience will likely be different.

e_y_ 4y ago
I think many companies have a chicken-and-egg problem when it comes to cross-platform development. They already engineers for iOS/Android/Mac/Windows and there's established workflows for creating native apps for each platform, so cross-platform experiments are at an inherent disadvantage. > You will go through multiple iterations to get your UX right. For high-level UX flows, this is where cross-platform frameworks could have an advantage, because you can iterate without redoing the work for each platform. It might even make sense to use a web framework for the initial prototype and early user trials, and then reimplement in native for performance/details once it's finalized. As a bonus, if you're willing to maintain the web version you could use it as your browser-accessible version.
- aejae 4y ago
  Good points. I think there are two reasonable options: A/ use cross platform to iterate effectively B/ choose to iterate on only one platform, then build out other platforms as your ux stabilizes. We chose B but acknowledge it’s an unusual option, and there a 30% chance in our minds that we’re wrong /shrug
embirico 4y ago
(Cofounder here) This is close to our thinking. Comes from seeing how at Dropbox we started with a cross-platform approach on desktop. While it meant that we could quickly achieve consistency, it also meant that we couldn’t use platform-specific tooling on any given platform, like debuggers, without a bunch of custom tooling to fight through the intermediate layers. We want to try running small teams using the best stack for each platform.

aejae 4y ago

(Cofounder here) Agreed, we aren’t ready for your team yet. We’re starting with a small but opinionated target audience, and building out for other platforms from there. > just for some technical clout I think we both know that’s oversimplifying :)