HACKER Q&A
📣 sylvain_kerkour

Looking for honest testimonials of Electron vs. Qt vs. GTK


Hi,

Electron is the target of a lot of hate on developer's forums. Nonetheless a lot of app are created with it everyday and you won't make me believe that these developers are just 'stupid' (the words of people hating electron, not mines).

This is why today I'm looking for honest testimonials of people having built apps with Electron and / or Qt and why they chose one rather than the other, if they have regrets or if there is some pitfalls.

Best regards

  👤 semireg Accepted Answer ✓
I built an electron app using the react boilerplate to get started. My app uses a handful of native node modules that let me interface with Mac and windows environments in a fairly seamless way. My app is sold directly from my website using a custom licensing system I built using express, GraphQL and JWT. I also sell on the Mac App Store and Microsoft store. Tooling such as electron-builder make packaging and multi-channel distribution possible, but it’s still a lot of work. You can check out my app at https://label.live. I’m happy to answer any questions about my experience.
👤 scambier
I'm currently building a note-taking app on my free time, with syntactic coloration. I had the choice to go with Electron and CodeMirror, or spend all my time learning new tools (and most likely give up after two weeks). I went with Electron.

Haters gonna hate (often with valid arguments), but my todo list doesn't stagnate and I am (and feel) productive.