Why does a Mac-only app that shows a menu bar icon and a notification popup need to be Electron…? That’s 30 lines of Swift, max.

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k4rli 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Looks like ai-generated bloat. It even has deps for deb+rpm builds yet is mac only.

Honestly would not expect anything more from js devs who use macs/windows. I see this so often.

	▲	eddd-ddde 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Those deps are just electron's boilerplate. If you create any new electron app from a starter that's likely what you get.
	▲	JimDabell 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I’ve asked AI to build macOS menu bar apps and it’s generated perfectly reasonable Swift, nothing like this.

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jeroenhd a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you don't know Swift, but do know Electron, it's easier to do it in 30 lines of Javascript.

People who don't like the developers work can always write and publish their own application, of course.

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whatevaa a day ago | parent [-]

It's hard work writing free stuff for others, much easier to criticise stuff instead of getting your hands dirty.

	▲	pwdisswordfishz 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's hard work learning programming tools and optimizing, much easier to use a one-size-fits all framework that wastes the end-user's resources.

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SR2Z a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you want a frontend for you app, you probably just use Electron and get it over with in a few minutes instead of digging through the docs for Qt or some other framework.

Is it worth it? Probably not, since this is a single-platform app to start with, but JS+HTML are easy to theme and customize, and Qt is... not quite as simple.

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rafram a day ago | parent | next [-]

Where did you get Qt from? This is, again, a Mac-only app that doesn’t even have any windows. It’s just a menu bar icon and a notification. That’s incredibly simple to build with plain old Cocoa and Swift.

	▲	anthk a day ago \| parent [-]
		Or AppleScript maybe.

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righthand a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No one has to dig through electron docs though right? There is nothing simple about an electron app regardless how little logic you personally programmed on top of it.

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juancroldan a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Now that you can build such an app with AI in under 20 minutes with a manageable codebase you can properly understand and control, I don't think that's a good excuse anymore

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whatevaa a day ago | parent | next [-]

If you don't know the language, how can you properly understand and control it?

	▲	therein a day ago \| parent [-]
		In 2025 you unfortunately just vibe with the code nowadays.

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paxys a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> with a manageable codebase you can properly understand and control

Yeah, that definitely describes every AI codebase I have seen..

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outofpaper a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

People forget to think about Swift let alone tools like Platypus.

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thisislife2 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It doesn't need to be - on macOS, it could even just as well have been a simple Xbar Plug-In! ( https://xbarapp.com/ ).

	▲	rafram a day ago \| parent [-]
		Or Alfred script, Raycast plugin, Shortcuts shortcut, shell alias, and the list goes on. There are a lot of decent options; "50+ MB Electron app" is, in my opinion, not one.

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palata a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Electron is an overkill way to not have to learn how to do stuff properly, if you ask me. And people love not to learn.

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WJW a day ago | parent [-]

Send in a PR then?

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ipaddr a day ago | parent [-]

A pr that deletes the repo and bans the person from github?

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WJW a day ago | parent [-]

No a PR that actually makes the world a better place. Be the change you want to see and all that.

	▲	pwdisswordfishz 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		By deleting the repo and banning the person from GitHub?

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gopher_space a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is ActionScript still a thing on Macs? I feel like that tech was almost criminally overlooked while being the backbone for a lot of processing pipelines back in the day.

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rafram a day ago | parent | next [-]

It (AppleScript) is, and you can actually write JS instead these days, with a criminally underdocumented Objective-C bridge (JXA).

	▲	al_borland 9 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I was preparing for the death of AppleScript and was shocked when I stumbled around their addition of JS a few years back. I thought that would have been big enough news to hit my radar when it happened, or that Apple would have made a big deal about it at WWDC. Of course, that would require them to fully support AppleScript in their newer apps, while instead they seem to really only care about Shortcuts, since that’s easier to sell on mobile, I assume.
	▲	latexr 17 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		> with a criminally underdocumented Objective-C bridge The documentation is the Objective-C docs, I use those all the time. You do need to understand the basics of how to translate from the Objective-C APIs to what JXA (or AppleScript) expects, but once it clicks you can do it for essentially anything with the same logic.
	▲	gopher_space 21 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Ahh thanks! Went down a brief rabbit hole with JXA and had forgotten how opaque Apple is when you're developing for them.

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mattl a day ago | parent | prev [-]

You mean AppleScript?

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ajsnigrutin a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

1) the dev only had a hammer and he nailed the screw in

2) the dev has 64gigs of ram and a newest CPU and doesn't care about performance issues for people on older computers... that's why you need gigs of ram just to read a weather report online.