I would argue that shipping bad software is worse than shipping no software at all, yes. And it's impossible not to create bad software when you start with "it runs in a web browser, but it's not a web page." I say this as a web developer with over fifteen years of professional experience.

Worst of all is the shamelessness, though. Don't Electron developers feel ashamed when they ship their products? Or have their brains been so muddled by this "JavaScript everywhere" mentality that they don't realize it's bad? Will future generations even know what a native application is anymore?

This program suggests quitting other applications while it runs. Maybe that wouldn't be so necessary if it wasn't using a framework which needs like 2GB of memory before it can draw a window.

I note that my OP hasn't been downvoted into oblivion as most of my critical HN posts are. I think there's at least a significant silent minority who agree with me on this one.

Developers just like any other inventive field have to balance time and work towards a good product.

Just because the app is written using a chromium framework does not necessarily mean that it's written poorly, VS code is a great example of a fast performance application written in electron.

I don't know where you're getting 2 GB of required memory but if you spin up an electron app it's rare that it requires more than 100 if it's not doing anything.

If you knew anything about these types of stable diffusion interfaces you know that they basically have to load the entire model into memory so that's likely where the multiple gigabytes is coming from.

A lot of us got into development work because we want to create new things, you sound more like the person who spends 99% of their time endlessly optimizing the game engine without actually remembering to build a compelling game experience.

You're getting downvoted because your arrogant tone makes you sound like an insufferable bore.

While I agree the posters comment felt entitled, it should be possible to pick up and make a SwiftUI version of the app fairly quickly.

I assume the developer went for electron due to familiarity, but it would be a pretty good exercise for someone to port it to SwiftUI and native Swift for the front end.

I would do it myself but sadly am bound by other clauses.

It reminds me "Teach Yourself C++ in 21 days". You just need to quickly learn Swift (which you will use exactly nowhere after this task).

It's astonishing how ungrateful people are. Even writing documentation for the software is quite a time-consuming action - writing the software itself is much more time-consuming.

So you are looking at some free software, that gives you the ability to play with StableDiffusion in 2 clicks, has a wide range of features and settings, surely required a ton of time to implement, and you arrogantly saying “pff, an Electron app...”

I think you completely misunderstood what I was saying.

I wasn’t saying that the author of DiffusionBee should make a SwiftUI application. In fact I said the opposite in that I agree that the person who expected a native app is entitled.

I was however refuting the person I was responding to who said making a native app is a huge undertaking, because learning SwiftUI is fairly quick. That’s not to say that the maintainer should learn it but just that it’s fairly quick to learn should someone else want to.

I was also saying that someone (maybe someone other than the maintainer of DiffusionBee) could contribute a SwiftUI front end.

Finally I was saying I would gladly contribute it myself if I could (but unfortunately have other reasons why I can’t)

anyway hopefully that clears things up, and that hostility from your post is unwarranted.

It is still kind of toxicity: “cool, you did it, but you could do it better - I could do it better, just out of time”.

Don't be toxic to don’t get that hostility.

That’s not at all what I’m saying, in fact you keep trying to infer the opposite of what I’m saying, and now you’re just doubling down.

If anything you’re the one being toxic because you’re unable to have a reasonable conversation about a misunderstanding, and are instead trying to put words in my virtual mouth to conform to your outrage.

If you feel that I’m putting words into your mouth - I’m sorry about that, it was not intended.