Whats wrong with QT on other platforms? If it is about the looks, it looked pretty good on Windows as far as i remember, as for speed, it is mostly down to the developer not the language.

I haven't tried VS Code, but Atom definitely doesn't feel that great. Looks like a lightweight editor, feels like a big, heavy moloch.

Atom's selling point to me was always its easy hackability, and that's where Electron tremendously wins: doing hacks, software meant to be set up quick'n'dirty, personal experiments, stuff done because "why not". I'm glad that Electron (and Atom too) exists because of that. However, that's definitely not a reason to write any serious tools in it. Using any Electron app with my 8GB RAM is a nightmare, and most of them look so out of place that (from the UX perspective) I don't know why they were put outside of the browser in the first place.

[eidt] Oh, and the main thing - VS Code and Atom definitely don't share their code with any Web version running in browser. Doesn't that make the original argument moot?

I'm with you here. Electron has gotten a bad name thanks to resource hogs like Slack, but it can also be used to create amazing multi-platfotm desktop apps. VS Code is a great example of Electron done right - compared to the full VS it absolutely flies, while still being packed with features and being very extensible.

I would throw GitKracken in the pot, with apps done well using Electron.

That's a great reason for Electron to exist and I'm all for it. If you want to mess around, do silly stuff just because you can, it's amazing that such technologies exist and you can do magic with pretty low learning curve. Heck, I've been doing stuff in the past like complete smartphone UI with Node and Chromium, just because I could and wanted to experiment.

However, that's a really bad argument when it comes to software development of proper tools that need to be developed and maintained and actually used by people.