My initial design doc was going to be Swift-based and in my “pie-in-the-sky” goal, it would be a native macOS app.
But part of the value of Calibre is that it is cross-platform and so yes, Electron was a strong option because for cross-platform development, I definitely don’t think it is worse than QT or Java. There are a lot of bad Electron applications, but apps like Visual Studio Code* prove that as with anything, you can make a really fantastic experience if you put the right work into it.
But it doesn’t matter anyway. The amount of work that would be required would be monumental and the payoff wouldn’t be worth it. Which is why I have tremendous respect for the Calibre developer. I don’t agree with his design decisions and I wish the app was more usable, but I fully acknowledge that nothing else exists and that no one else is willing to do the work to make a better version.
* Disclosure: I work at Microsoft but not on VS Code. I have huge respect for the VS Code and the Electron team, however.
My initial design doc was going to be Swift-based and in my “pie-in-the-sky” goal, it would be a native macOS app.
But part of the value of Calibre is that it is cross-platform and so yes, Electron was a strong option because for cross-platform development, I definitely don’t think it is worse than QT or Java. There are a lot of bad Electron applications, but apps like Visual Studio Code* prove that as with anything, you can make a really fantastic experience if you put the right work into it.
But it doesn’t matter anyway. The amount of work that would be required would be monumental and the payoff wouldn’t be worth it. Which is why I have tremendous respect for the Calibre developer. I don’t agree with his design decisions and I wish the app was more usable, but I fully acknowledge that nothing else exists and that no one else is willing to do the work to make a better version.
* Disclosure: I work at Microsoft but not on VS Code. I have huge respect for the VS Code and the Electron team, however.