Electron vs Go

Overview

Golang

Stacks24.0K

Followers13.9K

Votes3.3K

GitHub Stars130.7K

Forks18.4K

Electron

Stacks11.6K

Followers10.0K

Votes148

Electron vs Go: What are the differences?

Introduction

In the world of software development, there are numerous tools and technologies available to build applications. Two popular options are Electron and Go. While both are used for application development, they have distinct differences that set them apart. This article will outline six key differences between Electron and Go.

1. Electron: Web Development Framework: Electron is a web development framework that allows developers to create desktop applications using web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This means that developers with web development skills can easily transition into building desktop apps without the need for learning new programming languages or frameworks.

2. Go: Compiled Programming Language: On the other hand, Go is a compiled programming language that is known for its efficiency and simplicity. It was specifically designed to address the challenges faced by large-scale software development projects. With Go, developers can write highly performant and scalable applications.

3. Electron: Cross-platform Compatibility: One of the key advantages of Electron is its ability to create applications that run seamlessly on multiple operating systems such as Windows, macOS, and Linux. This cross-platform compatibility greatly simplifies the process of app development and deployment, as developers can target a wide range of users without the need for platform-specific customization.

4. Go: Concurrency and Scalability: Go is renowned for its built-in support for concurrency and scalability. Its lightweight goroutines enable developers to write concurrent code easily. Additionally, Go's efficient memory management and garbage collection make it an excellent choice for building scalable and high-performance applications, particularly in scenarios where real-time processing and synchronization are required.

5. Electron: Rich User Interface: Electron provides extensive tools and libraries for creating rich and interactive user interfaces. Developers can take advantage of popular web development frameworks like React or Angular to build modern and visually appealing desktop apps. Electron's powerful rendering engine enables the seamless integration of web content into desktop applications, resulting in a visually compelling user experience.

6. Go: Low Memory Footprint: While Electron is known for its versatility, it can have a higher memory footprint due to its reliance on web technologies. On the other hand, Go is highly efficient in terms of memory consumption. It has a small footprint, making it ideal for resource-constrained environments. This makes Go an excellent choice for building lightweight applications or services that need to run on devices with limited resources.

In Summary, Electron is a web development framework that offers cross-platform compatibility and rich user interface capabilities, while Go is a compiled programming language known for its concurrency, scalability, and low memory footprint. By understanding the key differences between these two technologies, developers can make informed decisions on which tool to use based on their specific project requirements.

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CLI (Node.js)

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Advice on Golang, Electron

Ido

Mar 6, 2020

Decided

When developing a new blockchain, we as a team chose Go lang over Java and other candidates, due to Go being (a) natively suited to concurrency - there are primitives in the language itself (goroutines, channels) that really help with reasoning about concurrency (b) super fast - build time, running, testing are all much faster that Java, this gives a far superior developer experience (c) shorter and stricter than Java - code is much shorter (less verbose), and there is usually one good way to do things, and even the code formatter that is bundled with Go is very opinionated - over a short time this makes reading other people's code far smoother than having to deal with different styles.

You should be aware that Go presently (v1.13) lacks Generics.

267k views267k

Comments

Ítalo

VP Platform Engineering at Lykon

Feb 19, 2020

Decided

We decided to use python to write our ETLs and import them into metabase via a lambda. Before python we tried using Go, but overall go was way more verbose than Python when writing the ETLs. Go also had some issues managing memory when using the S3 upload manager library. This was a deal breaker for us that made us switch to Python.

In the end the solution was much cleaner and maintainable.

261k views261k

Comments

Mohamed

Software Engineer at YottaHQ Inc.

Dec 2, 2019

Decided

PHP is easy to learn and you can get up and running in no time, available on almost all hosting providers and you can find developers easily. It has some great frameworks for building your backend like Symfony and Laravel. However, it can be challenging when running an enterprise and needs some adjustments, very recommended for starting a new project or startup.

208k views208k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Golang	Electron
Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.	With Electron, creating a desktop application for your company or idea is easy. Initially developed for GitHub's Atom editor, Electron has since been used to create applications by companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Slack, and Docker. The Electron framework lets you write cross-platform desktop applications using JavaScript, HTML and CSS. It is based on io.js and Chromium and is used in the Atom editor.
-	Use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with Chromium and Node.js to build your app.;Electron is open source; maintained by GitHub and an active community.;Electron apps build and run on Mac, Windows, and Linux.;Automatic updates;Crash reporting;Windows installers;Debugging & profiling;Native menus & notifications
Statistics
GitHub Stars 130.7K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 18.4K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 24.0K	Stacks 11.6K
Followers 13.9K	Followers 10.0K
Votes 3.3K	Votes 148
Pros & Cons
Pros 557 High-performance 398 Simple, minimal syntax 365 Fun to write 305 Easy concurrency support via goroutines 273 Fast compilation times Cons 43 You waste time in plumbing code catching errors 25 Verbose 23 Packages and their path dependencies are braindead 16 Google's documentations aren't beginer friendly 15 Dependency management when working on multiple projects	Pros 69 Easy to make rich cross platform desktop applications 53 Open source 14 Great looking apps such as Slack and Visual Studio Code 8 Because it's cross platform 4 Use Node.js in the Main Process Cons 19 Uses a lot of memory 8 User experience never as good as a native app 4 Does not native 4 No proper documentation 1 Each app needs to install a new chromium + nodejs
Integrations
Revel Martini	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Golang, Electron?

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Elixir

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

Swift

Writing code is interactive and fun, the syntax is concise yet expressive, and apps run lightning-fast. Swift is ready for your next iOS and OS X project — or for addition into your current app — because Swift code works side-by-side with Objective-C.

Related Comparisons

Electron vs Go: What are the differences?

Introduction

Electron vs Go

Overview