Sad about the Electron route. I don't consider it to be "desktop" software. Native toolkits are miles faster than the extremely lazy approach of running an entire new browser instance because someone wanted to write javascript for their "app". It's terrible.
You have to consider the costs of building an app native for each platform vs a cross platform framework built with javascript. Single javascript code base for all platforms is a lot cheaper.
I am not sure on that really. I built a cross-platform control software for high-end audio equipment that ran on macOS and Windows and did all of its own drawing (charts, graphs, ALL controls [knobs, buttons, grids, faders etc etc etc], 2D overview with links of all devices, 3D scene of venue layout with OpenGL, diagrams, alerts and floating popup windows). No bitmaps used anywhere, all generated in code. Another guy handled the network stack that it used which was an entirely-bespoke protocol and he wrote the control firmware on the equipment.
This was in C++ with wxWidgets. It redrew every 50ms and logged data received so you could keep historic data of all devices on the network.
I am pretty sure that all of these giant companies releasing garbage Electron apps have a bigger budget than the budget on the 2 people (us!) that wrote what we wrote in 2.5 years.
When I see how abysmal apps like Skype and Slack are, I despair. Colossal amounts of RAM and simply displaying text and pictures.
It might be more convenient for the developer to write in the first language they learned but it is producing giant bloated applications. More CPU cycles, more allocations, more power consumed, shorter battery life on mobile devices (laptops), more charging of devices, more fossil fuels burned.
