Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Electron VS JavaScript

Compare Electron VS JavaScript and see what are their differences

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Electron logo Electron

Build cross platform desktop apps with web technologies

JavaScript logo JavaScript

Lightweight, interpreted, object-oriented language with first-class functions
  • Electron Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-02-01
  • JavaScript Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-05

We recommend LibHunt JavaScript for discovery and comparisons of trending JavaScript projects.

Electron features and specs

  • Cross-Platform Compatibility
    Electron allows developers to create applications that run on Windows, macOS, and Linux using a single codebase, making it easier to reach a broader audience.
  • Web Technologies
    Developers can utilize HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (including popular frameworks like React, Angular, and Vue) to build Electron apps, enabling a more accessible development process for web developers.
  • Rich Ecosystem
    Electron benefits from the vast ecosystem of Node.js, granting access to a multitude of packages and modules, and simplifying the inclusion of various functionalities in applications.
  • Auto-Update Mechanism
    Electron has built-in support for auto-updating applications, which saves developers time and effort in managing updates and improves the user experience by keeping the application up-to-date seamlessly.
  • Active Community
    An active community and extensive documentation provide a wealth of resources for developers, from tutorials to plugins, making it easier to find support and improve productivity.

Possible disadvantages of Electron

  • Large File Size
    Because Electron packages both the application code and a version of Chromium, applications tend to be significantly larger in file size compared to native counterparts.
  • High Memory Consumption
    Electron apps can consume more memory because each window runs its instance of Chromium, which can lead to inefficient resource usage, especially on systems with limited memory.
  • Performance
    Due to its reliance on web technologies and Chromium, Electron applications may not perform as well as optimally coded native apps, particularly in resource-intensive scenarios.
  • Security Concerns
    Electron's use of web technologies and features like Node.js integration increases the attack surface, requiring careful handling of security practices to prevent vulnerabilities such as injection attacks.
  • Complexity in Debugging
    Debugging Electron applications can be more complex due to the blend of backend (Node.js) and frontend (browser-like) code, requiring developers to be proficient in multiple debugging tools and techniques.

JavaScript features and specs

  • Wide Browser Support
    JavaScript is supported by all modern web browsers without the need for any plugins, making it highly versatile for client-side scripting.
  • Asynchronous Programming
    JavaScript supports asynchronous programming with features like callbacks, Promises, and async/await, which helps in efficiently handling tasks such as HTTP requests.
  • Rich Ecosystem and Libraries
    The JavaScript ecosystem includes a vast amount of libraries and frameworks like React, Angular, Vue, and Node.js, which streamline development processes.
  • Community Support
    JavaScript has a large and active community, providing extensive resources, documentation, and forums for troubleshooting and development advice.
  • Event-Driven
    The language is inherently event-driven, making it suitable for developing interactive web applications that react to user inputs.
  • Full-Stack Development
    With the advent of Node.js, JavaScript can be used for both client-side and server-side development, enabling full-stack development using a single language.

Possible disadvantages of JavaScript

  • Security Issues
    Being an interpreted language that runs in the browser, JavaScript code is visible to the user, making it susceptible to security risks such as Cross-Site Scripting (XSS).
  • Browser Compatibility
    While JavaScript itself is widely supported, different browsers may implement JavaScript functions and standards differently, leading to compatibility issues.
  • Performance
    JavaScript is generally slower than compiled languages such as C++ or Java. Heavy computations can lead to performance bottlenecks.
  • Single Inheritance
    JavaScript uses prototypal inheritance instead of classical inheritance, which can be confusing for developers coming from object-oriented programming backgrounds.
  • Dynamic Typing
    JavaScript's dynamic typing can lead to runtime errors that are hard to debug, as variable types are checked at runtime rather than during compilation.
  • Fragmentation
    The ecosystem has many competing libraries, frameworks, and tools, which can make it overwhelming for developers to choose the right technologies for their projects.

Electron videos

💻 Why You Should Build Desktop Software With Electron

More videos:

  • Review - What is Electron: The Hard Parts Made Easy
  • Review - Electron Matrix Review Video

JavaScript videos

Learn JavaScript in 7 minutes | Create Interactive Websites | Code in 5

More videos:

  • Review - Top 10 JavaScript Interview Questions
  • Review - Learn JavaScript in 12 Minutes

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Electron and JavaScript)
Development Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Programming Language
0 0%
100% 100
Rapid Application Development
OOP
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Electron and JavaScript

Electron Reviews

Electron.js Alternatives For Cross-Platform Development
All of this changed when Electron.js came into the picture. The framework allowed developers to create a unique cross-platform desktop application without any hurdles. However, it uses up quite a bit of resource making it harder for developers to create lightweight applications. With this blog, we will look into suitable alternatives for Electron.js.
Source: www.atatus.com
12 Best Frameworks and Toolkits to Build Desktop Applications
If you are looking for an alternative to the Electronjs desktop application development framework, Neutralinojs is a viable option. A few applications may become bulky with Electron, but Neutralinojs can help avoid such problems.
Source: geekflare.com
10 Best Tools to Develop Cross-Platform Desktop Apps 
Electron.js is compatible with a variety of frameworks, libraries, access to hardware-level APIs and chromium engine, and Node.js support. Electron Fiddle feature is great for experimentation as it allows developers to play around with concepts and templates. Simplification is at the center of Electron because developers don’t have to spend unnecessary time on the packaging,...
Electron Alternatives﹣5 Best JavaScript Frameworks for Desktop Apps
If you’re a JavaScript developer, you’re going to need to learn a few relatively simple things on how Electron works and it’s API. You will most probably be able to set up your first Electron desktop application in just a few days.
Source: brainhub.eu
Frameworks & Tools to Develop Cross-Platform Desktop Apps – Best of
Enyo is an open-source JavaScript framework, like Electron, that allows developers to create native-quality apps for desktop, mobile, and TV. Enyo can run across all the relatively modern and standard web-based environments. It’s battle-tested and comes with a beautiful cross-platform UI toolkit for creating rich user interfaces.

JavaScript Reviews

Top 10 Rust Alternatives
In simple words, the main goal of JavaScript is to develop web pages and is used for authentication procedures. Some of the pros of using JavaScript as an alternative to Rust are follows.
Top 15 jQuery Alternatives To Know
ExtJS, as the name suggests, stands for Extended JavaScript. As an offering from Sencha, it depends on YahooUserInterface. ExtJS helps in creating data intensified HTML5 apps with JavaScript. It consists of a huge collection of customizable and high-performance widgets that assist in creating cross-platform mobile and web apps, for any type of modernized device.
The 10 Best Programming Languages to Learn Today
JavaScript skills are always in high demand – most of the world's top websites and apps rely on JavaScript in one way or another. Plus, JavaScript is a great springboard for learning more complex programming languages.
Source: ict.gov.ge

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Electron seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 14 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Electron mentions (14)

  • Design Systems with Web Components
    So we talked a lot about the Atomic Design Principle, but you could just use that in any system and start creating. You could have Angular components, React Components, and Vue Components. But if you notice these don't easily work Everwhere. So the solution is to use Web Components because the modern browser can already understand these, and any Front-End framework can then utilize these components. You can use... - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Building Apps with Tauri and Elixir
    For the longest time, building desktop apps was a daunting task to web developers. That is, until technologies like Electron made creating these apps more approachable to a wider audience. Today, we’ve got a wide array of native applications built with solutions like Electron, Tauri, Capacitor, and many more. While these are great solutions, sometimes configuration can be tricky and the applications we create can... - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • SvelteKit + Electron: Create your desktop web app
    I make a new Adapter for SvelteKit apps that prerenders your entire site as a collection of static files for use with Electron. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Electron: Build Desktop Applications Using Plain Javascript
    Electron is a cross-platform shell — a user interface for accessing operating system services both via command line (CLI) and graphical user interface (GUI). - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Circuit To Turn On Desktop PC
    Electron (https://electronjs.org/) is a framework for developing cross-platform desktop applications using JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. This is the technology behind many popular apps like Slack, Discord and Visual Studio Code. Join for discussions around Electron! Source: over 2 years ago
View more

JavaScript mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of JavaScript yet. Tracking of JavaScript recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Electron and JavaScript, you can also consider the following products

Qt - Powerful, flexible and easy to use, Qt will help you not only meet your tight deadline, but also reduce the maintainable code by an astonishing percentage.

Python - Python is a clear and powerful object-oriented programming language, comparable to Perl, Ruby, Scheme, or Java.

Flutter - Build beautiful native apps in record time 🚀

Java - A concurrent, class-based, object-oriented, language specifically designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible

React Native - A framework for building native apps with React

Rust - A safe, concurrent, practical language