What is the best alternative to GitHub Electron?

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score 314 · Answer 1

B4X

Top Pro

A very active forum where you can find any issue you have, and quick answers to new ones

Top Con

Lack of B4W real Web app

Erel needs to make a real Web app designer. See More

Top Pro

A highly motivated program author who is very active in the forums

Erel Uziel is simply the most pro-active Soft-Creator/Forum Manager you will ever come across. If it has not yet been asked & answered, just ask and you will be answered withing minutes, and thanks to it being a trully international forum, this is achieved 24h/7d. See More

Top Con

Only for Windows

The IDE, while very handy, only runs on Windows. If you want to code on Mac or Linux, you have to install it on a virtual machine. But you can debug your app by running it on the target OS. See More

Top Pro

Create easy, fast cross-platform views with less code

B4XUI custom views are designed, by Erel and other forum members, exactly with this in mind; custom views that act and feel exactly the same no matter what platform you target. See More

Top Con

Java-dependent Desktop Development

Top Pro

Very easy to use and powerful for IoT

Support for Bluetooth/BLE, MQTT, TCP/UDP, Serial, NFC, Websockets, HTTP/2 across platforms makes it the ideal tool for IoT projects. See More

Top Con

The documentation and examples and tutorials are not up to date

The documentation and examples and tutorials are not up to date. See More

Top Pro

Live code swapping

A huge productivity boost when you can run your apps on the devices and make code changes real time without needing to recompile. See More

Top Pro

Powerful general purpose programming tool

As mentioned in its website, "With B4X, anyone who wants to, can develop real-world solutions." See More

Top Pro

No complexities compared with other tools

No need to learn JAVA, C+, PHP, or any other complementary languages in order to achieve exactly what you need. See More

Top Pro

The best all round

Produces highly optimised end results. Easy to use and quick to learn. When you know how to produce an Android app you near enough know how to produce an IOS app. The fact that there are subtle differences between writing for different platforms is a huge plus - those differences help optimise your code and they're really not difficult to wrap your head round. See More

Top Pro

Erel has much passion for his tool

The speed of answer topics is amazing. See More

Top Pro

Many informative video tutorials

The tutorials help beginners as well as more experienced programmers grasping important concepts. See More

Top Pro

Many code examples of fully working apps for free

The Forum is filled with many code examples of fully working apps for free. Code snippets, animation, different type of views etc. can be easily downloaded and used in your own app. See More

Top Pro

Large user community

Over the years it has built up a very active user community that is very involved in the evolution of B4X. In their forums you can find any answer to your questions, and if it is not there, they will answer you. See More

Top Pro

RAD

VERY Rapid Application Development, with tons of pro features. See More

Top Pro

Tightly integrated framework

Top Pro

Almost everything is free and complete

Except the IDE for iOS. Even so it's very cheap. See More

Specs

Platforms:Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, Linux, Web, Raspberry Pi, Arduino

License:Apache License 2.0

Languages:B4X

Dev platforms:Windows, Mac (via VM), Linux (via VM), Web

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314 7

score 161 · Answer 2

Quasar Framework

Top Pro

Uses Vue.js 2.0

Vue 3.x available as a plugin. See More

Top Con

Developed by a single person

Statistically, apps being developed by a single person can be gone without warning. See More

Top Pro

Good documentation and coding samples

Top Pro

Massive suite of well test & optimized widgets

Instant rebuild for SPA, PWA, Cordova or Electron with Material/iOS Themes. See More

Top Pro

Designed from the outset for desktop & mobile

Top Pro

Can build/test your PWA with/without PWA wrapper

Top Pro

Supports server side rendering (SSR) like Nuxt + SSR/PWA

"Icon genie" builds app icons and splash images for platforms selected. See More

Top Pro

Ability to add custom server side code when using SSR

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, Web

License:MIT

Mobile targets:Android, Blueberry, iOS, Windows Phone, Web

Supported languages:Javascript, Typescript

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161 12

score 181 · Answer 3

MonoDevelop

Top Pro

Free

MonoDevelop is free to download and use. See More

Top Con

No longer supported (deprecated since 2018)

Starting with version 4.x, Xamarin rebranded MonoDevelop as Xamarin Studio, but only for the Windows version of the IDE. Stable release 7.6.9.22 / September 21, 2018 See More

Top Pro

Starting up this program doesn't take as long as starting Visual Studio windows 98

Top Con

Bad formatting

MonoDevelop doesn't offer much in terms of autocompletion and code formatting. Most of the time the automatic formatting that MonoDevelop does is annoying and not really compliant with C# guidelines. See More

Top Con

The MonoDevelop version that ships with Unity is several versions behind

The version of MonoDevelop that ships with Unity is several versions behind the main MonoDevelop branch. It also gets updated very rarely so any annoying bugs that it may have take a lot of time to get fixed. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows Linux Mac

Supported languages:C#, F#, Visual Basic .NET, Vala

Visual GUI Builder:Yes

Stable release:7.6.9.22 / September 21, 2018

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181 25

score 49 · Answer 4

Tcl

Top Pro

Standard library

Unlike *sh Tcl has a rich standard library. See More

Top Pro

Sane quoting rules

Unlike in sh you don't need to quote your variable substitutions ('"$1"'). Expanding of arguments occurs mostly explicit and if yet expected in-place (e. g. using eval or subst) it follows strict and well clear rules. So exec test $argv would execute test with single argument. And appending {*} before $argv would execute test with all arguments (list expansion). See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

With a little care you can have the same script work on Linux, *BSD, OS X and Windows. See More

Top Pro

Widely available

You can expect a reasonably recent version of Tcl to either installed or available in the repositories of any popular open source *nix. See More

Top Pro

Everything is a string

Tcl can operate at the same level of abstraction as the POSIX shell, which makes it easier to manipulate the output of other programs. See More

Top Pro

Tk and Expect

Top Pro

Standalone packages

Tcl enables easy deployment through self-contained binaries known as starpacks. See More

Top Pro

Rich scripting capabilities on a single line

Want to run something 5 times? Here you go: set i 0; time { puts done-[incr i] } 5 If you need real conditional cycle? Not a problem: for {set ready 0; set i 1} {$i <= 100 && !$ready} {incr i} { if {[exec do-some-thing] eq "ready" } {set ready 1} } Want to measure performance of something or repeat it max 300 times and not longer than 1 seconds? Very simple: timerate { after 20 } 1000 300 How about notifying yourself when some http-server is back online? Sure thing: while {[catch { close [socket localhost 80] }]} { after 1000 }; puts "\7\7\7ONLINE!" And you can do it also fully asynchronously using events etc. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

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49 9

score 194 · Answer 5

Flutter

Top Pro

Open source

Top Con

Still in development

According to the website, Flutter is still in its early stages of development. See More

Top Pro

Great developer tools debug/hotreload/analyser

Top Con

Based on Dart language

Dart is a Java like language, easy to learn and startup fast for millions of Java developers. BUT if you have to learn it ... it's a con. See More

Top Pro

Based on Dart language

Dart is a Java like language, easy to learn and startup fast for millions of Java developers. See More

Top Con

Dart is unpopular and never gained serious community traction like Kotlin or Java

Top Pro

A single codebase for iOS AND Android

Top Con

Does not support 32-bit iOS devices

If you plan on targeting iPhone 5, 5C or earlier, you can forget about Flutter. See More

Top Pro

Fast

The developer's goal is to allow people to make apps running at 120 FPS. See More

Top Con

Google has a bad history with product loyalty

Specs

Languages:Dart

Dev platforms:Windows, Mac and Linux

Desktop targets:announced Windows

Mobile targets:Android and iOS

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194 29

score 32 · Answer 6

Codename One

Top Pro

High performance

Top Pro

Open source

Top Pro

Highly customizable

By utilizing lightweight component architecture and the built in graphical designer and theming options you are able to customize a good looking app on any platform. See More

Top Pro

Java 8 support

Top Pro

Works with all IDEs

Works with NetBeans, Eclipse, IntelliJ, etc. See More

Top Pro

Multi-platform development environments (via build server)

You can even use Linux desktops to build native iOS apps, no need for a Mac. See More

Top Pro

Vibrant & helpful community

Top Pro

Attractive pricing

It is possible to build production grade apps even with the free version. Pricing is decent when compared to competitors like Xamarin. See More

Specs

License:GPL with Classpath Exception, allows you to build proprietary applications

Languages:Java, Kotlin

Dev platforms:Windows, Mac, Linux

Desktop targets:Windows, Mac, Linux

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32 10

score 161 · Answer 7

ASP.NET Core

Top Pro

Fast and getting faster

Thanks to breakthroughs in ROSLYN compiler and the efforts of the .NET COre developer team, code written in C# can reach speeds just a step behind C++. See More

Top Con

Microsoft environment

Top Pro

Multi platform

Can run on Windows, Linux and Mac (also Visual Studio Code editor). See More

Top Pro

Built-in middleware

Built-in middleware featuring: Authentication, Cookie policy, Health Check, MVC, Session etc. See More

Top Pro

Hosting

Ability to host on IIS, Nginx, Apache, Docker, or self-host in your own process. See More

Top Pro

Ease of Use

Top Pro

JSON optimization

In .NET Core 2.1 and 3.0, new APIs are added that make it possible to write JSON APIs that require less memory, using Span<T> and UTF8 strings, and improve throughput of applications like Kestrel, ASP.NET Core web server. See also Utf8JsonReader. See More

Top Pro

Tutorials and documentation quality

Both microsoft and 3rd party tutorials are mostly of high quality and encourage you to use the industry best-practices. See More

Top Pro

Tooling

Both VS and VSCode are powerful free IDEs that are well integrated with ASP.net Core. VS Community also allows for commercial use for projects with less than 5 developers. See More

Top Pro

Security

It is a very secure platform. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, Docker

Written in:C#

Default ORM:Entity Framework

Visual GUI Builder:Yes

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161 44

score 98 · Answer 8

React Native

Top Pro

Allows you to develop native apps

React Native allows you to create native apps by generating native views with JavaScript instead of using a web wrapper. See More

Top Con

If core team doesn't use a certain feature, it's not developed

Whenever there's functionality you need that they don't use in their apps, it's not going to get developed by them, even if it's obvious it should be in the core. They always say to either submit a PR or create a separate module. See More

Top Pro

Large, supportive community

Despite being such a young framework (early 2015), the support for React Native grew quickly. There is a forum, active tag on Stackoverflow and many other ways to get help from the community. See More

Top Con

Steep learning curve

React Native is not the most beginner-friendly framework for creating mobile apps with JavaScript. It requires that the developer know React, which is known to have a steep learning curve. See More

Top Pro

Backed by Facebook

Facebook writes their mobile apps in React Native so the code base gets pretty thoroughly used in some highly demanding scenarios. See More

Top Con

Many existing JS libraries are not usable on React Native; not exactly a 1-to-1 experience to writing React either

Example: Library that provides a full calendar with agenda view. In the end it's much easier to develop in actual JavaScript with a solution such as Ionic, especially if your app needs to work well on the desktop. See More

Top Pro

More predictable control of the state

The one way data flow, makes it more predictable and easy to control. See More

Top Con

React native only supports react which is getting old

React native is only based on react which is getting old. An old tech developer can't take much breaking changes so it gets more patchs. There is a limit, and react is too verbose and complex. better alternatives available today. See More

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98 37

score 65 · Answer 9

Xojo

Top Pro

Easy to use

Easy to make compiled native apps. See More

Top Con

Subscription-based/Not free

Using this product you're betting the company will still be around. If they get bought out by an enterprise that wants to use the tech internally, all they need to do is stop offering subscriptions and suddenly you're scrambling to rebuild your entire app on other technology. See More

Top Con

No Android support

They plan to eventually support Android, but for now, they only support iOS. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, Pi, Web,iOS

Visual GUI Builder:Yes

65 26

score 306 · Answer 10

Kotlin

Top Pro

Great tooling support

Since Kotlin is made by Jetbrains (the developers of IntelliJ IDEA) so it stands to reason that the IntelliJ support for Kotlin is also great. Besides that, Kotlin also works well with existing Java tools such as Eclipse, Maven, Gradle, Android Studio, etc... See More

Top Con

May be hard for programmers already used to imperative style to learn functional programming from Kotlin

Since Kotlin does not enforce any particular paradigms and is not purely functional, it can be pretty easy to fall back to imperative programming habits if a programmer comes from an imperative background. See More

Top Pro

Easy adoption for existing Java programmers

Kotlin runs on the JVM and Java interoperability has been one of the main objectives since the language was born. It runs everywhere Java does; web servers, mobile devices (Android), and desktop applications. It also works with all the major tools in the Java ecosystem like Eclipse, IntelliJ, Maven, Ant, Gradle, Spring Boot, etc. All of this makes adoption extremely easy even for existing Java projects. On top of this there's also ensured Type safety and less boilerplate code needed. See More

Top Con

The need for Java interoperability has forced some limitations

The need to make Kotlin interoperable with Java has caused some unintuitive limitations to the language design. See More

Top Pro

Easy to learn if you have prior programming experience

Kotlin's syntax is extremely easy to understand. The language can be picked up in a few hours just by reading the language reference. See More

Top Pro

No runtime overhead

The standard library is relatively small and tight. It mostly consists of focused extensions of the Java standard library and as such adds no additional runtime overhead to existing Java projects. See More

Top Pro

Officially supported for Android development

Starting with version 3.0 of Android Studio, Kotlin support will be built-in. This means that it's now easier than ever to use Kotlin for existing Android projects or even start writing Android apps only with Kotlin from scratch. This also means that Kotlin and Kotlin plugins for Android Studio will be fully supported in the future and their likelihood of being abandoned is quite small since Google is fully embracing the language for their Android ecosystem (alongside Java and C++). See More

Top Pro

Low-risk adoption for existing Java codebases

Since it has such a good interoperability with Java, Java libraries, and Java tools. It can be adopted for an existing Java codebase at little to no cost. The codebase can be converted from Java to Kotlin little by little without ever disrupting the functionality of the application itself. See More

Top Pro

Does not impose a particular philosophy of programming

It's not overly OOP like Java and it does not enforce strict functional paradigms either. See More

Top Pro

Is built to solve industrial problems

Kotlin has been designed and built by developers who have an industrial background and not an academic one. As such, it tries to solve issues mostly found in industrial settings. For example, the Kotlin type system helps developers avoid null pointer exceptions. Reasearch languages usually do not have null at all, but APIs and large codebases usually need null. See More

Specs

Current stable version:1.3

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306 105

score 11 · Answer 11

Red

Top Con

Not production ready

Red is still under development and not considered stable. See More

Top Pro

Simple toolchain

Other languages have complex, multi-step setups that beginners often get stuck on. Red has no installer, no setup, no dependencies*, just a single small (~1MB) command-line executable with both the compiler and repl. On Windows, you don't even have to launch executable from the command line--it has a GUI-console. See More

Top Con

Still in beta

It mostly works. It's good enough for building usable applications, but some planned features are missing. See More

Top Pro

Very simple syntax

Red syntax is a lot like Rebol. It's easier than most languages for beginners to pick up. See More

Top Pro

Both low and high-level

Red has low enough access to do systems programming, but it's expressive enough for high-level scripting. See More

Top Pro

Low cognitive load

Red has very simple syntax that's easy to learn. It gets out of your way and lets you think about the problem instead, enhancing productivity. See More

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