Ask HN: Can/should I embed a browser (Electron, webkit) for a golang web app?

2 points by shermanyo ↗ HN
I've been working on an app using ReactJS to build a web UI for a toolset I've written in Go and am really happy with the workflow and overall architecture so far. At present I can run a binary which starts a http server, then access a bootstrap index page with a browser. I use React / JQuery to send REST calls to query the data model and build simple views, or send requests to trigger specific commands.

I've thought about building a separate standalone GUI version with an embedded browser like Atom editor. I've also heard of people embedding webkit for similar results. I'm new to application programming (server and cli util developer, with some web experience), so think this model fits my skillset and workflow better than learning a UI toolkit like Qt (comments suggesting otherwise are welcome).

Is there anything I need to be aware of working with an embedded browser vs what I'm doing now? Specifically, will React's virtual DOM be supported? (From what I understand, the JS engine would handle things like any other browser, right?) I don't need any JS integration with my app itself, I'm happy serving files and REST calls for the data bindings.

Any advice or suggestions is much appreciated, thanks hackers.

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