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No Electron Alternatives

1 points by BracketMaster ↗ HN
I'm pretty good at Rust, and Go is pretty easy - both compile to wasm or desktop native and have web/dekstop UI toolkits that have tiny memory footprints see:

1. https://www.egui.rs/ 2. https://gioui.org/

I find using slack, discord, and zoom unpleasant.

I've been toying with writing a zoom and slack replacement native for all platforms in either Rust or Go.

Should I do it?

I don't want to build it - and be the only one to use it - so I'm hoping I can get enough inspiring comments to go for it.

5 comments

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BracketMaster
Basically - I have a full time job, so I need to be convinced that spending another 5 - 8 hours a day on a zoom replacement over the next few months is worth the trouble - or find a way to fund myself to do this.
webmaven
You're basically trying to de-risk the idea before committing to execution. You can't do this completely, but you can do it progressively. Without going into too much detail, I suggest reading "The Lean Startup" by Eric Reis and "Running Lean" by Ash Maurya. Optionally (especially if you intend to go the enterprise route) include "The Startup Owners Manual" by Steve Blank.

Your first step will be to validate user demand. Make one or more landing pages, using your guesses about who would be interested and of compelling features, and see whether people even try downloading or registering for the (currently fictional) app. Iterate on this until you get a good idea of what users find compelling enough to try downloading or signing up. Follow up with surveys or questionaires to refine your target market and the value proposition they find compelling.

You'll find more detail on this process and the next steps in the works I've pointed you toward. At each stage your goal is to learn whether you should continue by eliminating the biggest risk (Maybe people aren't interested in alternatives? Maybe people aren't willing to pay? Maybe they want different features than you thought? Maybe they sign up but don't actually use the solution? Maybe they use it so much you can't cover costs with what you're charging? Maybe getting more users by buying ads is too expensive? Maybe users don't ask their friends or colleagues to sign up?).

Good luck!

ezekg
There's Tauri [1], which seems to be a very good Electron alternative written in Rust.

[1]: https://tauri.studio/

BracketMaster
Thanks - there are a number of these actually. I guess my title of "no electron alternatives" should have been "no native alternative to popular electron apps such as slack or discord"

There is jitsi - but it doesn't have a native client.

There's also iced.rs

codeptualize
I think you might want to dig into what you find unpleasant about them, then see if other people have the same issues and are willing to go through the trouble of changing platforms for it.

It will definitely be a huge challenge and I think "native apps" and small memory footprint is only relevant to a small group of people.

> I don't want to build it - and be the only one to use it - so I'm hoping I can get enough inspiring comments to go for it.

In that case you should think about your marketing/sales plan first. How are you going to get users? Why would they switch? Who will you target? Why do people choose certain tools? Why will your tool be better than the existing ones? etc etc. Validate these things cheaply before you start building for months.

I can give you my personal 2c: I use both Zoom and Slack and am quite happy with them. Tbh I am unlikely to switch because my clients use them + they are performant enough; I rarely have any noticeable issues. So for me, just a native client would not convince me to switch.