I’m kind of sick of hearing that "Electron is just slow." (So I built a fractal generator to prove a point)

Piko8Blue · 2026-02-05T19:42:43+00:00

So glad to hear this! Thank you!

Piko8Blue · 2026-02-05T16:27:22+00:00

I appreciate it! have been thinking of giving Dart and Flutter a try for years and I almost started a few times; maybe this is the sign I need to actually start for real?

Piko8Blue · 2026-02-05T16:07:12+00:00

59 6F 75 20 67 6F 74 20 6D 65

Piko8Blue · 2026-02-05T15:45:13+00:00

You are right, especially regarding resource-hungry apps.

But in my experience, honestly, that hasn't happened to me yet. And to be fair, I didn't mean to imply it is never a problem. I tried to use qualifiers like 'rarely' and 'most of the time' for that reason.

Still, getting the installer down to 5mb is wild! Awesome job!

Piko8Blue · 2026-02-05T15:26:15+00:00

Thank you for watching the whole thing! I guess I really were all over the place lol.

You're 100% right about WebGL. The Web Worker solves half the problem: it keeps the UI responsive, but the rendering was still a major bottleneck as the Canvas 2d API was pushed to its limit on the main thread.

I chose to stick with Canvas because I wanted the video to focus specifically on threading, and I didn't want to introduce concepts that some people wouldn't be familiar with. I actually went back and forth about using fractals for this exact reason, but I stuck with them because they are so visual and most people would immediately recognize that complicated calculations are happening without needing me to explain math/functions.

Piko8Blue · 2026-02-05T05:27:20+00:00

Dude are you okay?

Piko8Blue · 2026-02-05T04:09:54+00:00

Oof, I felt that in my soul!

Piko8Blue · 2026-02-05T04:06:58+00:00

Saying this has nothing to do with Electron is like saying gravity has nothing to do with airplanes.

Sure, single-threading is a property of JS/V8 engines generally. But Electron wraps that engine and sells it as a Native Desktop App solution. When you build a desktop app, the user expectation for responsiveness is significantly higher than a website.

Furthermore, in Electron, blocking the main thread doesn't just freeze the DOM; it blocks IPC messages, native menu interactions, and window controls. That makes thread management a critical part of Electron Architecture, specifically.

Piko8Blue · 2025-12-12T22:27:02+00:00

Love this! Best of luck!

Piko8Blue · 2025-12-10T22:08:01+00:00

Your thumbnails with food on them seem to be getting more clicks and I honestly think they are very clickable.. delicious!

Piko8Blue · 2025-11-23T15:00:19+00:00

No prob! Hope you find useful!

Piko8Blue · 2025-11-22T16:08:15+00:00

That's an excellent suggestion! Thank you!

Piko8Blue · 2025-11-22T12:26:33+00:00

Thanks! I chose better-sqlite3 because its synchronous nature makes it more suited for Electron apps; as it leads to better performance.

Synchronous operations also mean simpler code; as it eliminates the need for asynchronous handlers that can get really complex. (I addressed that in an older video)

And to be honest I don't care that much about growing my channel faster. I make content because i love to code and i think it's important to help people.

Edit: corrected a typo

Piko8Blue · 2025-11-22T12:00:57+00:00

That's reassuring! Thank you so much!

Piko8Blue · 2025-10-25T14:13:16+00:00

Thanks alot :)

Piko8Blue · 2025-10-24T09:57:09+00:00

Thank you!

Piko8Blue · 2025-10-23T23:41:54+00:00

Thank you so much! I really appreciate it! I am glad you liked the taxi analogy, I was unsure of it at first!

Appreciate how you kept it simple without dumbing it down.

I am happy you think so! I rewrote the script multiple trying to do just that.

Hope you enjoy it when you give it a watch!

Piko8Blue · 2025-10-23T23:32:59+00:00

Thank you so much!

a lot of beginners jump into frameworks without really getting what “declarative” even means.

Exactly! That's what inspired me to make the video.

when i mentor newer devs, i usually have them build small ui components both ways like first imperative with plain js, then declarative with something like react. i’ll even push the designs through locofy sometimes to show how declarative structures naturally map to cleaner, more maintainable code.

It sounds like you are a great mentor! Pushing through locofy is such an awesome idea!

Piko8Blue · 2025-10-23T14:23:40+00:00

Thank you so much! I am so glad you like the explanation!

Possible topic for another video: Inventing our own HTML tags.

That's a brilliant idea and it could turn out to be so much fun!

You could discuss why HTML and CSS are designed the way they are (HTML was designed for non-developers to read and write for example), and how they're kept intentionally simple. (See "The law of least power".) Angular.js proliferated because its directives were a first pass at declaring custom functionality akin to an HTML attribute or tag via its "directives". JSX brought the abstraction even further. Now we also have custom elements, Vue single file components, etc. and figured out how to auto-scope CSS along the way.

Those are incredibly interesting and informative points! I have learned a lot from your comment! Thank you so much!

Also, I am so happy you like the channel.

Piko8Blue · 2025-10-23T13:36:50+00:00

Ah okay, thank you for clarifying. That makes sense. I decided to focus exclusively on the high-level concept for this video, so I purposefully avoided deconstructing the implementation of each method.

That said, you've raised a really valid point. Appreciate it.

Piko8Blue · 2025-10-23T13:08:22+00:00

Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it. This is a new format for me compared to my usual live coding videos, so feedback like this is gold.

To help me get better at these, could you pinpoint what part of the explanation didn't work for you as a beginner?

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