Who cares about 300Mb, where is that going to move the needle for you? And if the alternative is a memory-unsafe language then 300Mb is a price more than worth paying. Likewise if the alternative is the app never getting started, or being single-platform-only, because the available build systems suck too bad.
There ought to be a short one-liner that anyone can run to get easily installable "binaries" for their PyQt app for all major platforms. But there isn't, you have to dig up some blog post with 3 config files and a 10 argument incantation and follow it (and every blog post has a different one) when you just wanted to spend 10 minutes writing some code to solve your problem (which is how every good program gets started). So we're stuck with Electron.
> And if the alternative is a memory-unsafe language
and if not?
> and if not?
If the alternative is memory-safe and easy to build, then maybe people will switch. But until it is it's irresponsible to even try to get them to do so.
Until? Just take what's out there - it's so easy to improve on Electron
Like what? Where else (that's a name brand platform and not, like, some obscure blog post's cobbled-together thing) can I start a project, push one button, and get binaries for all major platforms? Until you solve that people will keep using Electron.
There are quite a few options. Many of them look dated though. I think that's the usp of electron.
There's a world of difference between using a memory safe language and shipping a web browser with your app. I'm pretty sure Avalonia, JavaFX, and Wails would all be much leaner than electron.
The people who hate Electron hate JavaFX just as much if not more, and I'm not sure it would even use less memory. And while the build experience isn't awful, it's still a significant amount of work to package up in "executable" form especially for a platform different from what you're building on, or was until a couple of years ago. And I'm pretty sure Avalonia is even worse.