So true. I had to stop loading Slack at startup because it was using 400MB of memory and running eight threads. As the article says, come on, "It's just a text chat app." For Electron to be viable we need a "Chrome Core" library that just has a JavaScript engine and some OS glue.
There's no reason UIs should be laggy in 2016 on the very highest-spec Lenovo Thinkpad mobile workstation, but that's the sad reality of anything written in Electron JS (along with Electron's absolutely zero 4K Hi-DPI support on Linux, so I have to squint to read the microscopic text on Slack, Upwork, Discord, Messenger for Desktop, Whatsie, Skype for Linux Alpha, Atom, sometimes VSCode ...).