But Rust runs on the server while Electron runs on the client. You can't compare them like that!

Rust is about as fast as C++, so I'd call that normal speed.

Electron is not necessarily slow - see Visual Studio Code; it's certainly not as reactive as Sublime Text, but it's fast/reactive enough.

I know, it was a (admittedly vague) joke.

People rag on Electron with the same shallowness as they praise Rust. I bet you can make slow things in Rust. It's all a soup of trade-offs, resource management and hype.