• FizzyOrange@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 month ago

    I feel like the best option at the moment is egui. It’s native. Works on the web too. Very easy to get up and running. The things I don’t like about it:

    • I personally think the default style could do with improvement. Mainly it’s way too cramped. There’s a happy middle ground between no padding and bootstrap. I mean Win32/Qt/etc. got this basically right.
    • Immediate mode. Yeah it’s easier, especially with Rust, but … it’s surely not how it’s supposed to work.
    • The low level drawing API (like if you’re making custom widgets) is surprisingly amateur. Not something I’d want to target if I’m spending a lot of time e.g. writing a custom map widget or git graph or something.

    I also tried Slint. Like the author I think the license is pretty reasonable. But it is pretty involved to set up a project and since it compiles everything from source it can take a very long time for a clean build of hello world. It’s like if you were using Qt but instead of a binary package the sources are just included in your app.

    Also I have bad experiences from QML (Javascript 🤮, weird scoping rules, etc.) but hopefully they learnt from their experience.

    Looking forward to the 2030 edition anyway!

    • spartanatreyu@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 month ago

      Good.

      Too many libraries/frameworks/products don’t factor in accessibility from the start.

      Along the same vein, too many open source projects don’t factor in non-“gnu/linux” environments from the start.

      It’s a lot harder to tack on after the fact rather than just having it be a part of the base design from the beginning.

      Making these front and centre in a survey should be a be a bit of a wakeup for people who don’t consider what doesn’t run on their machines.

    • onlinepersona@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      I thought you were joking, but this dude seriously uses windows for development. No wonder he’s running into so many issues. I can’t imagine a big chunk of rust developers using that terrible OS.

      Edit: I’m surprised at the number of things he tried though and how many worked.

      Anti Commercial-AI license

      • TehPers@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 month ago

        It’s a GUI framework evaluation. I would imagine most users of a desktop application with a GUI would be Windows users. It would generally be a little weird to develop a professional product that does not work on Windows (or at least Mac). It’s a lot easier to develop that natively than to cross-compile.

        • monogram@feddit.nl
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 month ago

          There’s a difference between a framework that builds to an exe and one that can develop in windows

          • TehPers@beehaw.org
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 month ago

            I’ll be honest, I’m not really sure what you’re trying to say, but it sounds like cross-compilation to me? The article mentions several different GUI libraries that require dynamic linking and complicated build scripts, so even if you setup rustc to cross-compile (which isn’t that hard but is an extra unnecessary step for your run-of-the-mill dev who just wants to get paid), getting the build scripts to cross-compile C++ libraries or testing the cross-compiled binaries with dynamically linked libraries is a pain, assuming your build scripts even let you do that.

            All of this is avoidable by building from Windows. Or I guess you can not target Windows. That works too, but most businesses won’t see that as an option.