What you discovered is that today’s mediocre developers implement everything in web browsers, or web brower-like frameworks like Electron, and set them up to masquerade as normal applications, but with 100x the disk, RAM and CPU footprint.
Let’s be honest, it’s the easiest. I’ve been trying to write UIs in pure rust and python recently and let me tell you, it’s a drag.
Some frameworks don’t even support writing your own components, some don’t allow reusing parts of the UI, some don’t even have proper layout engines you can modify, theming can be difficult, others dont have reactive values, most don’t have a fast dev loop (make a change, see it, repeat), and so on. I’ve even tried using game engines like Godot and Bevy.
We like complaining about Electron, but let’s be serious, as bad as it is, the other stuff is worse.
Writing stuff in a proper gui framework using the tools we’ve had for decades is not really that bad, it’s just not what all the tutorials are for. CSS can be an absolute pig to get things just so, or was until quite recently.
I’m working with heavily themed Qt as a frontend in a rather large project.
Qt Creator (and QML) wasn’t available at the start of the project and can’t be used, as the code base isn’t designed to run on just any machine and is linked to some RT threads.
Would be quite an effort to get the GUI working alone with mock interfaces and things.
So changing something, doing a recompile and see the layout scrambled is quite a downer.
In general I also hate the trend to electron & co “applications”, but I still envy a friend of mine working with homepages, when he just needs to refresh the browser to see his changes.
Until I remember working on a homepage 20 years ago and the slight differences between browser were a major pain in the ass.
So, I guess, it’s choose your poison…
I haven’t really had the opportunity to look into modern C++ GUI Frameworks - and only slightly followed Qt changes, as most of them aren’t relevant for the project.
Can anyone recommend something to look into?
Would be nice to have a good starting point, whenever I start something new.
Yeah, it’s actually really old by now
Gets framework updates and stuff, and new features, but reworking the code base for easier development obviously needs money and without a customer paying, there won’t be a new feature - disregard anything that would make a dev’s life easier
It’s still rather ok, because the GUI doesn’t get that many changes. Most things happen under the hood.
But I hate to see my layout being fucked, just because I missed something or switched a value
Edit: so, to clarify, it’s technical debt that build up over the years and the priorities were others.
There is some quite some time a lengthy talk about a complete redesign, but writing something with so many years of feature implementation from scratch, is not a small effort
I ran into a consequence of Fedora doing that. Their installer application crashes when running under an old GTX1060 with Nouveau’s nShitia drivers in live USB mode.
What you discovered is that today’s mediocre developers implement everything in web browsers, or web brower-like frameworks like Electron, and set them up to masquerade as normal applications, but with 100x the disk, RAM and CPU footprint.
looking at you Discord. hell also looking at you vesktop, equibop, whatever “better” discord client is out there. majority are just electron web apps.
Let’s be honest, it’s the easiest. I’ve been trying to write UIs in pure rust and python recently and let me tell you, it’s a drag.
Some frameworks don’t even support writing your own components, some don’t allow reusing parts of the UI, some don’t even have proper layout engines you can modify, theming can be difficult, others dont have reactive values, most don’t have a fast dev loop (make a change, see it, repeat), and so on. I’ve even tried using game engines like Godot and Bevy.
We like complaining about Electron, but let’s be serious, as bad as it is, the other stuff is worse.
Writing stuff in a proper gui framework using the tools we’ve had for decades is not really that bad, it’s just not what all the tutorials are for. CSS can be an absolute pig to get things just so, or was until quite recently.
Well, I do get what he means…
I’m working with heavily themed Qt as a frontend in a rather large project.
Qt Creator (and QML) wasn’t available at the start of the project and can’t be used, as the code base isn’t designed to run on just any machine and is linked to some RT threads.
Would be quite an effort to get the GUI working alone with mock interfaces and things.
So changing something, doing a recompile and see the layout scrambled is quite a downer.
In general I also hate the trend to electron & co “applications”, but I still envy a friend of mine working with homepages, when he just needs to refresh the browser to see his changes.
Until I remember working on a homepage 20 years ago and the slight differences between browser were a major pain in the ass.
So, I guess, it’s choose your poison…
I haven’t really had the opportunity to look into modern C++ GUI Frameworks - and only slightly followed Qt changes, as most of them aren’t relevant for the project.
Can anyone recommend something to look into?
Would be nice to have a good starting point, whenever I start something new.
What RT interfaces do electron apps let you use ;)
I’m confused why Qt Creator wasn’t available - is this project old enough to vote or was there some technical reason :P
Yeah, it’s actually really old by now
Gets framework updates and stuff, and new features, but reworking the code base for easier development obviously needs money and without a customer paying, there won’t be a new feature - disregard anything that would make a dev’s life easier
It’s still rather ok, because the GUI doesn’t get that many changes. Most things happen under the hood.
But I hate to see my layout being fucked, just because I missed something or switched a value
Edit: so, to clarify, it’s technical debt that build up over the years and the priorities were others.
There is some quite some time a lengthy talk about a complete redesign, but writing something with so many years of feature implementation from scratch, is not a small effort
My 2nd most hated trend in modern programming. (Behind AI forced into everything.)
I ran into a consequence of Fedora doing that. Their installer application crashes when running under an old GTX1060 with Nouveau’s nShitia drivers in live USB mode.
Oh is that why that happens? I just thought Nouveau drivers were incompatible with old Nvidia cards.