[spease]

I started with desktop applications, so my go-to for GUI has been Qt, especially QML. It works on Windows / MacOS / Linux as well as iOS and Android. I think there’s now a way to compile QML to webassembly as well. It also has a ton of support classes that are loosely analogous to the various *Kit things supplied on iOS and Android.

The downside is that the core of Qt is in C++, so it’s mostly seen (or used for?) embedded contexts.

I recently used Slint as well, which isn’t anywhere near as mature, but is at least written in Rust and has some type-safety benefits.

SwiftUI is pretty good too, and I wish I got to work on Apple platforms more.

To me, the simplicity of creating a “Button” when you want a button makes more sense, instead of a React component that’s a div styled by layers of CSS and brought to life by JavaScript.

But I’m kind of bummed that I started with that route (well, and writing partial UI systems for game / media engines a few times) because most people learned web apps and the DOM, and it’s made it harder to get the kind of work I identify with.

So it’s hard for me to recommend Qt due to the career implications…but at the same for the projects I’ve worked on, it’s made a smaller amount of work go a longer way with a more native feel than electron apps seem to have.