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Ask HN: What toolchains are people using for desktop app development in 2025?

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Re: Ask HN: What toolchains are people using for desktop app development in 2025?

#51

Post by doawoo »

vladdoster wrote: post #14

Flutter is a super compelling framework ( https://flutter.dev/multi-platform/desktop ), but I’d live in fear of it randomly being sent to the Google graveyard.

We shipped a project at work with Flutter recently, specifically using it on embedded Linux, basically a touch screen smart apartment tablet/thermostat combo.

Internally the “UI” team is tiny (basically me, a UI/Designer and one or two other part time engineers) and the productivity is astounding tbh

Re: Ask HN: What toolchains are people using for desktop app development in 2025?

#52

Post by sltr »

On my projects [1][2], I use C# and Avalonia with Rider or Visual Studio. For extra performance, turn on AOT, which has the nice side-effect of making reversing your app to C# impossible.

I worked in WPF for a decade. I wouldn't go with it for a new project since it's Windows-only and doesn't support AOT.

At work we have a Blazor MAUI hybrid desktop app because it also has to run on the web. If we only needed a desktop app, I'd go with Avalonia.

[1] https://linklever.net/ [2] https://github.com/endurabyte/FitEdit

Re: Ask HN: What toolchains are people using for desktop app development in 2025?

#53

Post by Mars008 »

Palomides wrote: post #20
diego_moita wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wouldn't really recommend a career out of it. Care to say why? I ask because that's what I use at work: C++ and Qt Yes, I'd prefer Rust and Slint/Tauri. But like a prostitute I don't do what I love, I do what pays the bills.

I think it's a little too niche, and as embedded processors get more and more powerful, we'll just see the same trend of doing all UI in a browser instead I do like working in it, though!

You don't need powerful microprocessor for UI. Just some sort of connection. WiFi, network, file system. Then UI can run in browser on tablet, desktop...

Re: Ask HN: What toolchains are people using for desktop app development in 2025?

#54

Post by Mars008 »

mg wrote: post #8

Now that Chromium supports the File System Access API on desktop and mobile, I am building every software I need as HTML+JS+CSS. Before that, handling files in the browser was cumbersome. You had to offer download and upload links for users to manage files. And handling whole directories was impossible. But now web apps are like native software tools that you can use to edit and manage files on the file system. And t…

What about FireFox, does/will it support file system access? I'm not an expert, just thinking this way and don't like Chromium. The idea is to use light web server in application + browser with JS. This makes it easier and more convenient as it can naturally run remote, on microprocessor. Also LLMs are good at generating such UIs.

Re: Ask HN: What toolchains are people using for desktop app development in 2025?

#55

Post by cosmic_cheese »

Still plain old Swift (or when the itch strikes, Objective-C) and AppKit. I don’t really build for platforms other than macOS because I haven’t found toolkits that feel right elsewhere. I would do just about anything for multiplatform AppKit.

Re: Ask HN: What toolchains are people using for desktop app development in 2025?

#57

Post by ranger_danger »

LarMachinarum wrote: post #38
Palomides wrote: post #7

Qt with QML for a somewhat embedded use case. I think it hits a really nice intersection of native speed, GPU acceleration, interfacing with C++, and ease of development. I wouldn't really recommend a career out of it.

Qt used to be what I used as well, but the licensing has become so repulsive for professional use that I now refuse to touch it now (not even for my open source side projects where this wouldn't be an issue). Too bad the hopes from the early Nokia adoption days got smashed by MS mole Elop and the later owners of Qt.

We have no issues shipping both FOSS (LGPL) and proprietary solutions using Qt without having to pay any license fee... not sure what issues you're running into.
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