Ask HN: How to make a native GUI with a modern language?

HN has strong opinions against Electron so here are my requirements:

- I want to make a native looking GUI

- Cross platform (macOS, Windows, Linux)

- With a sane language (no C, C++ or Objective C)

- Ideally with a data flow looking like unidirectional data flow / Elm architecture

What options do I have?

Personally I like JavaFX.

I made something pretty complicated with tkinter and Python. It's not that hard to do but the result looks awful, it doesn't support many features people expect in 2022, and the documentation for using tk in Python is poor. You probably need to refer to the tcl/tk documentation and translate it in your head to apply to Python.

As much as people hate Electron, the rendering engine in a web browser is head and shoulders better than any other cross-platform system and I think it's a sane model for programming. The main trouble w/ Electron is that you have 30MB of runtime for any application, even if it something that could be coded in a 25k .EXE file based on Win32.

Hate to say it but, this is one of the biggest tragedies of modern CS. Best bet is to use gtk, or qt, and hope the language bindings for your lang of choice aren't horrible (depending on the language you might be in tears)

Qt for Python may be an option: https://doc.qt.io/qtforpython/

While the Qt API is imperative (`self.layout.addWidget(self.text)`, ...), focusing on declative Qml whenever possible helps with a more declarative approach.

quark / sciter isn't OSS, and I've never used it, but they claim they can bundle something like electron (JS backend, web frontend) into a 5mb binary