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Windows native app development is a mess

domenic.me

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Re: Windows native app development is a mess

#161

Post by 201984 »

glitchc wrote: post #140
drnick1 wrote: post #138

> But, in 2026, writing a greenfield application in a memory-unsafe language like C++ is a crime. I disagree, the GUI layer is far from behind a safety critical component, and C++ is a battle-tested choice for everything from GUI, videos games, to industrial applications. If C++ is safe enough to control airplanes and nuclear reactors when used well, it is certainly safe enough for something as trivial a GUI. The art…

Yet we cannot consider Qt to be native app development since every app requires the Qt runtime. Native means system libraries only.

>Native means system libraries only.

Since when? To me, anything not webview-based is native, though you have varying degrees of integration into the platform.

Re: Windows native app development is a mess

#162

Post by AnotherGoodName »

nslsm wrote: post #154
apankrat wrote: post #114

Let me chime in and say that plain Win32 API is a perfectly viable option if you are using C++ (or another "OO" language) and if you are willing to sink a couple of weeks into writing your own MFC-like wrapper. Clearly this is not an option for those who are just starting up with Windows GUI work, but with little experience it is really a matter of 2-3 weeks of ground work and then you have full control over all nuan…

I don’t want to be that person, but if you can think of a decent API for your MFC-style wrapper, an AI should be able to write a decent implementation for you.

Agreed. In fact this supports the GPs point about using the rawest form of GUI manipulation.

For years we loaded up libraries and abstractions to minimize boilerplate. These hid the actual underlying mechanisms and often made specific customisations harder to do since you were taken away from the raw functionality.

These days AI is extremely good at writing boilerplate and in my opinion explicitly typed out boilerplate code is much easier to reason about than a library that abstracts things away to a one line annotation or similar.

A good example is that i've recently been leaning back to the raw Android apis for things like recyclerviews etc. It used to be 10+ files to changed to create an efficient scrolling view on Android with various resources and adapters required. So a whole bunch of libraries came out to try to abstract the complexity away. You know what though? I don't care about that anymore. I'm going back to the raw GUI APIs where possible because it's so explicit and clear even if it's 10x more code.

Re: Windows native app development is a mess

#163

Post by ToucanLoucan »

IlikeMadison wrote: post #79
ozim wrote: post #6

That is why everyone even Microsoft themselves does Electron. Running with html/css/js has benefits it really is open and free development based on international standards and not locked into any single big tech.

Electron is the worst thing that happened to quality software. I spoke to two HR guys last year at the company I'm working at and they told me they ditch every single resume mentioning "web technologies" in them. Funny part is when they also told me these "bad" resumes are for the vast majority H1B wannabees.

Second. I wouldn't say we ditch resumes on that basis, but ultimately, we're a native outfit only. You can be the best damn app developer on Earth but if all you've ever used is Electron, well, I can't use you.

Re: Windows native app development is a mess

#164

Post by Rohansi »

201984 wrote: post #161
glitchc wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet we cannot consider Qt to be native app development since every app requires the Qt runtime. Native means system libraries only.

>Native means system libraries only. Since when? To me, anything not webview-based is native, though you have varying degrees of integration into the platform.

Why single out WebViews? Would you consider Flutter native? It renders widgets on its own just like a WebView does.

Re: Windows native app development is a mess

#165

Post by nozzlegear »

pjmlp wrote: post #144

Again, unless you have existing Windows 8/10 applications that were written against WinRT, UAP or UWP[0], that make use of WinUI 2.0, forget about touching anything related to WinUI 3.0 or WinAppSDK, stay away from the marketing. Exception being the few APIs that have been introduced in Win32 that instead of COM, actually depend on WinRT like the new MIDI 2.0 or Windows ML. Keep using Win32, MFC (yes it is in a bette…

Just wanted to add a shoutout to WinJS for posterity, with which I built a Windows 8 app that I had published to the Windows Store for a brief period of time. Then they open-sourced the UI part of WinJS and decided it was just a web framework instead of an officially supported method for building Windows apps iirc, which was the end of my foray into the Windows store.

https://github.com/winjs/winjs

Re: Windows native app development is a mess

#166

Post by jwagenet »

domenicd wrote: post #121
apankrat wrote: post #114

Let me chime in and say that plain Win32 API is a perfectly viable option if you are using C++ (or another "OO" language) and if you are willing to sink a couple of weeks into writing your own MFC-like wrapper. Clearly this is not an option for those who are just starting up with Windows GUI work, but with little experience it is really a matter of 2-3 weeks of ground work and then you have full control over all nuan…

Judging from the screenshots, that doesn't produce Windows 11 style UIs, right? I.e. it contributes to the problem exploree at https://ntdotdev.wordpress.com/2023/01/01/state-of-the-windo...

Maybe I grew up with Windows so the older uis don’t phase me, but I find these sort of complaints rich considering differences between gtk, qt, etc in Linux userland. The average Windows user might stumble on an aero dialog, which is arguably less jarring in win11 than og metro.

Re: Windows native app development is a mess

#167

Post by Klonoar »

nozzlegear wrote: post #165
pjmlp wrote: post #144

Again, unless you have existing Windows 8/10 applications that were written against WinRT, UAP or UWP[0], that make use of WinUI 2.0, forget about touching anything related to WinUI 3.0 or WinAppSDK, stay away from the marketing. Exception being the few APIs that have been introduced in Win32 that instead of COM, actually depend on WinRT like the new MIDI 2.0 or Windows ML. Keep using Win32, MFC (yes it is in a bette…

Just wanted to add a shoutout to WinJS for posterity, with which I built a Windows 8 app that I had published to the Windows Store for a brief period of time. Then they open-sourced the UI part of WinJS and decided it was just a web framework instead of an officially supported method for building Windows apps iirc, which was the end of my foray into the Windows store. https://github.com/winjs/winjs

If you want JS, isn’t react-native-windows an option?

Re: Windows native app development is a mess

#168

Post by Marsymars »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #159
Marsymars wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company is moving our main LOB app to .NET 10 in the near future. It's taken a while but has gotten to the point where .NET 10 has pretty much caught up to .NET Framework for feature support, and our take is that the cross-platform support, performance gains and newer C# versions are worth more than the stability of .NET Framework. And the gap's going to keep growing - doing the upgrade now means future upgrades c…

If .NET had a desktop UI for Linux it might be worth it for me, but we haven't gotten there yet somehow.

Yeah we don't have any plans on moving our WPF app to Linux, but the rest of our stack (job scheduler, ASP.NET service, web APIs, etc.) all has real potential to get off of Windows.

Re: Windows native app development is a mess

#169

Post by layer8 »

pjmlp wrote: post #144

Again, unless you have existing Windows 8/10 applications that were written against WinRT, UAP or UWP[0], that make use of WinUI 2.0, forget about touching anything related to WinUI 3.0 or WinAppSDK, stay away from the marketing. Exception being the few APIs that have been introduced in Win32 that instead of COM, actually depend on WinRT like the new MIDI 2.0 or Windows ML. Keep using Win32, MFC (yes it is in a bette…

In that light, it is troubling that Friday’s blog post [0] announced “moving core Windows experiences to the WinUI3 framework” as a measure to improve the quality of said experiences.

[0] https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2026/03/20/our-com...

Re: Windows native app development is a mess

#170

Post by layer8 »

domenicd wrote: post #121
apankrat wrote: post #114

Let me chime in and say that plain Win32 API is a perfectly viable option if you are using C++ (or another "OO" language) and if you are willing to sink a couple of weeks into writing your own MFC-like wrapper. Clearly this is not an option for those who are just starting up with Windows GUI work, but with little experience it is really a matter of 2-3 weeks of ground work and then you have full control over all nuan…

Judging from the screenshots, that doesn't produce Windows 11 style UIs, right? I.e. it contributes to the problem exploree at https://ntdotdev.wordpress.com/2023/01/01/state-of-the-windo...

Many would consider that a positive.
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