Thank you for the detailed write up.
I’m was thinking about building native windows UI, wrapping around cross platform library written in swift. I did not know it was that messy and complicated.
Windows native app development is a mess
141–150 of 481 posts
Re: Windows native app development is a mess
#142The Windows code signing experience has prevented me from shipping apps that otherwise run perfectly fine on the platform. It is a nightmare and I cannot believe it wasn't called out in the "We want to fix Windows" blog post.
Just do exactly what Apple does. Charge me $100 directly from you and let me build an .exe that I can distribute on my website.
Re: Windows native app development is a mess
#143Because I didnt see it already mentioned. Avalonia[1] and Uno[2] for C# are also really great if you want to write windows apps. I wrote some in Avalonia that worked incredible nice on Linux and Windows. You dont have to use MVVM or AXML for example Uno allows for C# Markup[3] to be used instead or MVUX instead of MVVM. I personally hate MVVM and AXML but you are not forced to use them. For Avalonia I dabbled in crea…
I built multiple Avalonia apps with zero previous experience
- Windows 11 Hardening utility - made it because all existing ones are not updated to handle all the new AI telemetry + new updates + I made it differently and more powerful than anything that exists currently
- Windows Admin/ Security / Networking Utility built for my needs
- Windows 11 Anti Virus Nuker - Completely shuts off windows defender without disrupting system performance or zombie files
- and more
Re: Windows native app development is a mess
#144Again, 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 better state than WinUI 3.0 with C++), WinForms, WPF, if using Microsoft only tooling.
Otherwise, Qt, VCL, Firemonkey, Avalonia, Uno, ImGUI,....
They were even forced to revamp WPF status at BUILD 2024, given how bad WinUI 3.0 was back then, and it isn't if it got any better, apparently it is in the process of being open sourced, to see if the community can take over the mess a $4 trillion valued company cannot fix.
Really, stay away from WinUI, unless you're a Microsoft employee on the Windows team without any other option.
[0] - Can explain by the nth time the differences, if one feels like it.
Re: Windows native app development is a mess
#145> 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…
Why would the article mention Qt? Qt is native for a subset of Linux distributions, not Windows.
Re: Windows native app development is a mess
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Winforms? lol at them still bekng the best option. so much wasted effort trying to replace them
Winforms is great until you try to make windows dynamically sized, or deal with DPI nicely. In every other regard it's still fine, and for accessibility actually _better_ than many subsequent frameworks. And produces nice small fast executables.
Windows dynamically sized is quite easy, people have had enough time to learn how to use layout managers in Windows Forms.
Naturally it is a bit more than just drag and drop controls from the toolbox.
HiDPI is supported in modern .NET, with additionally APIs, that aren't enabled by default only due to backwards compatibility.
Re: Windows native app development is a mess
#147> And from what I can tell, neither are most developers. The Hacker News commentariat loves to bemoan the death of native apps. But given what a mess the Windows app platform is, I’ll pick the web stack any day, with Electron or Tauri to bridge down to the relevant Win32 APIs for OS integration. Well yes as a user I prefer native apps for their performance. It's clearly a mess to develop native apps as the article sh…
When Microsoft themselves use electron to develop apps what expectations can we have on other devs?
To decide what tools are the right job for each project,
same expectation as always.
So many “let’s race-to-the-bottom along with the authority” comments on HN lately.
Dude: no! =]
Re: Windows native app development is a mess
#148It has been a mess for 15 years and Microsoft keeps making it worse by adding new frameworks without retiring the old ones. Win32, WPF, WinUI, MAUI. Nobody knows which one to pick.
Yes, and the hubris sting-of-death was UWP. They tried to make Windows into a mobile OS, severely restricting the alowed actions of programs, including strict certification to be able to run them (elsewhere). Of course nobody went for this and UWP died a quiet death. Recently there are signs that MS is trying to go back to making products that users actualle want (Win11 reverts). We'll see...
> They tried to make Windows into a mobile OS, severely restricting the alowed actions of program
They already had Silverlight! For Windows Phone 7. Then they killed that off too and expected the "plethora" of WP7 apps to be rebuilt for WP8 (requiring the beloved Windows 8 desktop OS for this task). Then they again expected developers to throw that away in favor of UWP for Windows 10, which unified the desktop and phone OSes. By then it was too late.
Old apps still ran on the newer OSes but the SDKs became dead-ends.
Re: Windows native app development is a mess
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Winforms is great until you try to make windows dynamically sized, or deal with DPI nicely. In every other regard it's still fine, and for accessibility actually _better_ than many subsequent frameworks. And produces nice small fast executables.
I assume that if Microsoft hadn't abandoned WinForms for the next thing, it would support dynamic sizing and DPI properly. It's mindboggling how much time and effort they've wasted coming up with new GUI frameworks instead of just improving on what they have.
It does, but many still think it is like using VB 6 and don't learn the additional APIs that provide that support, e.g. FlowLayoutPanel and TableLayoutPanel.
And for HiDPI, https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/desktop/winforms/hi...
Re: Windows native app development is a mess
#150I’m still confused which frameworks are tied to which “visuals”. Ignoring the web-frameworks, do Win32 apps inherently look like Windows XP buttons or can they look more modern?
It might be nice if the article could add screenshots, a few of the Wikipedia links have a screenshot, but again I’m not sure if you’re limited to that UI or not.
I also like the carousel in the article showing the tray menus, but again not sure what they are each “built-with”.