Ask HN: Those who develop desktop apps, what is your toolset? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Those who develop desktop apps, what is your toolset?

8 pointsvijayr12 comments

Are there still devs making desktop apps? What is your toolset, and could you share a link to your app?

JavaFX

https://www.vinumeris.com/lighthouse

(there's a promotional video).

Note that to use it requires you have some bitcoins.

WRT the development process, it worked pretty well. The 3rd-gen Java UI stack is much better than Swing and was a pleasure to work with. Much better than the web stack.

The app is open source if you want to read the code:

https://github.com/vinumeris/lighthouse

I built the installers for each platform with the 'javapackager' tool that comes with JDK8+.

Java 8 (SE) with Swing.

Of the few other UI toolkits I have tried, Swing has proven the most flexible in terms of resizable layouts.

I have dabbled with some web dev (html,css, javascript). It all seems hacky compared to working with Swing.

Look into Google Web Toolkit when you get a chance, web dev toolkit with more of the Swing and less of the hacky.

Most of our desktop applications are made using C#/WPF/VS but I've been strongly considering Electron (http://electron.atom.io/) since Visual Studio Code was released which is made with it, and really doesn't have the feel of "yet another web app trying to look desktop-y". I'll most definitely try it out for our next desktop app project.

I've used Java with Swing before, and I've done some prototypes with Python and PyQt/Pyside, which I think works pretty great.

Been meaning to make something with Electron or NW for a while, but I'm apprehensive because of the downsides (executable size, app performance, appearance).

After a long absent from the desktop I returned developing in JavaFX. Oh boy has desktop app development improved on Java! I liked it a lot, using FXML to define the GUI, MVC built in etc.

I recently did a desktop app www.autoannote.com using node-webkit. I know it's still all html/css but that's the only way I figured to create cross platform desktop apps.

Is it autoannotate?

Yep. http://www.autoannotate.com

Maintaining a rather old Java desktop application, and I've been using Abeille. It is old, poorly documented but still pretty neat. Code is closed source unfortunately.

C# .NET, WPF, Visual Studio. I can't share a link

Windows 10 Universal apps

Visual Studio 2015, C#, XAML, TFS

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