Why? Qt/swing/gtk apps tend to look like shit and are horrible to try and code
You couldn't be further from the truth. Have you seen the Blizzard app (Qt) [0]? The JetBrains Toolbox app(Qt) [1]?
Also, here's a small app I wrote in kotlin and swing for my GF who wanted to download music from youtube without installing crapware downloaders [2]. You'll notice it has a custom window frame, support for drag and drop, and fully customized table and buttons. I spent about 5 hours styling the UI, and half a weekend writing the entire app.
Yes, I agree, dowloading music from youtube is immoral and illegal, but I'm showcasing the UI so please ignore the underlying purpose of the app.
[0] http://l3.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/v.xvnI7eUsLskyHopY6Kkg--/Y...
[1] https://www.jetbrains.com/help/img/idea/2017.2/rm_py_toolbox...
That's true, but the argument was never about how complex applications are. It was about how they look. If you want an `idea` how well a swing look and feel scales with the complexity of the application, look at the IntelliJ IDEs.
Not to mention the irony of complaining about performance, when the promoted alternative is electron...
Well, it wasn't about being "better", it was about not looking like shit.
> The Blizzard app does not look good and its performance is vastly worse than most Electron apps I've tried, so the irony eludes me.
Well, Visual Studio Code used to drain battery life for blinking the cursor in the background. But again, it was never about performance. My original argument was that newer 'native' applications written using Qt or swing can look just as good as web based UIs
What you did say is that Qt or Swing apps looking bad cannot be further from the truth. If that were the case, you should be able to rattle off dozens of beloved, beautiful, complex Qt or Swing apps. Most cross-platform UIs (including those based on Electron) look and behaves poopily. The few that don't are the result of exceptional effort and focus.
Unless someone puts in the extra effort to style the application, nothing will look consistent cross platform.
And if you want "native, consistent, desktop applications" (for the current platform), Qt has that out of the box and Swing had a native look and feel that looked pretty consistent on Windows 7 at least.
To be fair, I did change it a bit later to use Open Sans .
It is neither! Enjoy your music :)