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Comment by vially | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for these great articles. I love your blog and your work on druid. Keep them coming!

This is a space I'm very interested in. Having a high-quality, reactive UI toolkit for developing native desktop apps might make it easier for web developers accustomed to these reactive frameworks (e.g.: React) to develop native apps (without having to resort to hacks like Electron).

Linux in particular could really use more developers developing native desktop apps and I feel the current UI toolkits (QT/QML, GTK) and in particular their language choice (C++, but I'm aware there are bindings for other languages) are not appealing enough to the casual web developer. It could be argued that Rust might not be the answer for these developers anyway, but one can still hope.

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How is Rust a better choice for the „casual web developer“?

Both Qt and Gtk have Python bindings, which would be far more in the realms of a web developer (dynamic typing, no compilation, garbage collection...).

Maybe you’re asking the wrong question. A different way to phrase this question will lead you to answers about why this is so exciting for a lot of people.

Why is Rust a great option for building native applications? Rust is a great option for building applications that would traditionally be in C/C++. These languages are traditionally chosen to have lower overhead than other options. You could build a new Qt or GTK in Rust, and put similar Python bindings over it, just as you described to go after those developers, if that’s desirable.

In addition to that, many casual web developers are recognizing the benefits of a compiler with a type checked language, it’s why Typescript is growing so quickly.

So you want to choose Rust when you want a lighter weight application, that has lower memory overhead, generally faster runtimes, and a long term plan around maintenance (the type system and various safety guarantees). Or more succinctly, because you’re someone who enjoys writing programs in Rust.

Weird, because as web developers we've been pushing towards static typing (TypeScript, ReasonML, etc). I'd much prefer to be learning Rust than having to brush up on my Python, to be honest.

> It could be argued that Rust might not be the answer for these developers anyway, but one can still hope.

I fail to see how a systems programming language notorious for it's novel/different take on memory management will cater to a community known by their extensive use of high-level languages that are very permissive and abstract away memory management.

Well, unless we're talking about buzzword-oriented programming.

What native apps do you feel are missing on Linux? All the small apps and utilities are there. In some areas there are even more options available...

What is missing is big-ticket suites like Adobe's software or video editors etc. In other words, huge software packages that I would very much like to prefer to be developed by proper skilled developers who can manage to write modern C++ (is it so hard? We're not talk assembly here...), not by "casual web developers" who are used to writing subpar code because the web and the browsers let them get away with it.

> proper skilled developers who can manage to write modern C++ [...] not by "casual web developers" who are used to writing subpar code because the web and the browsers let them get away with it.

what a strange thing to say

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