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Comment by boomlinde | Hacker News Reader

I don't get this. I've used GTK, Qt, Tk and FLTK software in OSX, Windows and Linux. The rest is usually covered by standard libraries and third party libraries.

So I take it this approach is disqualified on your terms for not being meaningful, which raises the question about what "meaningful" means.

My own guess is that it's a matter of convenience of distribution: enter an URL and you can start using the app.

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Isn’t it that most software written today has to target the web? So you have two distinct platforms to write to: web, and non-web. Even if Microsoft and Apple came up with a brilliant, singular API, that’s still one more API that has to be coded to. With solutions like Electron, you have a very fast time-to-market with a “desktop” app, and your engineering team only needs to target the web. Customers will only notice the fundamental issues with the solution after it’s too late (or they won’t care.)

Sadly, the solution seems very business-driven. The ROI threshold to making a desktop-native app is quite high.

Why do you have to target the web as a platform if you already have sufficient platform-native support in your application?

That's a good question. I can think of a handful of reasons, but I am sure there are more. 1) ease of use. It's much easier to tell a prospective customer a URL than instructions on how to download/install/run a local application (if they even have permission to do so.) 2) Ecosystem. If your customers are generating content that needs searching, sharing, or collaboration, it has to be on the web in some capacity. 3) (Unfortunately) Shiny object syndrome. Browser-based applications have an innate appeal that outmoded desktop applications lack.

None of those UI libs work on Android or iOS.

I think that's a huge part of it. Most of the users nowadays are using smartphones and tablets.

Qt does.

It is very niche, and again only if you go with C++. For most Apps that are not games, using C++ is probably overkill on mobile just so you can use Qt. And you will still have to come up with a mobile optimized UI, as a standard desktop UI layout will just not work on 5" screens.

https://wiki.qt.io/Language_Bindings

> And you will still have to come up with a mobile optimized UI, as a standard desktop UI layout will just not work on 5" screens.

No tool will magically solve this problem for you. Qt has excellent support for responsive design if that's how you'd propose to solve it.

And no, Qt is not very niche.

Qt has done a fantastic job in this space. It is also isn't cheap. It is only free for GPLv3 software.

I use Qt for anything cross-platform. The main problem is that C++ is not an easy language for UI developments. also consider the fact that C++ devs are paid higher that Java, JS or C# devs. Most other UI toolkits are really terrible for cross-platform development.

> GTK, Qt, Tk and FLTK

Aren't all of those C/C++? There's time and place for manually managing memory, figuring out UB and segfaults. If you're trying to render a frame full of AAA graphics in under 15 milliseconds, or go through a million requests a second, then I don't mind it. But if I'm just writing an email client...

> Aren't all of those C/C++?

No.

> If you're trying to render a frame full of AAA graphics in under 15 milliseconds

Irrelevant.

> But if I'm just writing an email client...

Use bindings.

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