Interesting, Samsung’s Tizen OS used Enlightenment/EFL as its native UI framework: https://docs.tizen.org/application/native/tutorials/ui-build...
I haven't used EFL myself to judge its quality (i considered it for a bit but from what i could tell it doesn't seem the main developer(s) considers backwards compatibility important - there is some API revamp which on one hand sounds nice but on the other hand it means anything that uses the existing API will stop working - though i might be wrong here) but from what i could tell the author didn't really knew the API he was working with.
> If you can pass a const, you can pass a string literal for example, which will then be de-const’d, so you can modify it at will. Welcome to the land of undefined behavior by design!
The author needed to understand what C is - a weakly typed language that doesn't get in your way. EFL (and Enlightenment) was created and led by Rasterman [1], the guy who knows his craft and doesn't waste his time with type-related theoretical nonsense. I find his code extremely readable and performant, and he has a lot of good resources to learn from.
Nothing really awful about it. MOC is the MetaObject Compiler, and it's needed to support introspection. In standard C++ you can't just list the methods or properties any random thing has, for instance.
Signals are also pretty complex. At the simplest, yes, they're more or less a C callback. But they can also be queued and sent between threads, and that of course needs special support that Qt does for you behind the scenes.
What changed in newer releases is that signal syntax moved from using strings:
connect(sender, SIGNAL(destroyed(QObject*)), this, SLOT(objectDestroyed()));
// This is pretty much:
connect(sender, "destroyed(QObject*)", this, "objectDestroyed()");
connect(sender, &QObject::destroyed, this, &MyObject::objectDestroyed);
Both are valid criticisms. The first point is objectively wrong API design.
Let me repeat, it is objectively wrong. C may not have the strongest type system but that doesn't mean that the intended programming model is "completely ignore const correctness".
> knows his craft
Maybe. But there are plenty of programmers who achieve great things while being objectively awful programmers.
The criticisms in this article (assuming they are true) are really unarguable.
I'm genuinely curious how Tizen came to use EFL.
Edit: I looked it up; apparently due to high performance and built in theming support (which tbf I do remember being true of E17 back in the day). They do also note the "unfamiliar developer experience" and lack of documentation and developers. Definitely an odd choice.