Xaml and Wpf? Qt? I am honestly asking you, have you worked with React before? XAML has a learning curve of 2 years and more to get to expert level. I developed with it for more or less 5 years and i still have nightmares. Qt and the others are all imperative layout inflaters. React was a revolution, maybe the first cross platform paradigm that actually made sense. A learning curve that doesn't span more than a day. In all my years as a frontend developer i haven't seen a simpler way to create user interfaces. And sure as hell i would prefer React on the desktop or mobile over aged native toolkits that still struggle with obsolete oop-mvc-templating semantics, especially wpf and xaml, which in my opinion where the sole reason why i started hating my job.
I love writing React code and it is easy to get up to speed there.
I abhor the mix of HTML/CSS for UI design. I'd rather code UIs in Actionscript.
The web browser as an abstraction for general use UIs is just not ideal.
XAML might be a company induced mess underneath but my point is that you don't have to be XAML expert to make nice interfaces. I made CRUD apps on WPF and rarely did I have to touch XAML directly. I had a big thick book on XAML and it sat unopened on my shelf.
I am forced to do front-end webdev work and I hate it. I need to worry about UI breaking instead of worrying about business logic.
Let's say client needs a dropdown menu added at a certain location. On desktop this is cake on most toolkits.
On web the problem is that there is no certain location, there is no absolute. You have to delve deep into CSS abyss to figure out how the component will behave.
Well i give you that, css is what it is, but even with basic css knowledge, making a dropdown appear anywhere you want is not hard: https://codesandbox.io/embed/w7499vxrzk
It could be better, but it's even got a proper grid system now, close to wpf's. From what i remember though, wpf's styles also had some rough spots.
Uh, there is in fact, an absolute(position:absolute). It has caveats, but doesn't XAML? The 'certain location' bit is actually quite complex:
- how is it supposed to adapt to different resolutions?
- is an inner absolute component allowed to escape its container?
- how does it layer with other components?
The CSS required to position an element at an absolute location must take all of these into consideration, and I'm not sure how much better a native toolkit can make it.
