areweguiyet VS wxWidgets

The organization behind QT (QT Group) has pretty onerous licensing terms.

My understanding is that it's $3,950 per year just to develop using their libraries on your own computer if you ever in the future intend to commercialize a product using QT. Transitioning from the open source license to the commercial license is something you can do but it's not the happy path and their FAQ seems to indicate that it comes with some sort of penalty.

https://www.qt.io/pricing

Something like Slint (Rust based but includes CPP and JS bindings) is not as comprehensive (yet) but it's more modern and the licensing terms are significantly more in line with software industry norms.

GPUI from Zed is also something to monitor: https://www.gpui.rs/

Also, in general you can find an extensive list of Rust-based native UI libraries here: https://areweguiyet.com/

I would suggest that nearly every person on this website is a developer. Both C and C++ let you shoot yourself in the foot quite easily, but at least C++ has RAII.

If you're referring to Rust, it's just not there yet for anything serious: https://areweguiyet.com/

I normally use python to do some quick data analysis, with pandas/polars/pyspark/...

But I've started to use rust more and more in the last few weeks and really start to like it.

Does anyone have experience doing data analysis with rust, and would you recommend it over python?

And are there any resources like https://areweguiyet.com/ but for data analysis?

You still haven't said anything about why those existing frameworks don't count. Again, they are used in production and do exactly what a gui framework is supposed to do. Sure they may not have all the features of the frameworks that have existed a decade before rust even existed but the issue is time not rust itself. They very clearly can be used to build complex UI without inheritance. Since you mentioned it, you should probably actually look at it https://areweguiyet.com/ the page clearly says that GUI frameworks do exist in rust.

The web site https://areweguiyet.com/ has a list of GUI libraries for Rust.

I haven’t tried any yet as I lack the time, but it can be a good starting point.

Iced and Slint where interesting when I looked at that, and Slint may be done by former Qt developers.

I also hope that it is consistent with the goals mentioned at https://areweguiyet.com/

The Elixir programming language is no stranger to desktop applications as the language actually supports building them out of the box. It uses wxWidgets: a C++ library that lets developers create applications for Windows, macOS, Linux and other platforms with a single code base. But wxWidgets has a very complex API, and doesn’t solve issues that usually come with desktop applications around packaging.

Qt is also 100% open/free. In fact, both are available under the LGPL, just that wxWidgets also grants an exception to not have to distribute application sources even when statically linked:

https://github.com/wxWidgets/wxWidgets#licence

But for big programs, ones written in C++? Good luck it won’t be easy at all. You might try wxwidgets or qt. I do not predict trying to click box-ify complex cli tools yielding much success.

In theory, you should be able to use FFI to interface with something like wxWindows, but you might again have problems on macOS, I don't know. And to me eyes, Wx looks a bit outdated.

This seems to be like the classic wxWidgets [1], i.e. it's an API that wraps the underlying platform's default toolkit. So on Windows it uses Windows' native controls, in Linux it seems to use GTK, and so on.

That means that the advantage is being able to write against one API, and get cross-platform compatibility, which can be nice. It also means (typically) being limited in what you can do to the least common denominator, or you (=the toolkit author) end up having to re-implement features from one platform that you want to expose but that are missing on some supported target(s). Or, of course, have an API with non-portable parts in it.

In any case, it means the "look and feel" is not the core feature of the API since that is going to be "like the target platform" and that is the point.

Given the origin, I guess Lua support is important too, here.

[1]: https://www.wxwidgets.org/

- So, I found wxWidgets. Which looked good. However, when I followed some tutorials I was getting errors. Even when I copied and pasted the tutorial code. Furthermore, the library still doesn't seem to simplify the process much.

It is the icon for WXWidgets, a programming toolkit for making user interfaces that work on Windows, Mac OS and Linux.

In general, people will use a cross-platform library to port such applications. While QT will likely never really stabilize (I'd flag it unsustainable), the https://www.wxwidgets.org/ is able to be statically linked into commercial and opensource projects at no cost without tripping GPL.

"Hiring a senior C++ developer with GTK experience is costlier"

I think you are confusing skill valuation, and operational productivity. Some have an erroneous notion talent is interchangeable. Likewise, applicants with identical base skill-sets on their CV often mistakenly believe they even have long-term employment options (outsourced, youth tax credit churn, and or senior wage suppression).

Most FOSS people are easier to train, as most already can mitigate utter chaos already. =)

There are a few like that in the C++ community. WxWidgets is the most famous/popular with this approach. But it is a library almost impossible to use in other languages because their api is heavily templated.