The Quest for the Ultimate GUI Framework

This page summarizes the projects mentioned and recommended in the original post on /r/programming

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  • glimmer-dsl-libui

    Glimmer DSL for LibUI - Prerequisite-Free Ruby Desktop Development Cross-Platform Native GUI Library - The Quickest Way From Zero To GUI - If You Liked Shoes, You'll Love Glimmer! - No need to pre-install any prerequisites. Just install the gem and have platform-independent GUI that just works on Mac, Windows, and Linux.

  • webview

    Tiny cross-platform webview library for C/C++. Uses WebKit (GTK/Cocoa) and Edge WebView2 (Windows).

    The author shrugs off web tech (maybe because of electron bloat?) but you can avoid the bloat by using each platforms native web browser control. There are even cross-platform libraries that make creating the native control and cross-communication simple. These applications would be architecturally similar to Win32 apps using and communicating with a XAML Island, but the advantage of web tech is it's an open standard and WPF/WinUI is not.

  • WorkOS

    The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.

  • reflex

    Interactive programs without callbacks or side-effects. Functional Reactive Programming (FRP) uses composable events and time-varying values to describe interactive systems as pure functions. Just like other pure functional code, functional reactive code is easier to get right on the first try, maintain, and reuse. (by reflex-frp)

    I only have experience using Reflex, which I regard as the main contender for FRP UI libraries in the Haskell sphere. It's got a flashy website, but I think the documentation is a bit disorganized -- it took a long time for me to figure out how to get going with the library (you find some pieces of knowledge scattered here and there, if you look hard enough). My plan was to learn it well enough to onboard other people, but I don't think I could convince anyone who hasn't already decided that they're gonna make UIs in Haskell no matter the required effort.

  • Laminar

    Simple, expressive, and safe UI library for Scala.js (by raquo)

    For Scala there is Laminar, which has an even flashier website with nice docs. I haven't tested it out though, as I have never used Scala.

NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a more popular project.

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