Comment by jasonjei
15 days ago
It’s been a long time since I had to touch Windows development. If I had to do it over again, I would use React Native for Windows UI where possible and low-level Win32-React Native module bridges for user space code.
The last time I had to do Windows development was about 15 years ago. I used a library called WTL (I think a couple comments here mention it). I couldn’t use any of the newer stuff that Windows 8-10 were pushing because it needed backward compatibility. It seemed way less bloated than MFC, but not as annoying to use as ATL or rawdogging Win32 APIs.
Ironically, I was developing a Win32 app to build a cloud bridge to a Rails app (talking to Quickbooks COM API which was hell on Earth, with XML and XML definitions) on Mac, using VMware on Mac to talk to Quickbooks Windows. I was so annoyed with Win32 development I used the Chrome Embedded Framework library to build the UI for the Win32 app so I wouldn’t have to wrestle WTL for UI and just have browser-based views to drive UI.
I think it was very tempting to drop C/C++ development for .NET code, but I didn’t want to drop off user adoption by requesting users to download a huge .NET runtime if their computer didn’t already have it.
This was when I was building Levion, a Quickbooks Windows to Cloud Rails app…
You should run away from React Native Desktop screaming. It's built on top of WinUI 3, and inherits all it's problems, while also being dramatically slower. Almost all functionality requires writing C++ code, and communicating between C++ and JS is a huge pain in the ass. Use QT instead.
And if you think using it will let you port your app to other platforms, think again. There's no drop-in compatible equivalent of RNW for Linux, and the version for Mac is even worse than the Windows version.
t. works on a huge app written with React Native Desktop
Thanks for the heads up! In all fairness, I'd probably run away from writing any more desktop apps!