Comment by drnick1
15 days ago
> But, in 2026, writing a greenfield application in a memory-unsafe language like C++ is a crime.
I disagree, the GUI layer is far from behind a safety critical component, and C++ is a battle-tested choice for everything from GUI, videos games, to industrial applications. If C++ is safe enough to control airplanes and nuclear reactors when used well, it is certainly safe enough for something as trivial a GUI.
The article also fails to mention frameworks like Qt, arguably the best way to write GUI apps in 2026. Qt is native (C++), has built-in memory safety features (but no GC), and is cross-platform.
Why would the article mention Qt? Qt is native for a subset of Linux distributions, not Windows.
Qt is arguably the best cross platform toolkit to target when writing big/complex apps
Qt for Windows compiles to a win32 or win64 .exe. That is native in my book.
Even Microsoft shipped Qt apps as part of Windows though, for instance onedrive
...but it is comfortable and actually a PITA compared to any managed execution environment :-)
Sure, embedded systems are a different anmial...
Yet we cannot consider Qt to be native app development since every app requires the Qt runtime. Native means system libraries only.
There is no Qt "runtime". Qt is just a library.
> Native means system libraries only.
Every non-trivial application will eventually use third-party non-system libraries.
I think "Native app development" has at least two meanings:
1. narrow meaning: the program uses a native UI toolkit (Win32, Cocoa)
2. broad meaning: the program targets one or more specific platforms and the UI is not not just a webview
Even with the narrow meaning, WxWidgets would qualify as "native development" (because it uses native UI toolkits under the hood), yet it is still a third-party library.
>Native means system libraries only.
Since when? To me, anything not webview-based is native, though you have varying degrees of integration into the platform.
Why single out WebViews? Would you consider Flutter native? It renders widgets on its own just like a WebView does.
5 replies →
I have always considered Qt apps (even for Windows) to be native. Think of VLC, VirtualBox, etc.
I'd consider them "naturalized"; close enough to native that you wouldn't notice any big differences, but there are still minor ones if you know what to look for.