Alright. I'm actually fine with WinForms and WPF since my factory floor codes depend on them. But the reality is they aren't expressive enough for modern UIs. XAML is an issue, and WPF is boilerplate hell. But then Blazor is too heavy, MAUI is broken and buggy, Avalonia is underwhelming, and WinUI 3 is an absolute nightmare.
Not OP, but I've found Avalonia to be pretty much a direct replacement for WinForms. I mean that both as a compliment and a deserved insult. It's not the WinForms we wanted, but it is the one we deserve.
More seriously, it has all the strengths and weaknesses of WinForms and feels about exactly as unfinished and rough as WinForms. I still have to implement custom widgets that i would have expected to be included out of the box. It's nice that it's cross-platform, though with all the rough edges that cross-platform .net still has. It really, truly feels exactly like every C# UI framework I've ever used in the last 20 years: almost good, not quite finished, and takes an amount of effort that is just unreasonable compared to any other language/framework of any age.
I've been a C# dev for most of my career. I have more fun writing UIs from scratch by drawing individual pixels in C++ than any C# UI.
Alright. I'm actually fine with WinForms and WPF since my factory floor codes depend on them. But the reality is they aren't expressive enough for modern UIs. XAML is an issue, and WPF is boilerplate hell. But then Blazor is too heavy, MAUI is broken and buggy, Avalonia is underwhelming, and WinUI 3 is an absolute nightmare.
> But the reality is they aren't expressive enough for modern UIs
Other than web tech, what actually is expressive enough?
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> Avalonia is underwhelming
How? Can you elaborate?
Not OP, but I've found Avalonia to be pretty much a direct replacement for WinForms. I mean that both as a compliment and a deserved insult. It's not the WinForms we wanted, but it is the one we deserve.
More seriously, it has all the strengths and weaknesses of WinForms and feels about exactly as unfinished and rough as WinForms. I still have to implement custom widgets that i would have expected to be included out of the box. It's nice that it's cross-platform, though with all the rough edges that cross-platform .net still has. It really, truly feels exactly like every C# UI framework I've ever used in the last 20 years: almost good, not quite finished, and takes an amount of effort that is just unreasonable compared to any other language/framework of any age.
I've been a C# dev for most of my career. I have more fun writing UIs from scratch by drawing individual pixels in C++ than any C# UI.
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What I don't get is why Java doesn't get dogged for desktop UI like C# does.
Because people have given up that battle and just except that Java UI is crap.
Because Microsoft pushes C#/dotnet as the preferred way to write UI on Windows.
Which, for specifically Windows, it works perfectly fine. The only complaints I've heard is for a cross-platform UI framework.
Eto.forms too...