Has anyone here ever tried using Rust’s Qt or GTK bindings, or another library, to make a complex GUI beyond a few simple forms or dialog boxes? I keep hearing that the language’s architecture makes it really hard to do any sort of advanced GUI development on it, but what’s the actual experience like? How would you compare it to say, native Qt or GTK using C++/C respectively, or things like JavaFX or Flutter? Maybe even the .NET Framework or whatever Apple uses for their platform? Would you actually recommend Rust over any of those?

  • @kyleisguilty
    6•2 years ago

    haven’t done much GUIs on rust but i can say the Qt/GTK experience isn’t good, Qt/GTK rely too much on multiple ownership and on rust that’s a big no-no (basically, you either have to put everything behind a RefCell or use unsafe everywhere)

    thankfully that problem can be avoided by simply writing the library in rust (although that does bring other problems)