[catlover76]

Do you have thoughts and opinions on the various options for Windows desktop development? I would be curious to know, I am starting to work on a Windows desktop app. I am assuming that the first, MVP-style, attempt will be using Electron.

But I am also wondering if Maui will end up being a better option, or if I will be able to have an excuse to use the Avalonia framework for F#

[grumblingdev]

> the first, MVP-style, attempt will be using Electron.

Good choice.

If you want to stick to HTML...WebView2 is suppose to replace it, but it assumes your backend code is .NET or C++, instead of JS/Node.js. Microsoft Teams is using it.

If you want to use native Windows UI components from JS code, then React Native for Windows is recommended. Facebook Messenger is using it.

All approaches require C# or C++ modules to be used to interact with the Windows Platform. Or there is: https://github.com/tjanczuk/edge.

The recommended approach is WinUI 3 which would involve C#/C++ and XAML.

To SwiftUI/React/JetPack are called module-view-update (MVU). There is an MVU for C# called Comet. https://github.com/dotnet/Comet#key-concepts

[catlover76]

Cool, thanks for this info.

Seems like there are kind of many, many options, but none of them are particularly great.

[grumblingdev]

Just no obvious choice like every other platform.

[superchroma]

I think avalonia is much more promising than Maui as the latter seems to be kind of mythical in nature.

[catlover76]

What do you mean? That you've never seen anything actually built in Maui even though people mention it?

[superchroma]

It seems not ready for commercial use, and perpetually not ready, which is unfortunate.

[asfarley]

I’ve been working on a complex desktop WPF application and I’m happy with the results.