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by viraptor 878 days ago
Avalonia https://avaloniaui.net/ QML https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qmlapplications.html and other options exist. The choice is not between Electron or native. There's lots of options in between "everything native from scratch" and "ship the whole browser".

Also for many electron apps you're going to write a native component too.
1 comments
alwayslikethis 878 days ago
By the point you are using QML I don't think it's actually that much lighter than Electron. QtWidgets is probably justifiably better in this regard. Not all electron apps have to be as bloated as Slack, for example. It's possible to design sane applications.
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viraptor 878 days ago
No, it's still not the same category. QML doesn't pull in a full featured Chrome with all its runtimes, dom, full scripting, multiple levels of JIT, etc. You're still significantly lighter. Even Avalonia with bundled .net is lighter.
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rubymamis 877 days ago
QML is very efficient. Much of custom QML code ones write actually compiles to C++[1]. All the code of Qt Quick components are written in C++ as well. I'm now creating a block editor in Qt C++ (model) and QML (view) that is 4x faster than that fastest comparable native app on macOS[2]. So, yes, it's possible to write very efficient code with QML.

[1] https://www.qt.io/blog/qml-type-compilation

[2] https://www.get-plume.com/

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