> but that just goes to show how low our standards have become
I totally agree. We need to do better. But I still stand with Qt being a good option. There are ways to lower Qt apps binary sizes down to 11MB[1] or 8.3MB[2].
Qt hails from the era when software was routinely measured in megabytes, so it's designed with that in mind. I suspect that it's QML specifically that contributes the most bloat in this case.