WinRT was great, back when using it via .NET Native and C++/CX.
It was like Delphi and C++ Builder kind of experience, then they killed the whole experience.
Rust with windows-rs is hardly any better, and coming from the same folks that killed C++/CX, with false promises at CppCon 2017, I don't have great hopes for it. They will jump ship again after a new shiny.
Speaking of Delphi - they should just buy Embarcadero and make Delphi and CppBuilder available for small money. That way they might get more and better apps for their platform again.
The thing is, at least compiled programming languages are statically typed. XAML is... well I don't think they even have a language server for it. My experience in Visual Studio (non-Code) was pretty bad.
I think my favorite cross-platform GUI library is wxWidgets, because you can manually construct an interface from nested linear layouts, which is the way I prefer to construct my interfaces.
Apple seems to have a much more powerful constraint system for this sort of thing, but I haven't taken the time to learn it yet, so I can't speak to whether I'd prefer it or not.
It was like Delphi and C++ Builder kind of experience, then they killed the whole experience.
Rust with windows-rs is hardly any better, and coming from the same folks that killed C++/CX, with false promises at CppCon 2017, I don't have great hopes for it. They will jump ship again after a new shiny.