[WD-42]

OK, but what about actually using a GUI toolkit to make an actual application?

You can optimize a library to make it comparatively simple to draw a circle on a screen. But that tells me nothing about binding state, signals, styling, widget hierarchy, etc. Maybe these frameworks look complicated to you because doing something more than drawing a circle is actually more complicated.

[cwillu]

VB was used to create a great many data-munging applications in its time, and while they were never pretty, they were lightning fast, largely consistent, and generally far more reliable than what we currently have.

[monster_truck]

A relative's business has been and is still completely driven by a VB app. It's goddamn ugly but most businesses of their size in that industry have been paid subscribers for 30? years at this point. Most notably its the only piece of software they've never had to ask me for help with at all.

The only updates it gets anymore are little data packs when laws/regulations change and it seems like they automated that because it's always ready before it's needed. The last "big" update was a guide to running it in parallels on new macs.

[chii]

And that is the perfect piece of software - it does exactly what is asked, and no more. It has simple enough "architecture" to let anyone maintain it (by adding new stuff that regulations demand, easily), and continues to function without modification otherwise.

[hombre_fatal]

Agreed. I want a coherent, deliberate architecture for building an application and managing state.

That's the hard part. I'll take on incidental boilerplate (e.g. Elm) if the architecture helps me build and understand applications. Whatever gets me to that latter part.