Why trying to write GUI apps for Windows causes me physical pain

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Writing GUI applications for Windows using C++ can be challenging due to various limitations of popular libraries. WinUI 3 offers modern components but struggles with portability. Win32/MFC allows single .exe deployment but lacks easy styling. Qt has powerful features but is complex and expensive. wxWidgets is lightweight but lacks customization. hikogui is promising but difficult to compile. Sciter is a good alternative with rendering issues. Ultimately, Dear ImGui is found to be the most suitable for simple apps, despite its limitations with complex UIs and the need for a GPU renderer.

Writing GUI apps for Windows is painful

Win32 / MFC / small libraries wrapping Win32

That’s why electron(or the new Tauri) became popular so its better to choose these cross-platform frameworks or a game engine like Godot. It has reactive data binding so it is also good for just GUI app or just any cross-platform framework

Windows Development is painful if you use a painful tool: with Delphi you can write any app in seconds withouth having to deal with all the problem listed here.
WinUI is modern, but limited: Delphi has more than 400 components (GUI and functional) out of the box. WinUI is not portable, Delphi targets Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux with the same source.
Win32/MFC allows single exe deployment: Delphi does that too, but support RAD development, styling and theming. And you can access all the Windows APIs.
Qt is complex but, wxWidgets lack customization… Delphi is easy and you can customize anything you want, and also inherit existing components and controls to build your own ones.
Electron and similar are really bloated: they take up hundreds of megabytes only to run a Node instance and a web server under the hood. Delphi apps go easy on memory and are much more fast, and you can use all the features available through integration with the underlying operating system (in some Electron/JS app you can’t even use the right mouse button).
There are so many advantages that it is impossible to list them all.

Yea It’s painful if you don’t know what you are doing, when you learn all is simple and easy.

Java Swing With FlatLaf library is a good combination, if you want go beyond that you can use JavaFx with stylesheets, scenebuilder would be helpfull to build, and also JFeonix is good lib for JavaFx applications