We are huge into Microsoft but MAUI is on the no touch list.
After maintaining a Blazor (server-side) app for a few years, it has become clear to me that even if the abstractions are ideal, the tooling may cripple the entire experience.
I don't trust Visual Studio 2022 to not treat me like a piece of shit in a UI style project anymore.
The only project types I really trust to not suck are: class library, console app, and azure function (timer or http triggers).
If Microsoft wants me to give their UI frameworks another shot, then I challenge them to rewrite visual studio itself using whatever proposed framework. Only then would I have faith that someone sorted out all the long-tailed dragons that would bite me in the ass 2 years deep.
What UI framework should I be focusing on in 2023? Should I focus on web-based framework (vis-a-vis Electron or similar platform) or is there something more suitable for desktop UI?
We do web-only right now. No frameworks. Maybe focus on MDN if you think you can get the business done with a webapp. Once you master flex, grid & friends, you will be set free.
If we are still insisting upon native apps, I am growing increasingly-curious as to what the reason could possibly be. Unreal & Unity deploy to the browser. What does your business do that is so special by comparison?
HTML is a bad replacement for a proper UI toolkit, that's the appeal. There are so many problems that good UI toolkits and languages solve that HTML just ignores and always will. But, Chrome gets a massive budget, web apps are easy to deploy thanks to the ubiquity of browsers, and there's safety in numbers, so those things usually outweigh the other concerns. Doesn't change the fact that there is plenty of scope to compete with HTML.
After maintaining a Blazor (server-side) app for a few years, it has become clear to me that even if the abstractions are ideal, the tooling may cripple the entire experience.
I don't trust Visual Studio 2022 to not treat me like a piece of shit in a UI style project anymore.
The only project types I really trust to not suck are: class library, console app, and azure function (timer or http triggers).
If Microsoft wants me to give their UI frameworks another shot, then I challenge them to rewrite visual studio itself using whatever proposed framework. Only then would I have faith that someone sorted out all the long-tailed dragons that would bite me in the ass 2 years deep.