It's certainly lowered the barrier of entry for me, and I'm no web developer - my background is mostly back-end Java. Sure, I started out by making websites whe

It's certainly lowered the barrier of entry for me, and I'm no web developer - my background is mostly back-end Java. Sure, I started out by making websites when I was younger, and a few of my jobs have involved a bit of front end, but I'd be surprised if there are many developers that don't know the basics of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Using web technologies to develop a GUI has been so much easier than learning a new toolkit, or even language. For one thing, some of the options you mentioned are OS specific. There are benefits to OS-native toolkits, but as a one-man team with a small project, the benefits are small and the time investment large. With Electron, I can build on Linux and release for Win/Mac without any concerns. Qt is the best option of those you mentioned, and I considered it. But I was never great with C++, and learning a whole new markup language (or being tied to Qt Creator) for the UI was an extra barrier for entry. And I've often found that Qt programs don't look or feel right outside of Linux. Personally, I find developing a UI on HTML/CSS/JS much easier than any desktop UI toolkit I've tried in the past. Updating the UI from the code, and calling code from the UI is s simple, because that's what it was designed to do. And having a browser console makes debugging and trying things so much easier. I was never a fan of using JS for anything but websites before, but I decided to give Electron a try and I'm a convert. Perhaps there's enough of a speed difference between JS and native code that it would matter for more complex programs, but for my uses I don't notice a difference, thanks to the speed of JS engines now. Maybe from someone that's starting with no coding knowledge would find Qt and C++ just as easy to pick up as HTML and JS, and certainly a C++ developer would find Qt a better choice. And sure, I don't expect anyone to be able to build Photoshop on top of Electron. But there are plenty of programs that aren't that complex. While in theory I agree with not using the "new sexy technologies" for the sake of it, and "using the right tool for the job", I don't think that applies here. It works both ways, don't stick with old technologies just because that's what you're used to. What specific benefits do you get from using one of those toolkits for a simple desktop program?