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Over the past year, I've been porting my GIS project over to Rust (https://github.com/jblindsay/whitebox-tools https://github.com/jblindsay/whitebox-tools). I'm

Over the past year, I've been porting my GIS project over to Rust (https://github.com/jblindsay/whitebox-tools https://github.com/jblindsay/whitebox-tools). I'm sitting at over 100k lines of Rust code now. My experience with the language has been very good and, in particular, its concurrency support is extremely productive and aligns well with the spatial algorithms that I work with. The one thing that I wish for, however, is a better GUI story.

dman 8y ago
I am surprised there has not been a Qt like project spring up that is written in Rust.
- fcantournet 8y ago
  This is a really massive undertaking, and the UI space is really crowded and moving in all sorts of directions. It's not that it would be without value, but it's really risky and a lot of work, so not very surprising.
- jblindsay 8y ago
  Yes, I'm kind of surprised by this too, but I guess that the whole industry has been moving away from desktop applications for quite some time.
- rapsey 8y ago
  Right now https://github.com/maps4print/azul https://github.com/maps4print/azul is looking the most promising.
  - jblindsay 8y ago
    I'll look into this. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
- MrBuddyCasino 8y ago
  I‘m not sure its needed anymore. WASM in the browser could be both efficient and be the new UI paradigm - why pay the cost of mapping to OS widgets?
  - dman 8y ago
    I would imagine people looking at UIs for a systems programming language would want a lighter abstraction than pulling in an entire browser (for things like embedded).
    - MrBuddyCasino 8y ago
      On the other Hand, you wouldn’t need a UI abstraction layer on embedded, because those things don’t have standard controls and code is often platform specific, not portable.
  - Retra 8y ago
    Gross.
- Retra 8y ago
  There are a couple. But people don't just want any old GUI, they want a GUI that is marketed toward them and stamped with official approval.

dman 8y ago

I am surprised there has not been a Qt like project spring up that is written in Rust.

fcantournet 8y ago
This is a really massive undertaking, and the UI space is really crowded and moving in all sorts of directions. It's not that it would be without value, but it's really risky and a lot of work, so not very surprising.
jblindsay 8y ago
Yes, I'm kind of surprised by this too, but I guess that the whole industry has been moving away from desktop applications for quite some time.
rapsey 8y ago
Right now https://github.com/maps4print/azul https://github.com/maps4print/azul is looking the most promising.
- jblindsay 8y ago
  I'll look into this. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
MrBuddyCasino 8y ago
I‘m not sure its needed anymore. WASM in the browser could be both efficient and be the new UI paradigm - why pay the cost of mapping to OS widgets?
- dman 8y ago
  I would imagine people looking at UIs for a systems programming language would want a lighter abstraction than pulling in an entire browser (for things like embedded).
  - MrBuddyCasino 8y ago
    On the other Hand, you wouldn’t need a UI abstraction layer on embedded, because those things don’t have standard controls and code is often platform specific, not portable.
- Retra 8y ago
  Gross.
Retra 8y ago
There are a couple. But people don't just want any old GUI, they want a GUI that is marketed toward them and stamped with official approval.