There is an easy way to write GUI apps that both look good and do not boil down to the lowest common denominator of 80s state-of-the-art: use something like SDL

There is an easy way to write GUI apps that both look good and do not boil down to the lowest common denominator of 80s state-of-the-art: use something like SDL/GLFW, with an immediate mode UI toolkit on top. Lagrange (https://gmi.skyjake.fi/lagrange/ https://gmi.skyjake.fi/lagrange/) is a beautiful app that (despite my ideological purism in favoring more "native" solutions) I find perfectly usable and pleasant to use.