.NET WinUi3
We've got WinForms, WPF, UWP, WinUI3, MAUI, and whatever else they have cooking now. I haven't used much of MAUI, but WinUI3 (aka WindowsSDK or half a dozen other names they use, it's the "updated?" version of UWP) is also barely functional. Data binding is an absolute mess, and barely works. It works OK with static data, but just try having a ListView inside the data template for a ListView. I tried using user controls to add an add/remove button, which works fine when repeated manually but not when inside a user control. List items inside a flyout do not update, and the UI and data desync whenever you remove an item containing a list from a list view and then add a new item in, the new item will have the old one's data on the front end but a blank list on the back end.
Who knows, I am just a rookie after all. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. But honestly having to dig through dozens of pages of half-complete documentation, 3 year old forum posts talking about features that will be available in 1.0 yet we are on 1.4 today, and finding differences between wacky interfaces, BindableList, ObservableCollection, INotifyPropertyChanged propagation, etc. is a pain in the ass. Oh and the lack of a WYSWIG designer in VS that I really enjoyed in WPF is a pain.
Don't even get me started on distributing the application. By default, MS wants you to package your app into a MSIX package, like what is on the store. But, unless you submit to the store, you will need to have your package signed with a certificate from a root authority to be installed. There's no way to skip this either. If you sign it yourself, you need to also distribute a powershell script and a cert file. Uploading to the store was a no-go, as the app is just a tool for a friend and not complete either. Getting my non-techsavvy friends to install that was a nightmare and didn't work anyway.
You can unpackage your application, but this means the entire windows SDK (and .NET runtime if you truly want it to just work) must be copied to the output each time, adding around ~200MB for a hello world. Code trimming is broken and will never be fixed either. Then you still have to figure out how to get the ~400 files needed to run the app (mostly all localization on an app that doesn't need it, it's for a friend only) to install somewhere. I ended up using a vs installer project to make a .msi file, but the documentation is really poor and the default settings don't work either. Most links that talk about MSI push towards MSIX.
To be honest, I like the look and feel of winui3. It's why I tried it out and still use windows, I'm sorry. But these strange bugs are a pain to deal with. The biggest issue is installing unsigned packages. Please just add a "install anyway" button through a UAC prompt, like literally everything else. Apparently the reasons why not is that the windows sdk and net runtime, etc, are windows store packages, and non-blessed code can't talk to blessed MS code. I'm starting to see why people don't like snaps in the Linux world. Why move core system components onto the store?
Go back to WPF. For now, at least, it seems that developing your own app on WinUI3 is akin to an ACE exploit in MS's mind. Sorry for the ramble.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
