Some tools made building GUIs easy (and fun). I can think of Visual Basic, HyperCard, Borland’s TurboPascal, FrameMakerPro, etc.

In today’s era, the easiest GUI tools are probably game engines, iOS and web browsers.

Exactly. There's really not a way to make it easy. Web is the best UI dev method, that's why electron became popular.

I found VB6 really easy. Draw buttons on a form, double click, write code behind. There was also a huge ecosystem of components you could use. Delphi was similar in spirit.

I've also found Python + Gtk (in the Python 2 and Gtk 2 days) very simple and productive.

There are a ton of problems that you have in webdev that don't neccessarily exist in a local app. Mostly from the fact that you have state everywhere, in the client, on the server, and in the database, and you have to manage it asyncronously. React helps with it a bit, but in principle a desktop app can be "100% frontend" (I mean you still have something like MVC, but you don't have a separate server or a sandbox for window js where you have to communicate).

> Draw buttons on a form, double click, write code behind

If my memory serves, this is also how WinForms worked.

One problem with VB is you still have to know C/C++ to extend it

Lazarus does that too.

Best is a strong word. Just because something is popular does not mean it is the best. It is the cheapest/easiest (for developers), I have to agree.

With Delphi, GUI programming was super easy!

Still is

MacOS is simple, open xcode, new project, choose the app and press run.

Well, so just like on Windows :P

Open VS -> New Project -> Winform/WPF -> Run

to elabolate:

1. Open VS, wait a minute. 2. New Project 3. Run, wait 10 minutes for dependencies to download. 4. Want to use Sublime Text or VS Code, haha lol.

>3. Run, wait 10 minutes for dependencies to download.

Why would you need 10 minutes?

>dotnet new winforms

>dotnet run

>app appears

takes a few secs

even on old .NET there was no such a thing like 10 min wait for dependencies to load

You didn't ask about their internet quality, computer specs, etc.

If you're used to developing on Linux where you can self-host entire repos, it's incredible how fragile and ephemeral the MS stack must feel.

What do you mean?

>If you're used to developing on Linux where you can self-host entire repos, it's incredible how fragile and ephemeral the MS stack must feel.

I guess he's talking about restoring nuget packages, so of course you don't want to have all existing nugets in all versions on your disk.

> 1. Open VS, wait a minute. 2. New Project 3. Run, wait 10 minutes for dependencies to download. 4. Want to use Sublime Text or VS Code, haha lol.

You're playing on hard mode; try using Visual Studio for everything.

#3 is a one-time cost, #4 is you are doing it wrong

Tk has generally been easy.