I don't know if I'm lucky with the hardware revision, but I've had exactly zero problems with mine. I don't think I've ever even seen the stock firmware or at least not for anything other than installing "mainline" openwrt immediately. Has been running since, with steady updates.
A few (historical) contributing factors: FLTK doesn't follow "system" theming or look or integrate with anything. It's not the default of common "desktop evironments". It may also be less portable and lack bindings for the language the dev wants to use.
Both Gtk and Qt, but especially Gtk have those features. Qt also has a lot of corporate backing and jobs advertising. Gtk is the official GNU toolkit(?).
(I would also disagree on developer friendly or simple. But that's opinion of course.)
Well, in class environment, they've probably figured out that it's not a sane or correct answer that gets the points. It's the answer that follows all the rules that have been set in the material for that class. It's extremely typical for teachers to grade based on the "best practices" and "sacred rules" that the classes teach. Showing ideas, outside knowledge or solutions that are simpler than the course material just gets a student punished.
That made me want to look up some link about Shu Ha Ri. Turns out that's actually been made popular in some corners of sw dev already. E.g. https://martinfowler.com/bliki/ShuHaRi.html
