alt Hacker News> Zed is a heroic effort, but look at the code and you'll see that we still haven't figured out how to do Rust UIs.
Only a handful of apps and frameworks have figured this out. Most of the world moved onto HTML+Javascript plus Electron. Or mobile UI.
Who is using native UI in 2026? GTK and QT don't feel great.
I'm glad Zed is trying. We need more efforts.
Replies
pjmlp • today at 9:41 AM
> Who is using native UI in 2026? GTK and QT don't feel great.
Game developers, Windows applications in .NET (possibly with some C++/COM modules)
The problem with native UIs is mostly a Year of Linux Desktop problem.
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steve1977 • today at 8:48 AM
> Who is using native UI in 2026?
Swift. Which is similar to Rust in some ways actually.
I've been experimenting (thanks to Claude Code because it removes the headache drastically for me of Rust nuances, I'm not a Rust expert by any means) with Qt and Rust.
I discovered cxx-qt which is maintained by some Qt maintainers, which are all employed at KDAB. I had no idea KDAB or this project existed. It's been very smooth so far.
I can honestly say the barrier to building a GUI is very low with Claude, must to the dismay of others, but it beats me building an Electron app.
https://github.com/KDAB/cxx-qt