I remember I was trying to learn GUI programming in late 2000s. I took an attempt at MFC but no matter how hard I tried, it just didn't make any sense. Then I found out about Qt 4 and it felt like magic immediately. I ended up working as a professional Qt software developer for 3 years.

Fast forward to now, and KDE Plasma is state of the art Linux desktop that I've been daily driving for years. It's also built on Qt.