I can remember the subsequent period in which Java desktop apps were relatively common. They had cross platform UI by default. But the problem was:
1) cross platform GUIs are ugly by default, compared to fully native desktop apps, because they don't entirely replicate the affordances or the style of the platform;
2) in the Java case, it seemed heavyweight to install and sluggish compared to native apps;
Point 2 would not have applied to stdwin, as it would have produced small compiled binaries I suppose, but Point 1 would have.
So in the end, obviously web apps (and partly, Flash) took over the niche that "cross platform desktop apps" had once tried to fill, and then it was something of a dead zone until Electron, as far as I remember.
I think this is an implementation detail. It's up to the software stack whether it leaves off before drawing the UI elements on screen, or goes ahead and takes on that responsibility too. The wxWidgets toolkit uses the runtime platform's UI, so it does not draw the widgets themselves. Java Swing took on the task of drawing the UI elements on the screen in its own style.
Basically, cross-platform GUI only looks good on the platform that it was originally designed for. Unless the other platforms make zero interesting choices, they will always look worse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tk_(software)
...which even leaked into other language ecosystems like Python:
I saw a screenshot of GTK 1 and the first thing I thought is that I'd rather make something using GTK 1 than GTK 3. Unfortunately I asked an AI chatbot about it and they advised against it because of "security" :(
It says 1988 there.
Edit: Someone else wrote 1988 which I suppose makes sense, as the latest reference at the end is from 1988 too. So then Guido was 32 years old.
> 32 years old
As a ~20 year old this feels so weird to read. I'm still considered young in ~10 years?
One of these days, maybe as early as your mid-/late-40s, you will be consulting with your a medical doctor and realize that you are the oldest person in the room.
An anecdote for you...
In Summer 1997 i was 24 at a family reunion, listening to my grandmother and several other seniors talk about some recent interaction my grandmother had had with a delivery person. One of her friends asked her, "how old was he?"
i'll never forget either her response or my jaw-dropping which followed:
"Oh, he was a _young_ man. About 50, I guess."
(Yes, she actually stressed the word _young_.)
Back when I was a teenager, people in their 20s were “old farts.”
Nowadays, I look at people in their 40s, as “kids.”
Here’s my first ever engineering project (1987): https://littlegreenviper.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/TF30...
I was 25, at the time, and a fairly newly-minted EE.
I just turned 65. Own 1 person custom software development company and am very much active professionally. Started programming in the 80s while working as a research scientist.
You'll still feel young too! It's really weird when you get to your mid 30's and realise that all the 20-somethings view you as old