I’m not well-versed in Rust, but as far as I’m aware there’s a somewhat low hard cap on how ergonomic a fully Rust “old style” imperative OO UI framework (like AppKit/UIKit) can be, which is unfortunate as I find that style easiest to work with for complex desktop apps.
I wish there were more memory safe compiled languages that focused on ergonomics for cases like this.
Rust doesn't play well with traditional frameworks but works fairly well with Elm and immediate mode.
One of the reasons I started messing around with Zig.
What makes you say that exactly?
In my experience declarative UI frameworks quickly get awkward as UI complexity ramps. That model is workable for things like simpler mobile apps, text editors, terminals, and tiny focused utilities but is cumbersome for anything much more involved.
While imperative retain mode frameworks are technically possible in Rust, my understanding is that there’s a level of unavoidable ceremony and syntax ugliness (unless safety is discarded, which defeats the point of using Rust).