Logs on UIs, LLMs, frameworks and such

This is actually quite hard to do. I’m fairly proficient with the odd Python script and can cobble together a mean HTML/CSS/JS UI for a Python server, but making an actual desktop app? That’s another level. I’m just trying to turn my note-taking app which runs on a Python server into an actual, like, desktop app thingy.

LLMs and vibe coding don’t work on this. They are awesome at the functionality on the backend but absolutely mess up the UI time and time again. Then, there is the front-end frameworks quirks to contend with. What I actually need to do is to find something -- anything -- that is reasonably easy to work with for the front-end. For an absolute beginner, that is.

What I’ve tried

Nothing gets close to the original. There is always some sort of dependency hell. Take Tauri for example. All went well with the code migration until compile time. It couldn’t resolve a cookie dependency despite the fact that there was not a single cookie-anything mentioned anywhere in the code. That’s what my Terminal said: cookie. What the? The best of the best, Claude, could not resolve and recommended trying something else!

Pure Rust is also another story. Does not compile due to a mismatch on two crates needed for this. Again, all LLM’s could not figure out how to resolve this and most recommended trying Tauri. Well, OK then! Been there, done that, mate.

GTK actually worked out pretty nicely. I managed to get the UI looking almost exactly like the original, but there are some weird happenings in there. One such thing is an annoying thin black vertical bar which appears intermittently on the left side of the editor box. It comes and goes and is an eye sore. Once again, no LLM can help. “Try Tauri” they say! Listen, you walnuts! I have and the bloody thing seems hungry or something, complaining about cookies and such. FFS!

What I need

I tell you, Electron has never sounded so good right now. Why I’ve avoided it thus far is because of the size of its end product…the whole package is huge. I mean, this is a note-taking app, for Pete’s sake. A very, very simple, basic note-taking app. There is no need for the AppImage or the Flatpak or the .deb to be 200MB for this, right? All for the pleasure of using Chrome as the front-end because I know jack-all about coding proper UIs.

Then there is the battle-tested C++. This will work, 100%. Won’t it? No dependency hell, guaranteed. At least not like these newcomers. And, at least I know a tiny bit of the syntax. Do I, now? This will work now, right?

Nah!

Back to the drawing board in the quest to find something that accepts vanilla HTML/CSS/JS as a UI…