A critical review of Xilem in 2026
2 points by PuercoPop
2 points by PuercoPop
I've made concerted attempts at using xilem, and even masonry underneath it a few times and it's been pretty brutal. So I agree on pretty well the points here.
The problem is there are some really good bits to xilem, but they're hindered badly by the experience of trying to develop something even moderately complex in it. You have to be really dedicated to get something out of it that matches what you originally envisioned without a lot of compromises along the way.
As I've played with more and more different gui frameworks, I really like the QT slots and signals mechanism and I wish there was sort of an evolution of that we could target and bring into xilem alongside an easier path to declaring a UI. I harp on the web all the time, but it's really easy to cobble together a UI with some HTML. Slint took a similar route. Separating the concern of declaring the views and UIs from the code a bit makes things feel clearer and might make it feel easier to get something up and working faster.