I think these days I'd even shy away from MFC unless there was a reason that something like QT or even wxWidgets couldn't fulfill my needs due to licensing or some API (e.g. COM) it needs to use.

I've programmed Win32 for decades and while it was fine for the time, much of the user facing APIs are obsolete for modern GUI development and some of the non-user facing stuff too. But Microsoft really hasn't produced a credible replacement for it and has shat out a succession of technologies one after the other that devs are supposed to use before Microsoft abandons them for the next - Win32 (and layers on top like MFC), WinForms, WPF (and Silverlight), UWP, Windows App SDK / WinUI.

Some of these technologies are overlapping, but each was intended to coral devs into making Metro apps or Windows Store apps and burn their bridges in the process. It went down like a lead balloon. Now they're dialing back trying to make WinUI somewhat platform agnostic to the version of Windows its running on but who knows if it will stick. It's not the only pain point because Microsoft even extended the C++ language to deal with these APIs with new types like "ref", "partial" and hat notation to deal with garbage collected objects, auto generated classes and other things that also impedes portability.

So it's no wonder that app developers have gone for web apps (and QT) because it's makes it easier to write portable apps and acts as insulation from Microsoft's mercurial view of the world.

If "the problem is peer pressure" then the nicotine/tobacco industry should have NO PROBLEM with ads / promotions / marketing / sponsorship being banned right?

The reality is that vapes are in the same situation as tobacco in the 70s and 80s deliberately using marketing of people looking cool and sexy to get people hooked on this shit. The way to stop people getting hooked is to remove all prominence of the product and make it hard and extreme risk for a business to sell to kids. And to make the product less affordable by banning disposable vapes. And to make the product less attractive in terms of flavours and such.

These are all obvious measures. Will it stop all kids from vaping? Of course not. But it will stop a lot. And that's why tobacco / nicotine lobby REALLY want things to stay as loose as they are now. They need a constant stream of new addicts and anything that threatens that is detrimental to their business model.

Make the penalties of selling vapes to minors so huge that companies won't do it. And ban vapes from appealing to minors in the first place - zero advertising, zero promotion of vapes, a total ban on disposable vapes and limited flavours, i.e. they are not visible in stores, they are not advertised online or TV, they don't sponsor events / sports, they may not have a social media presence of any kind.

Everyone despises car dealers but they do perform an important role selling cars somewhere between wholesale price and MSRP. If automakers want to sell direct to the consumer then the online operation should be operate under the same terms and conditions as dealers. i.e. it might say "Ford" on the website, but it's really a separate siloed franchise that has to deal with Ford just like any other franchised dealer.

MacOS only runs on a handful of hardware devices that Apple creates and tightly controls. Windows runs on a VAST selection of hardware that Microsoft mostly does not control. So of course there is the potential for more crashes. Hardware and drivers aren't perfect and that increases the potential for things to go wrong.

But I'd rather have choice and the freedom to buy hardware that suits my needs & budget than be stuck in a golden cage.

So in summary "no I don't have examples of the tool chain being incomplete". A simple question but instead of answering honestly you went off on a rant instead.

When you say "the tool chain is incomplete", in what way? And assuming you have examples how are they insurmountable problems that couldn't or already aren't being addressed? Are they mainstream examples, or just niches that will be addressed in due course? I'm not even sure why "toolchain is incomplete" makes any sense since Rust is basically a front end to LLVM and compiles and runs anywhere that does, which is pretty much any modern architecture. Maybe you object to it not being in the GCC toolchain, but progress for that is already well advanced assuming you had some moral objection to LLVM. Rust can also be consumed by C and call C with first class bindings which is not surprising since under the covers it is a non garbage collected language that compiles to machine code. And who is saying anything about breaking user space? Or kernel space for that matter?

And when you say "Rust zealots", I'm afraid that's projection at work. We can see it at play in this very story where it is predominantly people throwing out all kinds of bullshit and nonsensical accusations against Rust and getting corrected. Who are the zealots? People productively using a computer language or the people attacking it, often with arguments from ignorance. It's one thing to use a language and not like it for legitimate reasons, it's another to attack it when very clearly you haven't used it.

Exactly. It's a good language. It solves obvious and recurring problems that plague C/C++. It produces fast code and it is used from application level all the way down to the kernel. I wouldn't advise rewriting any code for the sake of it unless what was there was an unmaintainable or incredibly fragile mess that needed rewriting. However for new code that previously would have used C/C++ the question should be - why shouldn't I write it in Rust? Maybe there are reasons, but the default these days for anybody who likes less bugs, performant and stable code is to use Rust.

I think it's clear that most of the "zealots" are people who feel threatened by a new language. Almost as though the existence of it makes them feel like less of a programmer. It's weird since Rust isn't that hard to learn for people who already know how compiled, non garbage collected languages work.

I have no doubt China is using apps to spy. But I don't its any different for X, Google, Facebook, Snapchat, LinkedIn etc. They all gather data and they will all give it up to the US government either willingly or if the government goes through the motions of obtaining a warrant.

Chinese autos have had a chequered history for safety and maybe the domestic market is different. But export EVs typically score 5 stars for safety in Euro NCAP tests and are as good as anything produced in the markets they compete in. China has also begun banning things which are proving dangerous to drivers, like electronic latches and popout handles in doors so in some ways they're setting the pace for vehicle safety.

I have a Chinese EV and it drives great. Its 3 years old and I haven't had any trouble with it aside from a slightly crappy infotainment system.

If anyone wants some cheap e-ink displays that's where you need to look.

Discover = Discord, silly autocorrect

I think a "browser for gamers" is marketing bullshit for a "browser with Twitch, Discover and a dump truck of affiliate shit hardcoded into it whether you need it or not". I expect gamers would be better served just by using a normal browser if they had the urge to. Most likely the experience is better, and the browser would be more focused on what it is supposed to be doing. Also, Opera's reputation for privacy is hardly enhanced knowing they're Chinese owned these days.