.NET MAUI is coming to Linux and the browser

I don't know if it has since improved, but .NET MAUI was really, really rough when I created a mobile app for my employer last year. I'm talking basic things - changing basic colors on the toolbar (1), putting non-text content inside a button (2), basic trigger behavior (3), to list a few. Not to mention that .NET UI has been years behind on hot-reload and developer tooling. Additionally, It was a fight to keep our app performant. The XAML compiler is a step in the right direction, but we had relatively simple views (in the dozens of components) absolutely tanking our FPS. I know there is probably some of my skill issue in there, but when I find basic things taking hours to optimize that I wouldn't even think about in React, I start to wonder about the framework. I spent a lot of time creating PRs on .NET MAUI but their team appears quite small and overloaded. I wish them the best - they're some talented folks, but I don't envy their job.

I can't help but think of Joel Spolsky's Things You Should Never Do (5) - the transition from Xamarin to .NET MAUI feels like a very similar mistake to Netscape. All of the battle tested Xamarin code, documentation, community examples, packages, etc. is now dead and has to be converted over to .NET MAUI.

On top of that, XAML just doesn't do it for me - having to deal with code-behind, MVVM view models, custom converters, and the actual XAML files themselves is insane for what is usually just a a single file in JS. The fact that you need to write a "InvertedBoolConverter" (4) just to flip a boolean is the most Microsoft thing ever. MAUI feels like it's designed just to keep a large development team busy. I'm not joking, we have a 42 line file that's only purpose is to flip booleans for XAML views.

We're a C# shop so it was nice to share our common C# with our desktop application, but I don't think it was worth it in the end. Sure JS has its problems, but I'll take those problems any day over MAUI.

I hope Avalonia can fix .NET MAUI - it'd be a massive kudos to them if they can smooth it over, but I can't say I'd willingly rely on this project long term.

1 - https://github.com/dotnet/maui/pull/15612 2 - https://github.com/dotnet/maui/issues/8191 3 - https://github.com/dotnet/maui/pull/15655 4 - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/communitytoolkit/ma... 5 - https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-... https://github.com/dotnet/maui/pull/16965