Believe it or not, this is a similar problem in web development. Every week or two there is always some new and shiny framework that is top dog and a must use. My best advice is to just pick one framework that you’re comfortable using and stick with it. Ignore the new and shiny beyond that and focus on your app. Otherwise you’ll be chasing the dragon forever.

The microsoft way is probably still WPF, yea. Though there are some articles every once in a while asking "Is WPF dead?" etc

A good alternative is Avalonia, syntax wise pretty close to WPF, but more community driven and cross-platform

Are you sure the frameworks you've tried are actually "discontinued"? C++/CX is still supported, it's just not recommended because WinRt is standard-compliant (CX uses compiler extensions) and has some other advantages. UWP is also still supported.

every time I try, Microsoft comes in a week later and discontinues the current framework in favor of something else.

This is the way.

I have nothing useful to add, as I noped-out to become a full web developer, for exactly this reason.

If I desperately needed to call into C++ libraries, I would just build the whole thing in C++. And you're right, it won't look modern.

That said, it sounds like you're asking the person running your app to give you an unprecedented amount of trust in the modern age (running locally, unsandboxed, running code from unmanaged libraries, presumably outside an app store ecosystem).

If you have users, in that situation, I'm guessing you have a deeply compelling solution.

And if I were in those shoes, I would build it 100% in C++ and let my users live with it looking old school. They'll notice the appearance once or twice, then they'll notice all the more important functionality for a lot longer.

Maybe Slint is for you? If you so wish, it'll be possible to run it on Linux+Mac too. In the future maybe even iOS and Android (they're working on it). Supports C++, nodejs, and Rust.

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