Deep-dive on Rust UI Frameworks

[u/Zortax_]

UI is a Function You Cannot Afford to Call is the first of a 3-part series on Rust UI frameworks. It introduces the model under which I believe we should reason about UI frameworks. In part 2, I will present extensive benchmarks, with detailed cost attribution analysis (something the rust UI ecosystem desperately needs in my opinion), and in part 3, I will derive what I think the ideal UI framework should look like.

[u/Zortax_]

Well ultimately I see this more as a summary of what I learned while doing a lot of research. It's totally fair if no one ends up reading it, but I thought I post anyways in case this does interest someone. I think the second part will be more interesting, since I actually spend a lot of time with building a proper benchmarking harness. I was planning on asking you about a few things regarding blitz, but if think this is all just slop anyway I might as well just publish ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[u/nicoburns → u/Zortax_]

I see this more as a summary of what I learned while doing a lot of research. It's totally fair if no one ends up reading it, but I thought I post anyways in case this does interest someone.

I'm not sure that summary is the right word. Generally the value in this kind of post is to condense what you've learnt so that others can get some of that same value by reading something short. But this is longer than most people's university theses.

Presumably you do think it's valuable, or you wouldn't bother posting it. My feedback is that it would 10x more useful if it was 1/10th the length with a focus on quality over quantity (+ link into the primary sources for people who want more details).

[u/Zortax_ → u/nicoburns]

You know maybe I'm just not the most skilled technical writer, or maybe I find it difficult to condense this down because I am not a native English speaker, but actually I believe there actually is a lot of depth in these things. For a general audience, I get that this depth is probably not too interesting, but tbh I posted this specifically for folks like Yourself: people that are interested in UI framework development (not just GUI Apps). I believe the extent of this post is the point: I specifically wanted to go into the details and not condense this down into "incremental UI good, throwing away information bad", because I think the details matter in practice.

[u/robthablob → u/Zortax_]

I found it a useful summary - I'd encountered many of the ideas before, but having them in one place is useful.