For a JavaScript alternative to pyQT I recommend proton-native[1] - a React environment for cross platform native desktop apps.

1: https://github.com/kusti8/proton-native

I can't comment for pyQt. But the regular C++ Qt app I'm tinkering with at the moment uses 11MB private and about 50MB in shared memory for displaying a simple window with some nested widgets and scrollable lists.

for reference, the app I'm working on (https://ossia.io), a multiple-hundred-LOC Qt-based DAW with support for many network protocols and which uses most Qt libraries as well as boost uses itself 41 megabytes of RAM (private working set) and 70 megabytes total (working set) with a small document loaded, according to the windows task manager.

/me cries in electron

An order of magnitude lower. I see 40Mb on macos right now for a simple app.

I see a simple electron app using 140MB total. Measured by running 'free -m' before and after starting the app and waiting a while for a gc to run.

Measuring memory use is difficult.

FYI, you can open dev tools in electron and manually trigger GC [0].

[0] https://i.imgur.com/JbWArmR.png

I'm sure opending dev tools will increase memory use significantly though. So it's a bit self-defeating. :)

Perhaps there's some API to call instead.

I don't know off hand, and we never compared w/ Electron, it was just floated as an idea. When we eventually fully refactor our GUI code to be agnostic of ROS we'll profile more completely.