As a dev with a lot of experience in JS/HTML/CSS Electron makes things super easy, especially when it can be part of the regular build pipeline.

Learning Qt means figuring out a whole new stack and build chain. Maybe the result would be better, but with only a few hours a week I didn't feel like it would have been worth the time investment.

See for example:

https://nklayman.github.io/vue-cli-plugin-electron-builder/g...

> regular

I think the reason you consider the web app publishing pipeline the “regular” pipeline is the reason we’re having this discussion =p

Qt is not nearly as easy to use as Electron, especially if you're a small company and need to hire front end devs for cheap.

Also Qt GUIs look like garbage, but it's hard to quantify why.

>Qt is not nearly as easy to use as Electron, especially if you're a small company and need to hire front end devs for cheap.

Sure it is.

>Also Qt GUIs look like garbage, but it's hard to quantify why.

No more garbage-like than you're getting with Electron and just as style-able (with arguable superior layout engines). Qt has a number of style palettes; perhaps you're used to using applications which chose to use non-native/standard palettes.

I've written apps with GTK, Qt and Electron in the past. Of the three frameworks, Qt is easily the hardest (albeit "the best" for cross-platform native development). I'm not sure what your experience is with it, but I never once felt like it was easier than writing an Electron app.

What are some examples of great-looking QT applications?

Kdenlive, Okular, KeePassXC, Dolphin.

J has an IDE written in Qt. It's nice.

Qt has provided us with a solid multi-platform solution. If you want power and control, you always have to pay in complexity and learning curve.

And wxWidgets :-)

You do have to pay for Qt if your app isn't open source.

No you don't. You can use LGPL just fine in commercial, non-open desktop apps.