wxWidgets feels heavily inspired by Microsoft's MFC framework. That always felt clunky to me, compared to GUI toolkits like Qt and GTK.

This was indeed the case. In 1995. Since then just about everything has changed, but the idea that wxWidgets is MFC-like still refuses to die... Another common related opinion is that you have to use macros when using wxWidgets, which couldn't be further from truth since ~15 years (see https://wxwidgets.org/blog/2023/05/are-macros-required-to-us...) but, again, old impressions linger.

I still find examples using the macros all over the place. It is unfortunate that is still the case...

Macros aren't the only thing that make wxWidgets like MFC. Things like using new but not delete on objects. The method and event names. The use of DCs in paint events. Etc.

Well, there is only so much latitude for naming the event (or message, callback, whatever) sent when a window needs to repaint itself. Qt has `paintEvent()` too and nobody calls it MFC-like AFAIK. IME people mostly think about event table macros when they say it.