Then I decided to rewrite it in Go + Sciter, but when it was becoming usable[1], as it had voice channels, custom avatars, custom themes[2], and layout modification, embedded images, custom user roles, file upload, and Markdown support, Sciter's creator decided to end support of its TIScript version, which was a JS alternative for controlling the UI. This made all the code that I wrote basically useless as it would have to be rewritten in JS to be compatible with the new version (really bad timing for me to write it in Sciter at that time).

After trying the JS version, it felt even buggier than the TIScript version, and at this time I got sick (stomach related) and had to stop developing it for about a year. During this time, while thinking about it, I realized that all the time that I tried to save by avoiding C++ made me waste even more time. I have tried many options: PyQt wasted too much memory and was too hard to deal with async stuff through QThreads. Rust felt like being married as all it does is whine and you can't get rid of it. Nim had no good GUI option. Go's Qt lib took way too long to do anything as my computer is slow. But now I'm doing what I should have done from the beginning.

A bit more than a month ago, I started to write it in C++ with Qt. Currently writing the media embed part[3]. I think by the end of the year, I should have the basics of a modern chat done, as customizing the UI takes way longer. There is no funding, just me and the dream of a native full-featured customizable (colors, size, space, position) bs-less chat.

[1]: https://i.imgur.com/BFAF2f0.png

[2]: https://i.imgur.com/SagVweI.png

[3]: https://i.imgur.com/nhBUsGh.png

GoVCL's author built a C library called liblcl [2] which is what GoVCL uses to control the GUI, so if you know C you can use it instead of Go.

I'm building a lightweight Steam chat client with GoVCL so that I don't need the official client that takes like 200-300mb ram just to show text [3].

[0]: https://github.com/ying32/govcl

[1]: https://www.lazarus-ide.org/

[2]: https://github.com/ying32/liblcl/blob/master/README.en-US.md

[3]: https://files.catbox.moe/c4lzxb.png

In this video you can see an example of how it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF4onowI1xw

[1]: https://pt-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Harpa_Crist%C...

https://github.com/UnnoTed/wireguird

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24493575

also: "Support for various backends: it compiles to C, C++ or JavaScript so that Nim can be used for all backend and frontend needs."

1.1k https://github.com/topics/pascal

27k https://github.com/topics/cpp

161k https://github.com/topics/python

1. Sciter

- Languages: C++/Python/Go/Rust/Pascal (optional: HTML/CSS/tiscript)

- Development time: fast

- Resource usage: light (space and performance)

- Visual customization: easy, doesn't use native widgets.

2. Qt

- Languages: C++/Python (optional: CSS/JS/QML)

- Development time: slow

- Resource usage: quite heavy (space), but well performant

- Visual customization: QtWidgets: hard, QML: easy, doesn't use native widgets.

3. WxWidgets

- Languages: C++/Python

- Development time: slow

- Resource usage: light (space and performance)

- Visual customization: hard, uses native widgets.

4. Lazarus

- Languages: Pascal

- Development time: slow

- Resource usage: light (space and performance)

- Visual customization: hard, uses native widgets.

[1]: https://sciter.com/ - https://quark.sciter.com/

[2]: https://www.qt.io/

[3]: https://www.wxwidgets.org/

[4]: https://www.lazarus-ide.org/

[1]: https://github.com/sciter-sdk/rust-sciter [2]: https://github.com/sciter-sdk/rust-sciter/blob/master/exampl...

https://imgur.com/uSA8AMs.png https://imgur.com/P9ckNBn.png https://imgur.com/L9fDMKQ.png

Ram usage is currently at 12-50mb on windows, up to 90mb with 50 messages with images(unoptimized, no virtual scrolling yet).

The server will be a single binary, there is still a lot to do: pin messages, emojis, avatars, community avatar, search... i want it (server+desktop) to be done by the end of the year.