Windows Presentation Foundation
Shares rank 35 of 45 GUI frameworks by recommenders
Stable, capable Windows desktop UI framework with well-thought-out theming, though it is in maintenance mode and critics find it verbose and hard to reason about.
Stable, capable Windows desktop UI framework with well-thought-out theming, though it is in maintenance mode and critics find it verbose and hard to reason about.
19 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 13
- approval share
- 32%
Recommended in 3 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 3 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Stable with few real issues
“WPF and Winforms are extremely stable with no real issues”
Comment from 22 Mar 2026 in “Windows native app development is a mess” “Stable, but many issues. Stay away if you value your sanity and do anything nontrivial.”
Comment from 22 Mar 2026 in “Windows native app development is a mess”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Poor performance versus web rendering
“WPF had made a bet on then-advanced graphics hardware for reasonable performance, and that was bad for these users.”
Comment from 6 Apr 2026 in “Microsoft Hasn't Had a Coherent GUI Strategy Since Petzold” “Performance using the WPF widgets was terrible compared to HTML/Javascript/Blink”
Comment from 6 Apr 2026 in “Microsoft Hasn't Had a Coherent GUI Strategy Since Petzold” “multiple layers of abstraction and just plain inefficient WPF code”
Comment from 6 Apr 2026 in “Microsoft Hasn't Had a Coherent GUI Strategy Since Petzold” Verbose boilerplate and unforgiving design
“WPF was full of footguns and rigid organization to alleviate said footguns”
Comment from 27 Jan 2026 in “RIP Low-Code 2014-2025” “twenty years after the release of WPF, the boilerplate had barely changed”
Comment from 22 Mar 2026 in “Windows native app development is a mess” “unbearably verbose, brutally unforgiving”
Comment from 6 Apr 2026 in “Microsoft Hasn't Had a Coherent GUI Strategy Since Petzold” Future uncertain, maintenance-only mode
“WPF is alive, but more in a maintenance mode while WinUI 3 takes over the future.”
Comment from 13 Nov 2025 in “Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper” “Last time I heard WPF was basically abandoned (open-sourced) and handed over to die to some Indian folks.”
Comment from 22 Mar 2026 in “Windows native app development is a mess” Blurry fonts and poor HiDPI support
“not going to work well on a modern machine with a HiDpi monitor”
Comment from 23 Mar 2026 in “Windows native app development is a mess” “Blurry fonts was my main issue with WPF.”
Comment from 6 Apr 2026 in “Microsoft Hasn't Had a Coherent GUI Strategy Since Petzold”
Other GUI frameworks people recommend
The four most recommended other GUI frameworks, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qt | 191 | 133 | 59% | 12 | 15 yrs7 owners | — |
| GTK | 85 | 118 | 42% | 12 | — | — |
| Windows Forms | 76 | 33 | 70% | 12 | 15 yrs3 owners | Approved |
| SwiftUI | 75 | 121 | 38% | 11 | 4 yrs8 owners | — |
| Windows Presentation FoundationThis page | 6 | 13 | 32% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
17 of the 19 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“WPF regained its official status out of deprecation”
“had facilities for theming that seemed capable and well thought out”
“It's a great UI framework, but it's unusable unless your front end is primarily a C# program.”
“they just plain failed to execute well on this idea”
“making the entire system very difficult to reason about and introducing regressions constantly”
“multiple layers of abstraction and just plain inefficient WPF code”
“Blurry fonts was my main issue with WPF.”
“unbearably verbose, brutally unforgiving”
“Performance using the WPF widgets was terrible compared to HTML/Javascript/Blink”
“WPF had made a bet on then-advanced graphics hardware for reasonable performance, and that was bad for these users.”
“not going to work well on a modern machine with a HiDpi monitor”
“Last time I heard WPF was basically abandoned (open-sourced) and handed over to die to some Indian folks.”
“WPF and Winforms are extremely stable with no real issues”
“Stable, but many issues. Stay away if you value your sanity and do anything nontrivial.”
“twenty years after the release of WPF, the boilerplate had barely changed”
“WPF was full of footguns and rigid organization to alleviate said footguns”
“WPF is alive, but more in a maintenance mode while WinUI 3 takes over the future.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.