# Windows Forms 76 Hacker News commenters recommended Windows Forms and 33 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 15 years (3 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** Free Microsoft framework for building Windows desktop apps, prized for quick GUI builds and long-lasting stability. Main caveat: weak high-DPI and resizing support, and it is Windows-only. ## Why people recommend it - Fast to build simple GUIs (4 comments): "WinForms was probably the closest thing since Visual Basic (and Delphi) in terms of rapid prototyping of a GUI." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49299676)) "WinForms may have looked ugly but you could bang things together pretty quickly." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47482237)) "I most of the time still use windows.forms for fast easy statefull ui forms" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47455929)) - Stable and still supported (4 comments): "It's as stable as QT and GTK, still supported, and has a large community of contributors and 3rd party vendors." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47661073)) "WinForms does what you want, is still fully supported, works on modern .NET versions" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47483115)) "I have 15 year old binaries made with WinForms that look just fine on Windows 10" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47485235)) - Native controls, familiar to users (3 comments): "The primary motivation for winforms was getting easy access to OS-native multiline input controls, clipboard, audio, image handling, etc." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46847360)) "All my old knowledge is still usefull. People know how to use a Windows.Forms program." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47653522)) "It was the last tech that made your app look and feel like Windows app." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47659157)) - Easy data binding and controls (3 comments): "C# WinForms standard controls included a usable datagrid with data binding out of the box." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49813689)) "I missed beauty of c# winforms controls with all their alignment and properties." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47285951)) "the experience was actually excellent, binding data to controls was dead simple" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50253050)) ## What people warn about - Weak high-DPI and dynamic resizing (3 comments): "Winforms is great until you try to make windows dynamically sized, or deal with DPI nicely." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47477163)) "WinForms supposedly has some support for high DPI, but with many open issues." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47482799)) "WinForms was still built on the back of pixel-perfect positioning assumptions" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263549)) - Uncertain future, limited investment (4 comments): "They took the "R" out of RAD, and then kind of put both WinForms and WPF on life support" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49809042)) "Everything else is incredible broken and stops being supported in such a short time." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46809530)) "I'm happy they're at least maintaining (to a limited extent) Windows Forms and WPF" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46600630)) - Hard custom and overlapping layouts (2 comments): "Building something that looks like a WhatsApp conversation in basic winforms is a lot of work." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46846860)) "WinForm really struggles with the idea of stacking elements on top of one another" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47480860)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Qt](https://hackerapproved.com/p/qt.md): 191 recommend - [GTK](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gtk.md): 85 recommend - [SwiftUI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/swiftui.md): 75 recommend - [Tcl/Tk](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tcl-tk.md): 61 recommend - [Avalonia UI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/avalonia.md): 51 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Windows Forms", https://hackerapproved.com/p/winforms/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).