Developers are not happy with .NET MAUI, but nobody in the team cares about it

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Developers report that Microsoft’s cross‑platform UI framework .NET MAUI is unstable, poorly maintained, and riddled with long‑standing bugs, making even simple apps hard to build and debug. Many see this as part of a wider pattern in which Microsoft underinvests in its own client UI frameworks, rarely dogfoods them in major products, and eventually lets them stagnate. As a result, teams are abandoning MAUI and related stacks in favor of alternatives such as web technologies, Flutter, Avalonia, or fully native apps, despite the appeal of shared .NET code.

State of .NET MAUI

  • Many commenters report MAUI as unstable and immature: inconsistent layouts across platforms, basic controls misbehaving, laggy collection views, random build and deployment failures, and crashes or leaks inside MAUI itself.
  • Some describe trivial features (pull-to-refresh, video streaming, list views with video) taking weeks and still failing, then being rebuilt in other frameworks in days.
  • Specific gotchas: path bugs on Windows/iOS/macOS builds, debugging that frequently breaks, slow iteration times, and long‑standing bugs with vague errors.
  • The underlying native bindings (especially on iOS) are said to be incomplete; newer Apple frameworks and Swift libraries aren’t fully supported.
  • Lack of Linux support is seen by some as an immediate deal‑breaker.

Microsoft’s strategy and dogfooding

  • Repeated concern that Microsoft does not use MAUI (or previous GUI frameworks) for its own major apps, while heavily relying on Electron, React + WebView, or Qt.
  • Several see this as a pattern: Microsoft markets new UI stacks (WinForms, WPF, Silverlight, UWP, Xamarin, MAUI) but rarely commits long‑term or uses them broadly internally.
  • Some argue that without being “in the critical path” for Microsoft itself, MAUI is unlikely to be robustly funded or maintained.

Alternatives and recommendations

  • Strong suggestions to avoid MAUI and, often, all Microsoft UI frameworks for new work.
  • Recommended alternatives include:
    • Web technologies (plain web + MDN, Electron, React, etc.) as the most actively evolving, with the richest ecosystem (CSS, JS APIs, d3-style tooling).
    • Avalonia and Uno Platform for .NET; WPF for Windows‑only desktop.
    • Flutter, React Native, Qt, and others, depending on requirements.
  • Some teams abandon Xamarin/MAUI in favor of native mobile apps or other cross‑platform stacks and report overall time savings.

Community relations and issue handling

  • Frustration that serious, basic bugs stay open for years with little visible progress; PRs allegedly sit unreviewed.
  • One high‑profile GitHub issue was moved to “Discussions,” seen as dismissive even if the underlying bug remained tracked elsewhere.
  • Debate:
    • One side says the tone of rants is unproductive and teams can’t give equal attention to thousands of issues.
    • The other side argues users are justified after years of waiting, especially when MAUI is marketed as production‑ready and backed by a huge company.

Broader Microsoft tooling & QA concerns

  • Several commenters generalize MAUI’s problems to Microsoft’s wider ecosystem:
    • Past experiences with Windows Phone, UWP, Xamarin, Blazor Server, Azure DevOps, and various APIs seen as half‑baked or abandoned.
    • Claims that some Microsoft products (e.g., Azure DevOps) appear to be stagnating as focus shifts to overlapping offerings (e.g., GitHub).
  • One thread points to Microsoft firing much of its QA in the past and relying on contractors plus agile processes; this is blamed for bugs slipping through, with little exploratory testing or advocacy for developer experience.

Cross‑platform UI challenges

  • Some note that cross‑platform native UI frameworks are inherently hard: extra abstraction layers add places for bugs, especially in small teams.
  • Suggestion: share business logic in language‑agnostic libraries and keep UIs native or simpler when possible.
  • A few ask whether React Native or other stacks face comparable pain; responses are mixed, but MAUI is widely seen as worse than its competitors in this thread.