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Retained GUIs vary wildly in implementation.

Many of authors most significant criticisms on retained GUIs are implementation considerations. GUI frameworks exist that solve his key criticisms of complexity and are pleasant to work with.

Criticisms that target core architecture of retained GUI I don't consider to be valuable design goals, at least in settings where I work on GUIs. e.g. memory usage.

Alot of things are glossed over that remain challenges in both, e.g. layout management.

HTML is an interesting example. First iteration of HTML was essentially immediate mode if you think about a single client/server interaction as a GUI update cycle. Server sends draws to client browser and client browser sends back to server user selections. There is no retained state on gui side. Now with programmatic access to DOM, ability to attach events to DOM elements from client side it is now a retained GUI. Seems to be where things evolve to naturally.

The GUI framework I use nearly daily is retained and very pleasant to work with in terms of ease of belting out screens & readability/maintainability of code. The simplicity comes with compromises though as there are limits on GUI idioms that can be expressed. Occasionally run into those boundaries and resulting GUI does look a little plain and unexciting, but for something that is substantially about data entry its fine.




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