Yes, but writing a cross platform UI for a single platform use case is a waste of time as well.

When you're stuck with C++, writing a GUI in anything but Qt on Windows or Linux is basically a waste of time. MFC on Windows sucks hard and Qt is simple the native go-to C++ toolkit for Linux.

It can make porting later to other platform easier. Using a lock-in on the other hand taxes any such future effort.

That’s why your use case matters. If we are going down this path of thinking with no context, your application should not be a GUI application at all. But if you want easier future porting to iOS, that’s different than if you want easier future porting to xbox, and different again if you want it to run on ChromeOS.

QT is awesome, don’t hear me wrong. But if your target platform is distros running gnome, it might not even be the right choice for a native Linux desktop app. And again, none of this cross-platform compatibility discussion necessarily makes it a better choice than Xamarin stuff.

I’m just saying, it’s not “the” option. It’s just a very good choice.

Isn’t that what wxWidgets is for?