Yes, saying that calling Win32 APIs is not the most ergonomic approach to writing UIs would be an understatement, but if any software can be called stable, this is it.

I would compare win32 API to vanilla JS. Whatever framework you might want to use on top of win32 is what's comparable to the criticized web tech in the article.

Your win32 app would have been much faster with much less memory hogging though. I would prefer to run that compared to your React app.

The choice really is between React and nothing. React (and Electron) enabled a lot of apps to be written that would not have existed otherwise.

Calling Win32 directly was already old fashion when Windows 95 came out in 1994, let alone 2005 when .NET was four years old.

The only folks already doing Win16 development with pure C code, instead of a C++ framework (OWL, MFC, VCL), VB or Delphi, were stuck in jurassic park.

The only valid reason for raw Win32 applications are games.

I liked it in the Jurrasic park