Don't get me wrong, I don't doubt at all that the actual widget handling is quite similar (nicer, actually) when done in C++/Qt compared to C/Gtk (except that Gtk gets so much easier when using Vala instead of C ), what I tried to say was that if you write the UI handling in C++ you would really want to write the rest of the application (the part that actually does something) in C++ too, which I personally don't wish to. I agree that the C++/Qt API itself is decent.