A seasoned programmer with decades of experience but no formal app development background set out to explore modern cross-platform development tools in 2025. The experiment involved building a simple dice-rolling application across seven different platforms: Standard C/POSIX, Linux with GTK and GNOME, Linux with Qt and KDE, Windows with WinUI 3, macOS/iOS with SwiftUI, and Android with Jetpack Compose. Each platform was evaluated for tooling setup, basic UI building, and platform integration capabilities.

The project started with a command-line implementation in standard C to establish baseline functionality, then progressively added requirements like persistent settings and localization support. The author deliberately avoided web technologies like Electron to focus on native development experiences. Documentation quality and tooling discoverability varied significantly across platforms, with some requiring extensive oral tradition knowledge rather than formal documentation.

Results were decidedly mixed, with each platform receiving a sarcastic award for its particular shortcomings. Standard C proved remarkably resistant to obsolescence, while POSIX standards showed their age and limited practical utility for modern developers. The experiment revealed that despite decades of computing progress, fundamental challenges around tooling discoverability, platform integration, and documentation quality remain unresolved across the development ecosystem.