> Not having heard about it, I looked up Lazarus, and it appears to be an IDE? Is that comparing apples to oranges?

While it is an IDE, it is also a GUI designer, unlike most other IDEs.

> CSS addresses the extremely difficult challenge of layout across devices and platforms. Does Lazarus do that?

Across the platforms that it supports, sure.

I didn't make any claim about how many platforms it runs on, though.

> I didn't make any claim about how many platforms it runs on, though.

We should probably define terms. You mentioned that HTML + CSS make a terrible design tool. I suppose that's true in the same way that C++ is a terrible design tool. Most designers don't touch CSS, and use Photoshop or Figma or similar and hand it over to a frontend engineer to actually implement it. You might be using the term design tool differently from how i understand it though.

Oh, yes you were replying to GP who seemed to imply they do use it as a design tool.

But what GUI library does it use? The library is more important than whatever tool you're using to write the code.

Lazarus uses LCL. I'd argue, it's one of the cases where the tool is actually more important than the library.

Funnily enough, there's also the Fresnel library in the works, and it uses CSS for layout.

https://www.blaisepascalmagazine.eu/roadmap-for-fpc-and-laza...

https://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Fresnel

> But what GUI library does it use? The library is more important than whatever tool you're using to write the code.

That wasn't important to the GPs point, so how would I know to answer it?

This is what I responded to:

> > I'd rather use CSS than any other GUI system I've used over the years in C++, Java, Swift, etc.

I interpreted GPs comment to be only about preferences for GUI design, not about which implementation is better, or why.

I'm confused. The parent said that there's no good alternative to CSS, and you suggested Lazarus, which is an IDE, not an alternative to CSS.

> The parent said that there's no good alternative to CSS,

No, the parent said he prefers CSS to the design systems he used with C++, Java and Swift.

Those aren't CSS alternatives, so he specifically wasn't comparing CSS alternatives, he was comparing technology.