What is Reddit's opinion of Lunacy?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

> Microsoft is still struggling to overcome the huge damage that the Windows 8 and Windows Phone fiasco caused. Skipping Windows 9 to put distance between versions 8 and 10 should remind you of how bad it was.

Actually, that's to prevent some low-level driver code from other companies from conflating Windows 9 from Windows 99.

> What is certain is that most Windows programmers have little idea what to use next, what to persevere with and what to abandon. Microsoft's obvious uncertainty is communicating itself very clearly.

If you want to give a cross-platform .NET application a shot, try out Lunacy, an open-source application that uses the also open-source cross-platform desktop app solution Avalonia. From that, you're down to two UI projects to support desktop and mobile natively? Doesn't seem too bad, and it's honestly leagues better than what it used to be.

MAUI is probably the long-term bet if it releases and also succeeds, but otherwise you may want to put your business logic in a library and have various projects leveraging that business logic in however many application surfaces you want to support. Yeah, it kinda sucks that you have to break out Onion Architecture for supporting many platforms, but that probably isn't a bad idea anyways.

That's true and unfortunate, but the app is built on core OSX services so it's not liekly to be built on windows for the mean time.

However...

Avocode and Zeplin both allow windows users to view sketch files, and the Lunacy editor is free (it's a bit buggy though), it can import, edit and export sketch files - maybe you should try it out and leave a review here: https://icons8.com/lunacy

No reason to panic. There are three things to consider in this case:

1) Resume / portfolio

Admittedly we don't know the full context, but if this is a portfolio of an aspiring young UX designer, a hiring manager would care about the designer's ability to:

• do research,
• define the problem,
• be able to test hypothesis quickly,
• collaborate well with other stakeholders in the team (PMs, developers, etc.),
• yes indeed, do high fidelity designs too.

If you run into a hiring manager who makes their decision based solely on which tool you used, it's a shortsighted and misguided hiring manager, in 99% of the cases. Your portfolio should ideally tell stories through case studies, where pixels come last and don't matter much if displayed alone. With your background and skills, you'll be alright.

2) Sketch / Windows

A tool is just a tool and these days more than ever before. It is literally like learning to drive on a Ford and then switching over to a BMW, or a VW or a Buick. If you are capable of using XD or something comparable, switching to Sketch or Figma will take you a week, at most.

In the meantime, perhaps try Lunacy - https://icons8.com/lunacy (disclaimer: haven't used it myself, but IMHO it's worth a shot)

Many product design teams have conventions on the tooling and that's why they might ask you about your experience with Sketch. Just tell them you are proficient with Adobe XD, which is very similar, and you'd be happy to switch to Sketch, of course. They will provide you with a Mac and all needed software.

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3) Your mentor

I don't wanna bash them immediately because they might be a very nice person with good intentions. This might have just been a slip and a bad moment, which can happen to anyone. They are right in (indirectly) claiming that Sketch is what the majority of designers in the wild are using these days. If you've been happy with the mentor otherwise, stick with them for now.

How about Avalonia UI? They have a canvas component that lets you use coordinates. Icons8 built their own Figma/Sketch replacement lunacy in it, and it works really well.

If you're looking for a design tool and happen to be on Windows, you could try https://icons8.com/lunacy. It's a free design tool, works in vector and includes collaboration features, etc. Hope that helps you. :)

I did the basic user journey (i'd guess you'd call it), created the visuals for the first couple of screens with lunacy (https://icons8.com/lunacyabstraction of native API for Android/iOS." is a big one for me. ':)

Thanks for the clarity!

Looking at your profile and past designs, I found the smoking gun for why they're not the greatest.

Paint is not a great option for UX design, it's too basic for making a cohesive UX unless you want to pay attention to *every single pixel*. I would recommend using Lunacy, there's a bit of a learning curve, but it allows you to make cohesive and good-looking concepts. You could also get away with using Microsoft PowerPoint (or indeed any presentation software like LibreOffice Impress or Google Slides) if you want something easier but far more advanced than Paint.

As long as they can see the designs and resources I don't understand what their problem is. If you use Sketch Cloud you can even give them access to inspect the Sketch files so they can get that 1:1 detail they want.

They could also use a Windows app like https://icons8.com/lunacy which apparently fully supports Sketch files.

Have you tried Lunacy from icons8 (https://icons8.com/lunacy) for the non-mac sketch issue. Personally only tried it out maybe once or twice but I've never had to do anything productive/proper with it.