oh man

    python -m textual.app 

is so satisfying. You get web like layout dynamicism without the whole browser stack.

Widget layouts systems are older than the web. I would say "much older", but after thirty years the much is not very large in comparison any longer.

the only one I remember is Borland's Turbo Vision. I'm not sure it had layouts or only overlapping windows.

A good video walkthrough of Textual from September, 2021 with Paul Everitt interviewing the author, Will McGugan: A Look At – and Inside – Textual (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kTWxamIJ_k).

Woah. That calculator and file tree _look_ like native widgets. Impressive indeed.