What exactly are your qualms with Qt Quick and QML? I find the separation of UI (QML) and logic (C++) pretty amazing. QML is such a nice language and the framework has grown a lot over the years. I developed a block editor (Notion style) in QML and C++, wrote about it in my blog[1].
I still don't hear any concrete feedback regarding QML and Qt Quick - the stack is very suited to desktop apps as well. My FOSS app (1,500,000 downloads) has a Kanban UI written in QML[1] and people seems to like it. I do think the choice of Javascript as the scripting language for QML is not ideal to say the least (although there were some improvements to type safety like using `required` in model-view, etc).
Also, most QML components are just C++ objects exposing QML api. And I think there are some compile flags to convert QML to C++ (even some JS code).
> I still don't hear any concrete feedback regarding QML and Qt Quick
Well, evidentially you chose/prefer that stack over Qt Widgets, presumably for some considered reason (unless it was just Nokia pushing that as the future, per their own mobile interests).
There was definitely a change of focus when Nokia bought Trolltech. For me it was a negative one.
For my taste there was already enough separation of UI and logic in a widget-based UI with callbacks or signals/slots. I was using Qt for desktop app development, so didn't see any benefit to Qt Quick and QML which seemed more intended for mobile, and a step away from native desktop feel. Qt Designer also helped separate UI from logic, but although it was great I found it didn't quite hit the mark. I would use it for prototyping, but then reimplement for real.
In general I got into Qt wanting a nice GUI toolkit for C++ on Linux. The cross-platform support was a bonus, but not something that I ever actually used. MOC was already an unwanted step away from pure C++ development, and QML would have been another one. At the same time Qt Quick and QML support seemed to suck all the wind out of further Qt development for desktop use.