While many toolkit-driven approaches (such as Gtk and Qt) are deliberately supported by multiple programming languages, only ioL is truly language independent. Any time you decide to learn a different programming language or crave the freedom to choose the right tool for the job, ioL just works.
ioL is based on a powerful idea which we like to call Turing-complete interface streams. One aspect of this is that the streams work across devices.
While many traditional approach might produce a desktop application that runs on a single machine, ioL is truly node independent.
Computing the ioL way, a local application turns seamlessly into an online service as soon as you decide to turn your PC into a server. An IoT device or hardware device no longer needs special drivers or apps to be installed in order to use it. ioL even works on the blockchain.
Traditional software development approaches require excessive overhead and produce software that spaghettifies quickly as features are added. ioL's io-focused approach allows you to write code that does what you tell it, without interfering with natural program flow. A streamlined path of execution means your code is easier to follow, verify and debug.
[graphical] window systems may be easy to use, but they are very complex to program.
—Mark Langley
While early computing pioneers like Ken Thompson envisaged a paradigm of computing based around fundamental input and output, all this went out the window in the race to commercialise graphical user interfaces during the 1980s. ioL is a back-to-basics approach that fits in naturally with the native operating system in the way the original pioneers intended.
One of the biggest annoyances faced when coding through toolkits like Gtk is the burden of dependencies that need to be installed on different machines just for your program to run in the first place. Even two different Gtk programs may require a very different set of dependencies to be installed. This makes programs hard to maintain and harder to support out in the field.
A lot of programming environments purport to allow you to build apps more easily, but the environment is dumbed-down and often more useful for learning to code than doing serious coding. Since ioL integrates with the OS at a deeper level, programs that utilise it can be as low-level or high-level as you want.
Traditional desktop applications are self-contained don't talk to each other very well. ioL is not a software development toolkit but a whole new layer of the system environment, designed to augment the capabilities of programs and, in future, allow better integration with the native operating system than facilitated by other approaches, in line with the Unix philosophy.