Cool article, never knew the actual history of how Trenchbroom got started! Have been using it very casually over the last decade or so. There are some incredible Quake mappers out there making things that would make your jaw drop if you haven't seen Quake in quite a while.
For example, Arcane Dimensions[0] or the Quake Brutalist Jam[1]
func_godot works better than I expected it to the first time I used it, properly imports and compiles triggers, lights, materials, sounds, etc straight from trenchbroom so you really can do 90% of your work in trenchbroom. It's awesome for prototyping!
It is neat all of these years later to see Qt pop up now and then, just chugging along with comments from users like the author saying "Yep, that was worth it.". Just doing its thing getting out of the way and letting users build what they want to do.
For example, Arcane Dimensions[0] or the Quake Brutalist Jam[1]
[0] https://www.moddb.com/mods/arcane-dimensions
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vquTPCYbOxk
One nice thing is that you can use it as a level editor for your own games in Godot with func_godot