[Development] Question about Qt's future

[Robin Burchell]

Hi,

On 23 Apr 2014, at 14:14, cincirin <cincirin at gmail.com> wrote:

Sorry for re-open this topic, but as someone else already pointed out,
what do you think about the Unreal engine guys to abandon the unreal
script which was used until now for many years ?


I don’t think this topic is really suited for this list, but I’ll answer it
anyway because why not.

To give some background about myself: I’ve been around Qt for a while,
actively developing with it since - I think - around 4.4, but I have also
had exposure to code a lot older than that. I’ve been involved with
developing two phones (one with C++ as the primary language of choice for
the system applications - the Nokia N9) and more recently I’ve been working
on Jolla’s Sailfish OS - which is a QML-centric (but not exclusive)
platform, with most middleware and logic (that is - the real guts) written
in C++.

My feeling is that QML has exactly the flaws everyone talks about: it can
easily create a mess of an application, it’s annoying to tool, it’s
annoying to debug (because, well, you’ve two languages / runtimes / etc
instead of one).

On the other hand, it’s also one of the fastest things I’ve ever found to
prototype UIs in (for context, the initial home screen code prototyping I
mention on https://twitter.com/w00teh/status/447041014520643584 happened
literally in one day). We had similar stories with most of our other
applications, being fleshed out in UI within a very short span of time,
with a lot more time then subsequently being spent in getting the
middleware in good shape and bolted together correctly.

Having a language runtime that isn’t C++ also frees you up from a few of
the usual messes (access-after-free, etc, etc, etc) and generally means
that the problems you get to debug are on a more superficial level. Unless
you run into engine or Quick item implementation issues, which sadly aren’t
yet as infrequent as I’d like - but it’s young. Give it time.

The central point I guess I’m trying to make here is that, like any other
tool, QML has its downsides, and as a developer, it is your job to be aware
of those downsides, and to try to stick to best practices when writing your
application. It’s perfectly possible to write a horribly unmaintainable
mess in any tool/language, given a bad developer. I think the tradeoffs are
worth the risks, even though I’ve seen a few of those horribly
unmaintainable messes already in QML’s short lifespan.

BR,
Robin
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