[Qt-interest] Are there any disadvantages with OT

[Oliver.Knoll at comit.ch]

David Ching wrote on Monday, March 01, 2010 2:59 PM:

> "Sean Harmer" <sean.harmer at maps-technology.com> wrote in message
> news:4B890A45.6090607 at maps-technology.com... 
>> OK as an example the app shown in images 1 & 2 could be created in Qt
>> usig the following:
>>
>> [... Easy instructions on how to re-create the widgets seen...]
>> 
> Thanks much Sean.  Indeed, I have to learn about delegates, proxy
> widgets, styles, and stylesheets. 

Yes, understood. But ranting about a toolkit you don't know about is so much easier than learning it ;)

> 1) .NET is a drag and drop (and endlessly fiddle with properties)
> experience 
> to get the above.  Qt isn't.

Qt Designer is also drag-and-drop.

> 2) With .NET the good styling is readily seen immediately.  Not with
> Qt 

Right. Qt widgets are supposed to look NATIVE out-of-the-box. And last time I checked Windows XP/Vista did not resemble those widgets you have shown. If you need this kind of "look and feel", then use

- Stylesheets

- Or even more down to the core: Qt styles (agreed, that is some more work, but you get FULL control about how widgets behave/look)

> whose out of the box UI makes Management not believe in it.

Ah, yes, the "Management" again. Tell me again, these are the people who got trained "in Excel", right? I agree, this can be a nasty bunch of people to convince.

> 3)  It's easier to hire a .NET developer than a Qt developer (in
> USA), so 
> codebase maintainability is better with .NET.

This might be true. Qt is propably (still) more popular in Europe (India? Asia? Africa?). Seems like you are a bit behind here ;)

> 4) The target audience do not much care about nice things such as good
> performance, keyboard navigation and accelerators and all the nice
> things Qt 
> makes it easy to get right.

That's the programmers fault. It is YOUR responsibility to convince the customers/management of these necessities! The customers are not educated computer scientists. They don't even grasp the meaning of "performance", how to measure it (but off course they will DEMAND it later on!). "Accelerator? Isn't that the rioght pedal in my car?" Not to mention "code maintainability" or all these "invisible magic stuff that programmers deal with the whole day". "It just has to Look Good(tm) and there has to be a big sticker on the box, "Web-As-A-Service-In-The-Cloud-Ready", right? WRONG!


Sorry, I know we are all in the same boat here. I used to face the same questions about all these points. Luckily in my current position customers do not care about "fancy UI". They care about correct results and usability.

> #3 is the root problem.  If Qt had momentum in USA especially for
> Windows, 
> perhaps convincing management of the rest would be reasonable.  I had
> hoped 
> when Qt became LPGL, Windows C++ programmers would start to use it
> more, but 
> judging from the job market (at least in the Silicon Valley, USA
> area) that 
> hasn't happened.

You can help here - Spread the word ;) Maybe Europe could also help the USA with "Care Packets" ;)


Best regards,
  Oliver
-- 
Oliver Knoll
Dipl. Informatik-Ing. ETH
COMIT AG - ++41 79 520 95 22