[Qt-interest] Are there any disadvantages with OT

Fri Mar 5 21:09:07 CET 2010

> >> 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 ;)
>
> I suppose I was ranting about the NEED to learn it.

Developers programming using a technology they don't understand is not a good 
idea for any business. Yes, those flashy integrated development environments 
make it look easy to create programs, but a program tends to spend more time 
in maintenance and extension than in initial design and deployment.

* All the lovely numbered-name identifiers IDEs throw into the code and the 
concomitant spaghetti-style lack of design make understanding the code by a 
new person, who assumes responsibility later on, very difficult. Making 
changes causes bugs and fixing bugs causes bugs. Extension becomes 
problematic and leads to bugs.

* Easy-to-dive-into IDEs used by people who do not understand what they are 
doing promotes developers programming beyond their ability, especially given 
the ability to change code while running a debugger. Too little time gets 
spent actually thinking about what needs to be done and what the best way to 
do it is. Good code often results from the 2nd or 3rd draft. IDE-developed 
code all too easily turns into a taped and glued mess with areas 
labeled "Don't touch this section! It seems to work, but I don't know why!".

I think the issue here is the need for education of the business world on what 
is good and useful and in their own interests as opposed to the common 
practice of thinking that all we need to do is throw some IDE-equipped 
amature developers, who actually have other duties at the company, at 
software development problems. Is that really a sound business practice?

I only mention amateur developers and IDEs because the issue at hand seems to 
be whether someone should need to learn the technology.

Jeffrey Brendecke

Managing Director
icanetix Software Systems and Consulting GmbH
Untere Hagenstrasse 26
91217 Hersbruck
Germany

Commercial Registry B 25317 Nuremberg, Germany
VAT-ID: DE250213502

--------------------
Date: Friday 05 March 2010 19:42
From: "David Ching" <dc at remove-this.dcsoft.com>
To: qt-interest at trolltech.com
Cc: 
Subject: Re: [Qt-interest] Are there any disadvantages with OT
--------------------

> <Oliver.Knoll at comit.ch> wrote in message
> news:C10F29AB06447B4881FC0DE1E302E2F2050BA5EFFA at sg000036.corproot.net...
>
> >> 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 ;)
>
> I suppose I was ranting about the NEED to learn 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.
>
> Yes, presuming there are pre-written widgets to 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.
>
> They do not.  But the Office UI is very popular for Windows, and with the
> .NET libraries, I just set the Theme Property to e.g. Office 2007 Blue, and
> that's it.
>
> >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.
>
> LOL,  actually they are not really to blame.  The user, for whatever
> reason, values this kind of look.  Management's job is to provide the users
> what they want.
>
> >> 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 ;)
>
> Well, in USA, sexy look and feel is perhaps more valued.  For example,
> while I appreciate the understated look of the Qt website, it is rather
> plain looking compared to the Microsoft one.  Certainly having Microsoft be
> an American company promotes American values.  I think Qt Declarative will
> enable sexy UI, but similar to WPF and Silverlight, and still not making it
> easy to do Office style UI's.  IMO, this is a big part of why Qt is not
> more successful in America.
>
> >> 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.
>
> 99.99% of the people use the mouse to click, and use keyboard as a last
> resort.  Programmers, no, but they are not the ones buying our apps.
>
> >> #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" ;)
>
> I am trying.  On the MS MVP private newsgroups and MS public forums, I
> regularly tell MS and the other MVP's that Qt offers a paradyme worth
> emulating.  I am trying to get Qt the de-facto standard for Windows native
> GUI's.  But since there are becoming more Windows managed GUI's, just
> getting the native GUI market is not as good as if you get the .NET market
> as well.
>
> -- David
>
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