[Qt-interest] Are there any disadvantages with OT

[Malyushytsky, Alex]

In my practice if I needed special controls, I was able to implement it much faster than I ever was able to do without Qt,
and mostly never had to look for commercial solution.

There are more commercial solutions (projects, etc) for .Net than for Qt.
This is clear and has historical backgrounds.
But there are a plenty, so you can't say they are non-existent.
(For example http://www.ics.com/products/qt/ )
It seems Qt become more popular than it was up to Qt 4 on the Windows platform.
The more commercial development will be done with Qt, more commercial components will be available.

As for me the main disadvantage of Qt is lack of support for older versions.
You face this problem with any 3rd party software you are using.
But it is crucial for software you are using as a developer's framework.

Migration to Qt 4 cost is time and cost consuming.
I hope Qt 5 will maintain at least source code compatibility.
Otherwise I doubt I would still use Qt for cross - platform the Windows development.

Regards,
   Alex




-----Original Message-----
From: qt-interest-bounces at trolltech.com [mailto:qt-interest-bounces at trolltech.com] On Behalf Of David Ching
Sent: Friday, March 05, 2010 2:25 PM
To: qt-interest at trolltech.com
Subject: Re: [Qt-interest] Are there any disadvantages with OT

"Jeffrey Brendecke" <jwbrendecke at icanetix.com> wrote in message
news:201003052109.07195.jwbrendecke at icanetix.com...
>> 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.
>

There's a difference between having the skills to find out and needing
prerequisite knowledge of internals before using them.  We'd all be in lost
if we needed to know how an engine converted fuel into power before driving
a car.  It simply doesn't matter.  Likewise, I shouldn't have to know how to
deal with QStyle and stylesheets before using QWidget!  But I am more
valuable as a programmer if I can find out when needed.

In fact I said I needed to learn Qt internals in order to create derived
classes that worked around Qt bugs.  This is necessary in Qt more than other
frameworks, so I do know how to dive into framework internals.  Still, I
prefer to buy pre-made components that I can treat as a black box to save
some time, relying on my debugging ability to make them work for me.

-- David


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