[Qt-interest] Are there any disadvantages with OT

[Sylvain Pointeau]

the biggest advantage for me now is QtWebkit for sure.

On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 10:13 PM, Jeffrey Brendecke <jwbrendecke at icanetix.com
> wrote:

>
> > 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.  [ . . . ]
> I have heard this comparison from the commercial software industry many
> times
> before. It is one of those things that superficially sound self-evident but
> in reality it is a completely invalid comparison.
>
> What the statement here is really comparing is learning how to refine
> copper
> and silicon before learning how to use (not design) a program. You are not
> talking about driving a car but rather designing one. But a car is much
> less
> complex than a general-purpose computer and operating system in that it is
> designed for a very specific purpose along with all of its components.
>
> The laws of nature dictate much of what you can and can't do when designing
> a
> car, but with software, this is not the case: The rest is the accumulated,
> not terribly well coordinated, very arbitrary, and eternally changing
> agglomeration of what computer scientists, engineers, and corporations with
> vested interests have created over the last decades. The only thing that
> really acts like laws of nature in the software world are such concepts of
> how information is processed in memory, maybe boolean logic, the
> mathematical
> foundations for algorithm design, or maybe good design principles, though
> the
> last point is not universally agreed upon.
>
> > It simply doesn't matter.  [ . . . ]
> No, you don't know need to know how to refine copper and silicon before you
> use a computer, but you do need to know about and understand what you are
> working with before you write a program. Better put, the program you write
> is
> much more likely to be good.
>
> Here's a thought: What if the person designing the software for the
> automatic
> braking system thought or was told that it was more important to create a
> multicolored light show on your dashboard in a braking emergency than in
> saftely braking the car under conditions of uneven traction on a slippery
> curve?
>
> > 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.
> Learning QStyle and stylesheets before learning QWidget is in my opinion
> the
> reverse order of how to approach the problem. Presentation is arbitrary and
> funtionality much, much less so. Qt is great in that you can put together a
> functional application and then make it pretty later without changing much.
> In my opinion, one of the major faults of the visual tools is that they
> force
> users to approach the visual appearance of their applications before really
> making them give much thought to the real work that needs to be done and
> the
> best way to implement it. That is very backwards and a good foundation for
> bad software.
>
> > In fact I said I needed to learn Qt internals in order to create derived
> > classes that worked around Qt bugs.
> Maybe you might be doing something wrong or trying to make it program based
> on
> your understanding of another framework, which is only natural. Changing
> frameworks often means approaching problems differently. I have never had
> to
> change the Qt internals to get a job done.
>
> And if Qt doesn't do quite what I need I can use STL or the boost libraries
> or
> even native APIs. Qt stays, as it should, pretty neutral. I have read it
> even
> lets me use the boost signal-slot mechanism instead of its own if desired.
> Now, that's awesome!
>
> > This is necessary in Qt more than
> > other frameworks, so I do know how to dive into framework internals.
> With the propietary black box components you mention, you can't see or
> change
> the internals, and if they don't do what you want, as you want, and you
> have
> committed to using them, then you at the mercy of the company selling the
> components as to whether anything gets fixed (or even unfixed) or really
> needed features are implemented.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> 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
>
> [ I am not going to put one of those silly statements here that tell you to
> forget everything you had to read before you got to this point. ]
>
> --------------------
> Date: Friday 05 March 2010 23:25
> 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
> --------------------
>
> > "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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