[Qt-interest] Silverlight

[David Ching]

I'm wondering how easy Qt programmers will find switching to Silverlight to
be.  I have done both Qt on desktop (not QML though) and WPF/Silverlight for
a couple years and I have to say Qt is far easier.  For one thing, unlike
Qt, the names of .NET things are quite long and hard to grasp what the
meaning is.  Likewise, I find the declarative part (XAML) to get very
complex quickly, almost as if it is a write-only file.  There is all manner
of things specified in it, from animation sequences, to which methods get
called when events occur.  It is not organized very well and is hard to get
an overview of what is happening just by giving the file a quick look.  How
does this compare to QML (Qt's declarative syntax)?

Also, the emphasis on data binding, where a control's property is data bound
to the property of another object is foreign.  Instead of simply writing
code that says

  Textbox.Text = "New text";

you say something like

  Textbox.DataContext = myModel;
  Textbox.Text = "{Binding Name}";

so that when this code is executed:

  myModel.Name = "New text";

the text box's text gets updated automagically because it's bound to the
Name (but only if myModel implements INotifyPropertyChanged).

This is a powerful concept, but in reality, you end up defining properties
on the model such that the only thing that cares about the ".name" property
IS the textbox, so why not just avoid this plumbing and call

  Textbox.Text = "New text";


Finally, it is not possible for Silverlight apps to directly access a
database without going through WCF RIA Services, which is quite complex.
Therefore, Silverlight apps are by necessity n-tier instead of the far
easier 2-tier.  Another thing is everything in Silverlight is asynchronous,
meaning you need to have "delegates" (.NET equivalent of a slot) handle the
operation when it is completed.

No doubt, the learning curve of Silverlight is steep.  But would learning
QML make it easier?

Thanks,
David

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