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To anyone with experience building apps with QT: Would you recommend using it for new apps over Electron? I know the tech stack is different and I'm aware that

by thepumpkin1979 10y ago

To anyone with experience building apps with QT: Would you recommend using it for new apps over Electron? I know the tech stack is different and I'm aware that Electron apps are all memory hogs which is why I wonder whether QT is a good alternative in Desktop or not.

AnthonBerg 10y ago
I haven't noticed our cross-platform desktop app to be anything but nice and lean. I'd recommend Qt not only for desktop GUI work but would also recommend it even a bit more for general cross-platform stuff, i.e. our console apps are Qt as well and it's great.
trishume 10y ago
I certainly would. Qt is fantastic. Not only will your app be faster, but depending on which type of Qt you use (Qt Quick controls 1, Qt Quick Controls 2 or Qt Widgets) it can also look native. I also like the UI and event model better than HTML+JS. Plus you even get a visual GUI builder.
joshuak 10y ago
What a lot of people don't seem to realize about Qt Quick (as apposed to using C++/Qt Widgets), is that it's like a game engine. People seem to think its akin to HTML and JS, i.e. 'interpreted' scripting language, but QML is actually more like a game engine language, it loads the assets into high performance GPU and has much better performance characteristics then anything else including the C++ widgets in many cases.
winter_blue 10y ago
I would recommend going with Qt over Electron any day. You'll have an app that's fast, responsive, easily be multi-platform, have the look and feel of a native app on every platform (Windows, macOS, Linux), is light-weight, doesn't hog a lot of memory. You'd also not be trying to twist and bend over backwards to try to use something that was designed to display documents (HTML and DOM) to construct apps (with all the overhead that comes with it), and instead be building atop a framework that was created with desktop applications first and foremost.
dragly 10y ago
One very good reason to use Qt is QML. It's just such an amazing language to work with for creating GUIs and is also a great way to learn declarative programming. And it is easy to mix QML with logic in either Javascript or C++ if you want to. Every time I work with anything else, like HTML+CSS, I just miss working in QML. I don't have a lot of experience with Electron apart from working on some Atom packages. Electron seems like a good choice to me if you have existing code or libraries in JS that you want to reuse. Or if you want to make a combined web+standalone app. But if you want something that's fast, cross-platform and fun to develop, I would go for Qt.

AnthonBerg 10y ago

I haven't noticed our cross-platform desktop app to be anything but nice and lean. I'd recommend Qt not only for desktop GUI work but would also recommend it even a bit more for general cross-platform stuff, i.e. our console apps are Qt as well and it's great.

trishume 10y ago

I certainly would. Qt is fantastic. Not only will your app be faster, but depending on which type of Qt you use (Qt Quick controls 1, Qt Quick Controls 2 or Qt Widgets) it can also look native. I also like the UI and event model better than HTML+JS. Plus you even get a visual GUI builder.

joshuak 10y ago

What a lot of people don't seem to realize about Qt Quick (as apposed to using C++/Qt Widgets), is that it's like a game engine. People seem to think its akin to HTML and JS, i.e. 'interpreted' scripting language, but QML is actually more like a game engine language, it loads the assets into high performance GPU and has much better performance characteristics then anything else including the C++ widgets in many cases.

winter_blue 10y ago

I would recommend going with Qt over Electron any day. You'll have an app that's fast, responsive, easily be multi-platform, have the look and feel of a native app on every platform (Windows, macOS, Linux), is light-weight, doesn't hog a lot of memory. You'd also not be trying to twist and bend over backwards to try to use something that was designed to display documents (HTML and DOM) to construct apps (with all the overhead that comes with it), and instead be building atop a framework that was created with desktop applications first and foremost.

dragly 10y ago

One very good reason to use Qt is QML. It's just such an amazing language to work with for creating GUIs and is also a great way to learn declarative programming. And it is easy to mix QML with logic in either Javascript or C++ if you want to. Every time I work with anything else, like HTML+CSS, I just miss working in QML. I don't have a lot of experience with Electron apart from working on some Atom packages. Electron seems like a good choice to me if you have existing code or libraries in JS that you want to reuse. Or if you want to make a combined web+standalone app. But if you want something that's fast, cross-platform and fun to develop, I would go for Qt.