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C++ is arguably one of the most complex popular programming languages out there. With Qt you get a lot of conveniences and built-in magic, but I'd say at that p

C++ is arguably one of the most complex popular programming languages out there. With Qt you get a lot of conveniences and built-in magic, but I'd say at that point it's not really regular C++. A good comparison could be writing plain Ruby vs writing a Rails app. I'll admit my experiences with Qt have been fairly limited relative to my web work, but picking up QtWidget seemed like it had a much higher barrier of entry than a web tech stack. Although I'll also recognize that QtQuick and QML greatly seemed to streamline the whole thing, especially for getting started. Based on my experiences performance with QtQuick still left a bit to be desired, but it was still an improvement over most Electron equivalents. It's also worth noting that these comments mostly apply for people going for a mostly-native look and feel. If you want to completely customize the look and feel of widgets, as many modern apps have recently begun to do, I think it might be easier to get started doing that with the web stack. Then again, I recognize that this just might be my inexperience talking. It also depends on the kind of app you're trying to build. I've written lots of personal apps using server-side rendering and a tiny bit of JS and I love how easily I can deploy and access it from all devices. That's a kind of versatility you just don't get with native. IMO, most web developers could probably learn a lot from giving Qt and other native toolkits a try.

martin_ky 8y ago
> With Qt you get a lot of conveniences and built-in magic, but I'd say at that point it's not really regular C++. This is a common misconception of beginner Qt users or people who just looked at Qt superficially and decided not to use it, because it's not "regular C++". You use Qt with 100% pure C++. Qt itself is written in 100% pure C++. The part that confuses people is the metaobject compiler (or MOC). This is a simple code generator tool that provides additional features like runtime type information and reflection. It does not modify your source code, only generates some additiona, 100% legal C++. Granted, this requires an extra build step before invoking the C++ compiler. But Qt's build system handles this automatically, and it's not really difficult to integrate into any other build system. Starting with Qt 5, you don't even need to invoke the MOC compiler, because in many cases, the features provided with generated code were replaced by new C++11 functionality. If/when C++ gets proper metaclasses and programmable compile-time code generation, there will be no more need for MOC, because all of its functions can then run in a single compilation step. There's a great blog post debunking the myths about the QT metaobject compiler - https://woboq.com/blog/moc-myths.html https://woboq.com/blog/moc-myths.html

martin_ky 8y ago

> With Qt you get a lot of conveniences and built-in magic, but I'd say at that point it's not really regular C++. This is a common misconception of beginner Qt users or people who just looked at Qt superficially and decided not to use it, because it's not "regular C++". You use Qt with 100% pure C++. Qt itself is written in 100% pure C++. The part that confuses people is the metaobject compiler (or MOC). This is a simple code generator tool that provides additional features like runtime type information and reflection. It does not modify your source code, only generates some additiona, 100% legal C++. Granted, this requires an extra build step before invoking the C++ compiler. But Qt's build system handles this automatically, and it's not really difficult to integrate into any other build system. Starting with Qt 5, you don't even need to invoke the MOC compiler, because in many cases, the features provided with generated code were replaced by new C++11 functionality. If/when C++ gets proper metaclasses and programmable compile-time code generation, there will be no more need for MOC, because all of its functions can then run in a single compilation step. There's a great blog post debunking the myths about the QT metaobject compiler - https://woboq.com/blog/moc-myths.html https://woboq.com/blog/moc-myths.html