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This is bonkers. The UI did look good, I'm suprised it wasn't something native like QT. But I guess when I think about it, does it really matter? Chromium has s

This is bonkers. The UI did look good, I'm suprised it wasn't something native like QT. But I guess when I think about it, does it really matter? Chromium has some of the best engineers behind it, and web developer supply has never been higher.

Yfvj875rfg 6y ago
Qt requires a commercial license in this use case. Why bother if Chromium is free and it works?
- detaro 6y ago
  So SpaceX is worried that their customers they sell spaceships to need to be able to get the source code of the Qt they use if they use it under LGPL?
- speedgoose 6y ago
  I'm quite sure SpaceX can afford the commercial license of Qt. It's simply that right now, web is the best. Far from perfect, but the best.
  - eternauta3k 6y ago
    > It's simply that right now, web is the best. Far from perfect, but the best. Could you go into more detail? With Qt, you can use Qt Designer/Creator and get a working UI pretty fast and easily.
    - speedgoose 6y ago
      I would say the mains advantages are : * write once, run everywhere. * the amount of tools and libraries. * Modern javascript is better than c++ or python for UI * the availability of good web developers
      - ZeikJT 6y ago
        * That is Java's slogan! * The npm ecosystem is a bit overzealous in the dependency department. Not everything is bloated inside npm or out of it but a lot of it is. * Javascript itself hasn't changed much in the way of making DOM creation/mutation easier. Custom elements, shadow DOM, etc. were nice but at the end of the day you still need to call createElement a lot and do everything manually. You're probably referring to using libraries, of which some are nice but many suffer the above-mentioned bloat problem. Event handling similarly hasn't changed much. * True enough, there probably haven't been this many of us in a long long time! More people must mean more good people.
- mrweasel 6y ago
  They already pay for VxWorks, I’m sure they can afford the QT license, if they even need it for a system that only made for SpaceX.
- jcelerier 6y ago
  Tesla uses Qt under LGPL in their own cars: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=18/05/20/1737213 https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=18/05/20/1737213
ksec 6y ago
In the article comment section someone from QT mentioned they were using QT for something. So it isn't clear which part of which is QT and which is HTML.
Matthias247 6y ago
> I'm suprised it wasn't something native like QT. The question is what you really would gain from using QT compared to Chrome/HTML/JS. Performance won't really matter for this. It it's good enough on the hardware they have, then further improving it does not make a difference. Provided they are running everything really mission-critical and real-time outside of the UI and on an RTOS or specialized hardware anyway (I really really hope so). One advantage might be audibility and the hope for less defects due to a smaller codebase and less dependencies. But I think even QT is already far beyond that point. And since Chrome is nowadays wider deployed, it might have a higher level of maturity than eg. the QT/QML tech.

Yfvj875rfg 6y ago

Qt requires a commercial license in this use case. Why bother if Chromium is free and it works?

detaro 6y ago
So SpaceX is worried that their customers they sell spaceships to need to be able to get the source code of the Qt they use if they use it under LGPL?
speedgoose 6y ago
I'm quite sure SpaceX can afford the commercial license of Qt. It's simply that right now, web is the best. Far from perfect, but the best.
- eternauta3k 6y ago
  > It's simply that right now, web is the best. Far from perfect, but the best. Could you go into more detail? With Qt, you can use Qt Designer/Creator and get a working UI pretty fast and easily.
  - speedgoose 6y ago
    I would say the mains advantages are : * write once, run everywhere. * the amount of tools and libraries. * Modern javascript is better than c++ or python for UI * the availability of good web developers
    - ZeikJT 6y ago
      * That is Java's slogan! * The npm ecosystem is a bit overzealous in the dependency department. Not everything is bloated inside npm or out of it but a lot of it is. * Javascript itself hasn't changed much in the way of making DOM creation/mutation easier. Custom elements, shadow DOM, etc. were nice but at the end of the day you still need to call createElement a lot and do everything manually. You're probably referring to using libraries, of which some are nice but many suffer the above-mentioned bloat problem. Event handling similarly hasn't changed much. * True enough, there probably haven't been this many of us in a long long time! More people must mean more good people.
mrweasel 6y ago
They already pay for VxWorks, I’m sure they can afford the QT license, if they even need it for a system that only made for SpaceX.
jcelerier 6y ago
Tesla uses Qt under LGPL in their own cars: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=18/05/20/1737213 https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=18/05/20/1737213

ksec 6y ago

In the article comment section someone from QT mentioned they were using QT for something. So it isn't clear which part of which is QT and which is HTML.

Matthias247 6y ago

> I'm suprised it wasn't something native like QT. The question is what you really would gain from using QT compared to Chrome/HTML/JS. Performance won't really matter for this. It it's good enough on the hardware they have, then further improving it does not make a difference. Provided they are running everything really mission-critical and real-time outside of the UI and on an RTOS or specialized hardware anyway (I really really hope so). One advantage might be audibility and the hope for less defects due to a smaller codebase and less dependencies. But I think even QT is already far beyond that point. And since Chrome is nowadays wider deployed, it might have a higher level of maturity than eg. the QT/QML tech.