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What do you mean is big? How much % of your RAM will a Qt application take? What I mean by well architected is that: 1 it respects the user choice so it tries

What do you mean is big? How much % of your RAM will a Qt application take? What I mean by well architected is that: 1 it respects the user choice so it tries to use the user themes, icons , fonts (it would do a even better job if Miscrosoft and Apple would contribute a bit when they change their designs) 2 it is efficient, it does not use some hacky stuff like you see in angular or react, where one click causes some data to change then a lot of code runs and check what changed where, then try see what other data needs to change then finally updates the DOM, which DOM is a super complex piece of software that is super easy to eat a lot of CPU with just a line of CSS or cause a lot of recalculations when you update one item. 3 Qt gives you a lot of widgets to build on top of, I remember it had a lot of APIs not only for GUI but also networking, desktop integration(like to use the native notifications) 4 I loved the fact Qt had it's own standard library, I know some c++ purists won't like that and the qmake , but we need to understand how many platforms Qt targeted and that the col new C++ features were not there on all this platforms when Qt4 was created (and even with Qt4 I think there was a way to upgrade from Qt3 so there was not a complete start from scratch). I assume there are some smaller toolkits, there are some posted here but I think the smaller ones have only 20% of the features. IMO the reason Qt is not used as much is because it uses C++ , for modern application I think developers prefer garbage collected languages and Qt (last time I checked) did not had mature bindings for this popular languages. Sorry for the long comment, what would you use today if you need to make an application for someone, something simple like some buttons, menus and it does a bit of work maybe with some files or the internet), the goal is to be fast and have very few bugs that you will have to support by fixing them.

inetknght 5y ago
> I loved the fact Qt had it's own standard library, I know some c++ purists won't like that and the qmake , but we need to understand how many platforms Qt targeted and that the col new C++ features were not there on all this platforms when Qt4 was created Indeed so! Qt is living today with the fact that it was built and designed long before C++11 was really a thing (where C++11 is the baseline of modern C++ and I would argue that even C++17 should be considered the baseline). The design decisions of Qt are directly against modern C++ design. I think that's ultimately the core of the problem: that modern Qt is orthogonal, not complementary, to modern C++. Range-for loop? Oops, accidentally detached and deep-copied into a temporary. Move objects? Just, no. unique_ptr? Nah, QScopedPointer. Also still not moveable. make_unique? Nah, reset(new...) and ignore the modern advice that you shouldn't use `new` Qt still takes naked pointers and decides willy-nilly whether to take ownership. It still has examples everywhere for using naked new without even mentioning the context of a smart pointer. It has the concept of "you used new, but the parent actually owns it, unless the parent is null" which is just a time bomb for anyone new to the framework let alone the language. No, there's no way I would recommend Qt to someone who isn't experienced. Since I wouldn't recommend it then it's no wonder to me why Qt isn't used so much. It has little to do with C++ and a lot more to do with the design decisions of Qt itself. > IMO the reason Qt is not used as much is because it uses C++ Arguably. Also arguably is because Qt brings along a lot of unnecessary baggage. You mentioned using Qt requires using qmake (which definitely counts as arcane, if not archaic); cmake does a pretty good job of wrapping qmake but doesn't eliminate it. And all of that is because of Qt's non-standard magical signals & slots system which is really just a more error-prone semi-async system when compared to any other eventing system. Using Qt efficiently strongly needs Qt Creator which isn't nearly as good as Visual Studio or VS Code and not as feature-rich as CLion or other intellij-based IDEs I've used -- but at least it performans way better than CLion or intellij trash. Qt's license changing in 5.15 has also become a significant penalty to non-commercial use. This fact alone means there's no way I'd use Qt in a new project, even a commercial one. Modern Qt developers also have to become javascript developers since Qt's UI is heavily driving towards QML. That's an unfortunate direction and also inhibits adoption of Qt IMO. Why write an application in C++ if you need to learn javascript anyway? There are better feature-rich javascript frameworks with better community adoption and better price points. > what would you use today if you need to make an application for someone, something simple like some buttons, menus and it does a bit of work maybe with some files or the internet), the goal is to be fast and have very few bugs that you will have to support by fixing them For GUI, Dear Imgui [0]. For network, Asio [1]. For files, plain standard streams. They're not fast but if your files are your bottleneck then I'd consider memory-mapped files. [0]: https://github.com/ocornut/imgui https://github.com/ocornut/imgui [1]: https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_77_0/doc/html/boost_asio/reference.html https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_77_0/doc/html/boost_asio/re...
- simion314 5y ago
  Your suggestions are not compatible with what I was thinking , my scenario was that "I need to write a small application very quickly" not "I am staring a bussiness and I want to spend a few years developing an application", What I mean is that with Qt you have more then a GUI, you don't have to Google what library I need to do some networking , or what is the win32 API to count how many screens this PC has (and same for the other platforms). I did not work on Desktop application in many years so I am not sure what exactly is happening in Qt world now and for a quick project I don't want to learn some niche libraries .
  - inetknght 5y ago
    > Your suggestions are not compatible with what I was thinking , my scenario was that "I need to write a small application very quickly" not "I am staring a bussiness and I want to spend a few years developing an application" I disagree; it's very possible to write a small application very quickly in modern C++ without Qt. > with Qt you have more then a GUI, you don't have to Google what library I need to do some networking If you are new to Qt then you do need to google how to use Qt. On the flip side, if you're not new to whatever other library you want to use for networking then you don't need to google to use that. Indeed, I don't need to use Google to figure out how to use asio and beast to connect to a server and download data using http. > or what is the win32 API to count how many screens this PC has What small application needs to know how many screens this PC has? I definitely don't consider that a small application and I would need to go "Google" how to get that information out of Qt. I would just as quickly find that information from Xlib because fuck Windows. > for a quick project I don't want to learn some niche libraries For a quick project I don't want to use Qt. Your argument is merely an opinion.
- rixed 5y ago
  It can be frustrating indeed that Qt is not quite C++, make no use of modern C++ library, and requires a preprocessor. Still, I find it debatable whether modern C++ is so much better than Qt. Qt design principles might lead to less performance but I, for one, find the design consistent and solid. The main advantage of Qt over modern C++ though is its stability. If you had written a Qt app 20 years ago it would still compile and work as intended, whereas C++ become a different language every 5 years. I share your sentiment about QML though, and hope they will quickly reinvest into Qwidgets.

inetknght 5y ago

> I loved the fact Qt had it's own standard library, I know some c++ purists won't like that and the qmake , but we need to understand how many platforms Qt targeted and that the col new C++ features were not there on all this platforms when Qt4 was created Indeed so! Qt is living today with the fact that it was built and designed long before C++11 was really a thing (where C++11 is the baseline of modern C++ and I would argue that even C++17 should be considered the baseline). The design decisions of Qt are directly against modern C++ design. I think that's ultimately the core of the problem: that modern Qt is orthogonal, not complementary, to modern C++. Range-for loop? Oops, accidentally detached and deep-copied into a temporary. Move objects? Just, no. unique_ptr? Nah, QScopedPointer. Also still not moveable. make_unique? Nah, reset(new...) and ignore the modern advice that you shouldn't use `new` Qt still takes naked pointers and decides willy-nilly whether to take ownership. It still has examples everywhere for using naked new without even mentioning the context of a smart pointer. It has the concept of "you used new, but the parent actually owns it, unless the parent is null" which is just a time bomb for anyone new to the framework let alone the language. No, there's no way I would recommend Qt to someone who isn't experienced. Since I wouldn't recommend it then it's no wonder to me why Qt isn't used so much. It has little to do with C++ and a lot more to do with the design decisions of Qt itself. > IMO the reason Qt is not used as much is because it uses C++ Arguably. Also arguably is because Qt brings along a lot of unnecessary baggage. You mentioned using Qt requires using qmake (which definitely counts as arcane, if not archaic); cmake does a pretty good job of wrapping qmake but doesn't eliminate it. And all of that is because of Qt's non-standard magical signals & slots system which is really just a more error-prone semi-async system when compared to any other eventing system. Using Qt efficiently strongly needs Qt Creator which isn't nearly as good as Visual Studio or VS Code and not as feature-rich as CLion or other intellij-based IDEs I've used -- but at least it performans way better than CLion or intellij trash. Qt's license changing in 5.15 has also become a significant penalty to non-commercial use. This fact alone means there's no way I'd use Qt in a new project, even a commercial one. Modern Qt developers also have to become javascript developers since Qt's UI is heavily driving towards QML. That's an unfortunate direction and also inhibits adoption of Qt IMO. Why write an application in C++ if you need to learn javascript anyway? There are better feature-rich javascript frameworks with better community adoption and better price points. > what would you use today if you need to make an application for someone, something simple like some buttons, menus and it does a bit of work maybe with some files or the internet), the goal is to be fast and have very few bugs that you will have to support by fixing them For GUI, Dear Imgui [0]. For network, Asio [1]. For files, plain standard streams. They're not fast but if your files are your bottleneck then I'd consider memory-mapped files. [0]: https://github.com/ocornut/imgui https://github.com/ocornut/imgui [1]: https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_77_0/doc/html/boost_asio/reference.html https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_77_0/doc/html/boost_asio/re...

simion314 5y ago
Your suggestions are not compatible with what I was thinking , my scenario was that "I need to write a small application very quickly" not "I am staring a bussiness and I want to spend a few years developing an application", What I mean is that with Qt you have more then a GUI, you don't have to Google what library I need to do some networking , or what is the win32 API to count how many screens this PC has (and same for the other platforms). I did not work on Desktop application in many years so I am not sure what exactly is happening in Qt world now and for a quick project I don't want to learn some niche libraries .
- inetknght 5y ago
  > Your suggestions are not compatible with what I was thinking , my scenario was that "I need to write a small application very quickly" not "I am staring a bussiness and I want to spend a few years developing an application" I disagree; it's very possible to write a small application very quickly in modern C++ without Qt. > with Qt you have more then a GUI, you don't have to Google what library I need to do some networking If you are new to Qt then you do need to google how to use Qt. On the flip side, if you're not new to whatever other library you want to use for networking then you don't need to google to use that. Indeed, I don't need to use Google to figure out how to use asio and beast to connect to a server and download data using http. > or what is the win32 API to count how many screens this PC has What small application needs to know how many screens this PC has? I definitely don't consider that a small application and I would need to go "Google" how to get that information out of Qt. I would just as quickly find that information from Xlib because fuck Windows. > for a quick project I don't want to learn some niche libraries For a quick project I don't want to use Qt. Your argument is merely an opinion.
rixed 5y ago
It can be frustrating indeed that Qt is not quite C++, make no use of modern C++ library, and requires a preprocessor. Still, I find it debatable whether modern C++ is so much better than Qt. Qt design principles might lead to less performance but I, for one, find the design consistent and solid. The main advantage of Qt over modern C++ though is its stability. If you had written a Qt app 20 years ago it would still compile and work as intended, whereas C++ become a different language every 5 years. I share your sentiment about QML though, and hope they will quickly reinvest into Qwidgets.