3 ms·
Many times this. Native path is the path of infinite churn, ALL the time. With web you might find some framework bro who takes pride in knowing all the intricac
by wiseowise 8mo ago
Many times this. Native path is the path of infinite churn, ALL the time. With web you might find some framework bro who takes pride in knowing all the intricacies of React hooks who'll grill you for not dreaming in React/Vue/framework of the day, but fundamental web skills (JS/HTML/CSS) are universal. And you can pretty much apply them on any platform:
- iOS? React Native, Ionic, Web app via Safari
- Android? Same thing
- Mac, Windows, Linux – Tauri, Electron, serve it yourself
Native? Oh boy, here we fucking go: you've spent last decade honing your Android skills? Too bad, son, time to learn Android jerkpad. XML, styles, Java? What's that, gramps? You didn't hear that everything is Kotlin now? Dagger? That's so 2025, it's Hilt/Metro/Koin now. Oh wow, you learned Compose on Android? Man, was your brain frozen for 50 years? It's KMM now, oh wait, KMM is rebranded! It's KMP now! Haha, you think you know Compost? We're going to release half baked Compost multiplatform now, which is kinda the same, but not quite. Shitty toolchain and performance worse than Electron? Can't fucking hear you over jet engine sounds of my laptop exhaust, get on my level, boy!
- LtWorf 8mo agoQt does exist. It's not difficult.
- inejge 8mo agoQt costs serious money if you go commercial. That might not be important for a hobby project, but lowers the enthusiasm for using the stack since the big players won't use it unless other considerations compel them.
- heavyset_go 8mo agoDepends on the modules and features you use, or where you're deploying, otherwise it's free if you can adhere to the LGPL. Just make it so users can drop in their own Qt libs.
- LtWorf 8mo agoI'm sure microsoft and slack have sufficient funds for a commercial Qt license.
- fc417fc802 8mo agoQT only costs money if you want access to their custom tooling or insist on static linking. We're comparing to electron here. Why do you need to static link? And why can't you write QML in your text editor of choice and get on with life?
- heavyset_go 8mo agoSome widgets and modules, like Qt Charts (or Graphs, I forget), are dual GPL and commercially licensed, so it's a bit more complicated than that. You also need a commercial license for automotive and embedded deployments.
- fc417fc802 8mo agoRight but it's a perfectly functional (even remarkably feature complete) UI toolkit without the copyleft addons. > You also need a commercial license for automotive and embedded deployments. How does that work? The LGPL (really any OSI license) isn't compatible with additional usage restrictions.
- LtWorf 8mo agoI'm guessing some parts of code are needed to make it run on those platforms and aren't LGPL.
- heavyset_go 8mo agoYou generally can't adhere to the LGPL in automotive or embedded deployments: the user can't link their own Qt libs in their auto/embedded device. Slint has a similar license
- jenadine 8mo ago> You generally can't adhere to the LGPL in automotive "Can't" or "won't"? The UI process is not usually the part that need certification. > Slint has a similar license Indeed, but Slint's open source license is the GPL and not the LGPL. And its more permissive license is made for desktop apps and explicitly forbid embedded (so automotive)
- wiseowise 8mo ago...which is the same as Flutter. Both don't use native UI toolkits (though Qt doesn't use Skia, I'll give you that (Flutter has Impeller engine in the works)). And Qt has much worse developer experience and costs money.
- LtWorf 8mo agoQt costs money if you for some reason insist on static linking AND use all the fancy components, the core stuff is all LGPL. Anyway it does look native and it is way faster than electron, which also doesn't look native so I don't understand why it's a problem for Qt but not for electron.