8 ms·

800,000+ developers seems like an awful lot. I work mostly on the web - do I just not move in the right circles to meet these Qt developers?

selmnoo 12y ago
That seems about right to me. Qt is very popular among people making physical products on embedded systems and such. The last 3 places I worked at all used and loved Qt.
- checker 12y ago
  I just started using PySide which is a Qt wrapper for Python. So far it's been very good. I chose it because I can get familiar with Qt and eventually I may use it in my C++ projects too.
  - frownie 12y ago
    I concur. PySide makes developement/prototyping really efficient : the code is easy to read, no build system to maintain, no heavy tools to run, portability makes life so much better, you can freeze applications => deployment is super easy (well provided you don't have to copy the file on every PC's of the customer :); can't beat the web for that). And plus, Qt is very old and thus mature. It may not be as fun as the web development (which I admit is funnier, at least for the GUI part) but it provides a solid, predictible framework... Now I admit, I didn't play with JQuery which looks very solid too...
Qworg 12y ago
If you do web work, you likely won't meet anyone doing Qt. I've used it for robot and industrial machine UIs.
ColinCera 12y ago
Almost all Linux developers have used Qt, because KDE, and Qt has been around a long time; a significant percentage of all C++ programmers have used Qt on one project or another.
- acdha 12y ago
  Linux developers who write GUI apps. The many people who write server apps are unlikely to have more than user experience.
  - milliams 12y ago
    Though Qt provides loads of tools useful for writing headless applications. It's not just a GUI toolkit by a long way.
  - Touche 12y ago
    Even among GUI apps, GTK has been until very recently by far more popular.
    - sho_hn 12y ago
      By what metric? I'm fairly sure there's always been more Qt software than GTK+ software.
    - lmedinas 12y ago
      On Linux i guess so, on others GTK+ support is mostly dead.
      - Touche 12y ago
        Fair.
    - shmerl 12y ago
      Many projects recently started switching from GTK to Qt.
    - pjmlp 12y ago
      I imagine you mean on GNU/Linux.
  - stevelaz 12y ago
    Speaking of non-gui apps with Qt. In the past, I wrote a server app that was supposed to be cross-platform (Windows, Linux, Embedded Linux and eventually OSX). I chose to write it in C++ & Qt. That ended up being a bad decision because of the bloat. Since we needed the app to be able to run on embedded systems we couldn't use Qt. (We eventually wanted to be able to run on VxWorks as well). So, the size of the binary was too large. Eventually, I rewrote the app in ANSI C and saved a huge amount in the size of the static binary IIRC ~4MB (Warning, I don't remember exactly). The #ifdef code for each platform was one .c file for each OS with just a few functions on how to start/stop the service etc...
malkia 12y ago
Autodesk Maya, Motion Builder, p4v and many others
- stevelaz 12y ago
  Although I use git these days and wouldn't go back to P4 if you paid me. I still sometimes use p4merge for my difftool and I always thought they did a great job with their client UI with Qt. So, yay for p4 and Qt.
  - malkia 12y ago
    Funny, while I love Qt, and have been using it in our internal tools, there is a old-lore & myths about p4win (the MFC version) of the tool - that always felt snappier than its successor - p4v - and yes, p4win is snappier, but sometimes its just the fact that you've used it for so long, its hard to get without it. Just about any big game studio uses P4 these days. I haven't seen one that doesn't.
    - stevelaz 12y ago
      "Just about any big game studio uses P4 these days. I haven't seen one that doesn't." That's a very interesting statement. I wonder why? Maybe it's just grandfathered into these companies. IMHO, even if you're an enterprise software shop I think git can handle that with the proper tools and practices. I'm currently having to use Accurev in an enterprise environment, but I haven't run into anything that Accurev offers that can't be accomplished with git in a better and faster way. But then again, that's just my opinion :-)
      - georgemcbay 12y ago
        P4, as much as there are aspects of it I hate, handles the situation where you have binary files in the repo much better than most source code control systems do... especially git which sucks at that[1]. Game companies tend to have potentially quite large (by SCCS standards) binary assets mixed in with the code or even when they are cleanly separated, they like to have the standardization of everyone using the same version control system instead of having something separate for the artists. ([1] Predictably someone will probably want to respond to this with some link that shows a complicated and non-intuitive way in which you can get git to be halfway reasonable with handling binary files, though this will just prove my point more than disprove it, when compared to P4 which just handles binary files great out of the box with no thinking or planning required).
jeroen94704 12y ago
It is the blind spot of the Web/Silicon Valley/Startup world that not all programming is web programming. While the Googles and Facebooks of this world get all the press, there is a stupendous number of developers working on good old-fashioned desktop applications and embedded software. That is the world where Qt is very popular. In fact, it is my opinion that Qt is the one thing that keeps C++ relevant these days (http://weblog.jeroen.ws/blog/2012/11/19/how-relevant-is-c-plus-plus-today/ http://weblog.jeroen.ws/blog/2012/11/19/how-relevant-is-c-pl...).
- pjmlp 12y ago
  There are lots of things that keep C++ relevant, not only Qt.
  - anonbanker 12y ago
    Such as?
    - _wmd 12y ago
      If you count C in the same breath, then between them, they make up the implementation language for probably 99% of other languages, and the operating systems those languages run on. For anything safety critical, C in particular still has a vice-like stranglehold in many industries (e.g. automobile)
      - rurounijones 12y ago
        > For anything safety critical, C in particular still has a vice-like stranglehold in many industries (e.g. automobile) Which is kind of ironic, given its well known foot-shooting abilities.
        slavik81 12y ago
        That's partly why the use it: the problems with C are well understood by many people. They choose the devil they know.
tellarin 12y ago
Guess web is not its circle. ;) I've used in software for multiplatform oil and gas data analysis and visualisation. I've left the company many years ago, but they still use it heavily.
maelys 12y ago
I think different frameworks are more popular in different spheres, and yes - I don't really see Qt as being one of the most common frameworks mentioned for web work. That said, I wrote the backend to provide HTML5 video over websockets using Qt for my company.
heeen 12y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Software_that_uses_Qt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Software_that_uses_Qt http://developer.blackberry.com/native/documentation/core/porting_qt_apps.html http://developer.blackberry.com/native/documentation/core/po... https://www.openwebosproject.org/docs/architecture https://www.openwebosproject.org/docs/architecture plus many specialized niche applications that don't get a lot of press.
lmm 12y ago
Qt is a GUI framework - it's useless on the web (well, except as a way to learn good UI practice). It's probably the best non-web UI framework I've ever used, on any platform, in any language (its Python support in particular is superb). If I were to write another native desktop application I can't think of anything I'd rather use.
- thejdude 12y ago
  AFAIK Qt is much more than a GUI framework, and even modular these days, so you could leave out the GUI parts if you want. So you can use all kinds of Qt libs for different things, probably even for building a web server. Whether you WANT to write a web app in C++ is an entirely different matter, of course.
shortsightedsid 12y ago
I'm one of those 800000+ devs. I like QT with it's Slots and Signals! I've used it mainly on embedded platforms for UI.
- 72deluxe 12y ago
  Isn't signals and slots just a neat way of doing function pointers, the same as every other GUI toolkit that has callbacks? (Having said that, it was a simple concept and easy to grasp)
shmerl 12y ago
Probably not. If you would have interacted with any mobile or desktop Linux developers (especially KDE ones) you would have met more of those who use Qt.

selmnoo 12y ago

That seems about right to me. Qt is very popular among people making physical products on embedded systems and such. The last 3 places I worked at all used and loved Qt.

checker 12y ago
I just started using PySide which is a Qt wrapper for Python. So far it's been very good. I chose it because I can get familiar with Qt and eventually I may use it in my C++ projects too.
- frownie 12y ago
  I concur. PySide makes developement/prototyping really efficient : the code is easy to read, no build system to maintain, no heavy tools to run, portability makes life so much better, you can freeze applications => deployment is super easy (well provided you don't have to copy the file on every PC's of the customer :); can't beat the web for that). And plus, Qt is very old and thus mature. It may not be as fun as the web development (which I admit is funnier, at least for the GUI part) but it provides a solid, predictible framework... Now I admit, I didn't play with JQuery which looks very solid too...

Qworg 12y ago

If you do web work, you likely won't meet anyone doing Qt. I've used it for robot and industrial machine UIs.

ColinCera 12y ago

Almost all Linux developers have used Qt, because KDE, and Qt has been around a long time; a significant percentage of all C++ programmers have used Qt on one project or another.

acdha 12y ago
Linux developers who write GUI apps. The many people who write server apps are unlikely to have more than user experience.
- milliams 12y ago
  Though Qt provides loads of tools useful for writing headless applications. It's not just a GUI toolkit by a long way.
- Touche 12y ago
  Even among GUI apps, GTK has been until very recently by far more popular.
  - sho_hn 12y ago
    By what metric? I'm fairly sure there's always been more Qt software than GTK+ software.
  - lmedinas 12y ago
    On Linux i guess so, on others GTK+ support is mostly dead.
    - Touche 12y ago
      Fair.
  - shmerl 12y ago
    Many projects recently started switching from GTK to Qt.
  - pjmlp 12y ago
    I imagine you mean on GNU/Linux.
- stevelaz 12y ago
  Speaking of non-gui apps with Qt. In the past, I wrote a server app that was supposed to be cross-platform (Windows, Linux, Embedded Linux and eventually OSX). I chose to write it in C++ & Qt. That ended up being a bad decision because of the bloat. Since we needed the app to be able to run on embedded systems we couldn't use Qt. (We eventually wanted to be able to run on VxWorks as well). So, the size of the binary was too large. Eventually, I rewrote the app in ANSI C and saved a huge amount in the size of the static binary IIRC ~4MB (Warning, I don't remember exactly). The #ifdef code for each platform was one .c file for each OS with just a few functions on how to start/stop the service etc...

malkia 12y ago

Autodesk Maya, Motion Builder, p4v and many others

stevelaz 12y ago
Although I use git these days and wouldn't go back to P4 if you paid me. I still sometimes use p4merge for my difftool and I always thought they did a great job with their client UI with Qt. So, yay for p4 and Qt.
- malkia 12y ago
  Funny, while I love Qt, and have been using it in our internal tools, there is a old-lore & myths about p4win (the MFC version) of the tool - that always felt snappier than its successor - p4v - and yes, p4win is snappier, but sometimes its just the fact that you've used it for so long, its hard to get without it. Just about any big game studio uses P4 these days. I haven't seen one that doesn't.
  - stevelaz 12y ago
    "Just about any big game studio uses P4 these days. I haven't seen one that doesn't." That's a very interesting statement. I wonder why? Maybe it's just grandfathered into these companies. IMHO, even if you're an enterprise software shop I think git can handle that with the proper tools and practices. I'm currently having to use Accurev in an enterprise environment, but I haven't run into anything that Accurev offers that can't be accomplished with git in a better and faster way. But then again, that's just my opinion :-)
    - georgemcbay 12y ago
      P4, as much as there are aspects of it I hate, handles the situation where you have binary files in the repo much better than most source code control systems do... especially git which sucks at that[1]. Game companies tend to have potentially quite large (by SCCS standards) binary assets mixed in with the code or even when they are cleanly separated, they like to have the standardization of everyone using the same version control system instead of having something separate for the artists. ([1] Predictably someone will probably want to respond to this with some link that shows a complicated and non-intuitive way in which you can get git to be halfway reasonable with handling binary files, though this will just prove my point more than disprove it, when compared to P4 which just handles binary files great out of the box with no thinking or planning required).

jeroen94704 12y ago

It is the blind spot of the Web/Silicon Valley/Startup world that not all programming is web programming. While the Googles and Facebooks of this world get all the press, there is a stupendous number of developers working on good old-fashioned desktop applications and embedded software. That is the world where Qt is very popular. In fact, it is my opinion that Qt is the one thing that keeps C++ relevant these days (http://weblog.jeroen.ws/blog/2012/11/19/how-relevant-is-c-plus-plus-today/ http://weblog.jeroen.ws/blog/2012/11/19/how-relevant-is-c-pl...).

pjmlp 12y ago
There are lots of things that keep C++ relevant, not only Qt.
- anonbanker 12y ago
  Such as?
  - _wmd 12y ago
    If you count C in the same breath, then between them, they make up the implementation language for probably 99% of other languages, and the operating systems those languages run on. For anything safety critical, C in particular still has a vice-like stranglehold in many industries (e.g. automobile)
    - rurounijones 12y ago
      > For anything safety critical, C in particular still has a vice-like stranglehold in many industries (e.g. automobile) Which is kind of ironic, given its well known foot-shooting abilities.
      - slavik81 12y ago
        That's partly why the use it: the problems with C are well understood by many people. They choose the devil they know.

tellarin 12y ago

Guess web is not its circle. ;) I've used in software for multiplatform oil and gas data analysis and visualisation. I've left the company many years ago, but they still use it heavily.

maelys 12y ago

I think different frameworks are more popular in different spheres, and yes - I don't really see Qt as being one of the most common frameworks mentioned for web work. That said, I wrote the backend to provide HTML5 video over websockets using Qt for my company.

heeen 12y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Software_that_uses_Qt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Software_that_uses_Qt http://developer.blackberry.com/native/documentation/core/porting_qt_apps.html http://developer.blackberry.com/native/documentation/core/po... https://www.openwebosproject.org/docs/architecture https://www.openwebosproject.org/docs/architecture plus many specialized niche applications that don't get a lot of press.

lmm 12y ago

Qt is a GUI framework - it's useless on the web (well, except as a way to learn good UI practice). It's probably the best non-web UI framework I've ever used, on any platform, in any language (its Python support in particular is superb). If I were to write another native desktop application I can't think of anything I'd rather use.

thejdude 12y ago
AFAIK Qt is much more than a GUI framework, and even modular these days, so you could leave out the GUI parts if you want. So you can use all kinds of Qt libs for different things, probably even for building a web server. Whether you WANT to write a web app in C++ is an entirely different matter, of course.

shortsightedsid 12y ago

I'm one of those 800000+ devs. I like QT with it's Slots and Signals! I've used it mainly on embedded platforms for UI.

72deluxe 12y ago
Isn't signals and slots just a neat way of doing function pointers, the same as every other GUI toolkit that has callbacks? (Having said that, it was a simple concept and easy to grasp)

shmerl 12y ago

Probably not. If you would have interacted with any mobile or desktop Linux developers (especially KDE ones) you would have met more of those who use Qt.