A Taste of Qt 4

Karma Sucks writes "In 'A Taste of Qt 4', Trolltech reveals that it is positioning Qt 4 directly against Java. Qt 4 promises to be smaller and faster than its predecessors and there will be a boatload of new features including support for non-GUI applications and accessibility under Linux using Sun's ATK. More controversial is the introduction of a new and elegant foreach construct. Incidentally, for those still opposed to Qt's moc preprocessor, Havoc has some interesting comments. It is possible the idea will be adapted to provide GObject introspection in the future."

Comments

Re:So

[moxruby]

I'm not a developer, I'm just a KDE user. I fail to see how there's anything revolutionary in here for me, or the other users. After all, software isn't just for the developers.

While you may not realise the benefits straight away, software being easier to develop means more, higher quality apps for everybody.

Java?

[bunhed]

..."positioning Qt 4 directly against Java"?

That'll be great to be writing servlets and jsp's in C++. *cough*

Happy Developers == Happy Users

[Derleth]

This should be obvious.

If the new Qt toolkit gives developers things to drool over, they'll develop more software. If they develop more software using droolworthy tools, there's a good chance some of that software will be droolworthy in and of itself.

A good API isn't the be-all and end-all of software design. But giving developers things to feel excited over is important, especially in the open-source world.

Re:Mono-Culture?

[bircho]

It's not a Monopoly... I don't think Gnome is gonna embrace Qt (at least now). So Mono has its place.

Yeah, BUT....

[SerpentMage]

Sounds interesting, BUT.... The problem QT are as follows:

1) No GPL version for the Windows platform. As much as people in the Open Source community might hate MS, many (most) Open Source packages are cross-platform where Windows is a platform.

2) A non GPL version of the library costs an outrageous sum of money. Sure Trolltech wants to make money, but lower the costs a bit.

3) Why compete against Java? Somebody who uses Java is not going to switch to Qt as Java is still simpler. To me C++ != Java, and I am not saying one is better or worse than the other.

Frankly, I tend to prefer wxWindows, which has many of facilities mentioned in the parent post. And there are plenty of bindings for wxWindows (Python, Java, .NET, etc)

Re:Yeah, BUT....

[infiniti99]

1) No GPL version for the Windows platform. As much as people in the Open Source community might hate MS, many (most) Open Source packages are cross-platform where Windows is a platform.

A port of the GPL'd Qt/X11 to Windows can be found here. Remember, there was a time when Gtk didn't run anywhere but X11 either, yet hobbyists managed to port it. Qt is arguably much easier to port, as it was designed this way, and Trolltech has already proven it with their own proprietary version.

2) A non GPL version of the library costs an outrageous sum of money. Sure Trolltech wants to make money, but lower the costs a bit.

Honestly, I'm not sure how Trolltech can afford to pay all of their programmers a decent wage by simply selling a developer tool (which by definition is a bit of a niche market), even at such a high price. They must sell a heap of licenses... I'm no business major, but I think that Qt has to be expensive if we want Trolltech in business (and we do, Linux on the desktop wouldn't be where it is today without 'em).

3) Why compete against Java? Somebody who uses Java is not going to switch to Qt as Java is still simpler. To me C++ != Java, and I am not saying one is better or worse than the other.

Ahh, but maybe Qt can keep a C++ user from switching to Java? I learned Qt before I learned Java, and during my study of the latter I kept thinking how much it was like Qt. At this stage, if something cool is possible in Java, I'd like to see it also possible in Qt/C++ (assuming such a feature would make sense in that context).

New and Elegant "foreach" ?

[PissingInTheWind]

Wow, a new syntactic construct. Stop the press.

Seriously, such rejoicing about new language features fills me with pity at the thought of those poor programmers stuck with whatever language constructs the "higher autorities" deems them worthy to have.

Lisp has supported extending the language for about 40 years. And people still get excited when they get a new syntactic construct for C++. That is sad.

If you want to find joy and productivity in programming, use Scheme, Common Lisp or some other programmable programming language. Free your mind.

foreach

[Bingo Foo]

If you use a c++ compiler with "typeof" (g++ has this) and STL containers, you can do this handy trick:

#define EACH( I , C ) typeof((C).begin()) (I) = (C).begin();\
(I) != (C).end(); ++(I)

that allows:

std::vector<MyBigClass> v = ...

for ( EACH( i, v ) ) {
... do something with i ...
}

which is very readable and maintainable. My guess is that Qt's foreach is something similar:

#define foreach( I , C ) for ( typeof((C).begin()) (I) = (C).begin();\
(I) != (C).end(); ++(I) )

foreach( i, v ) {
... do something with i ...
}

The problem is that this is too much of a departure from C++ syntax (foiling editor syntax highlighting), and the macro hides too much of the actual loop construct.

Re:QT's licence is BAD!

[Capt. Beyond]

your post is redundant. GPL is GPL. If you want GPL Qt on windows, you are free to write the code yourself. As if Trolltech's GPL isn't as good as the GNU GPL. Give this a rest.

Re:Mono-Culture?

[RoLi]

Is there even one single non-trivial software project made with/on Mono?

I'm getting tired of all those predictions, promises and vaporware coming from Gnome/Mono. Why does anybody still take them seriously?

So far, nothing useful has come from Mono while Qt runs REAL software (you know, the kind that actually runs and can be useful) ranging from a whole desktop environment to word-processors.

Against Java ?

[MosesJones]

Which bit ?

Against the J2EE platform supported by IBM, SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle, BEA, Sun, Manugistics etc etc

Against J2SE supported by IBM, Sun, Dell, HP etc

Against J2ME supported by IBM, Nokia, Ericsson, Sony, Sun etc

How about positioning it as a useful tool for corporate developers with minimal tooling support and no easy integration with corporate applications.

OSS needs to realise what WORKS in a corporate environment and why it does, and why re-inventing, or competing with, the wheel is not a great idea.

I like OSS, I advocate OSS with my clients, but its this sort of visionless statement that makes many serious IT directors walk away as they know its a bollocks statement made by people without a grasp of their problems.

Corporate IT _is_ IT.

Re:QT's licence is BAD!

[Ben Hutchings]

I work for a small development house, and we were certainly able to afford it. $1550 is less than two weeks' salary (and that's before counting expenses on the top of the payroll) so if Qt can save that much developer time it's worth buying. Note that the price includes good technical support.

Trolling?

[brunes69]

2) A non GPL version of the library costs an outrageous sum of money.

If you think only 1500-3000 ( depending on package ) per developer for a perpetual license is a large amount of money, then you're either 12 years old or have never paid a dime for software in your life.

A manager of any team of 5 or more people would laugh at that kind of money. It is chump change compared to how much a company would spend on *paper* for pete's sake.

And if you take into account the developer's time ( which any manager must ), Qt is actually cheaper since it is so powerfull it takes on average 25-50% less code to do things in Qt than it does to do in other C++ toolkits I have used in the past.

I would use Qt even if I was only targeting Windows and even if I was the only person on the team. It is *that* good. People who knock it just do not have experience using it.