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Qt or HTML5? A Million Dollar Question

embedded-computing.com

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Re: Qt or HTML5? A Million Dollar Question

#41

Post by majewsky »

dmitriid wrote: post #11
djsumdog wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well there have been some other articles that talk about using Qt, python's built in browser or Python+GTK over electron/HTML5 apps. There are a lot of people out here sick of things like Slack/Discord/Atom which each have the entire Electron framework that weigh in at 80 ~ 150MB. I'd be all for using GTK or QT if there were just better well supported bindings, with good documentation and examples, for languages like…

I used to call Qt ".Net for people who can't have anything better". When you code in Qt you rarely, if ever, are exposed to the hairy parts of C/C++. If anything, it feels like coding in C#. Nesides UI there are a gazillion helper and utility classes for everything from networking to threading to string handling. And with QML there's even less C++ :)

I actually just migrated a small Rust application to C++ with Qt because I have to use DBus and Qt has a very nice DBus library, which Rust has not. (In general, DBus hates runtime environments that don't have an event loop.)

Re: Qt or HTML5? A Million Dollar Question

#42

Post by bb88 »

donjoe wrote: post #32
solarkraft wrote: post #17

Real link: http://content.cdntwrk.com/files/aT05NDQwMzEmdj0xJmlzc3VlTmF... While this does read a bit like an ad I find the points to be valid. I also think interface quality can be achieved to be better with Qt Quick than with HTML. Unfortunately there is a somewhat higher entry barrier, but that shouldn't be a problem for a company this large. I am glad one company didn't follow the hype of putting web technology e…

What I'm missing are some points regarding: - Maintainability: Who will maintain a Qt application once it's deployed? How fast can a Qt application become modified? - Cost for/of developers/development: How easy is it to find good Qt frontend developers/maintainers? - System upgrades: How will HAM upgrade its appliances? I assume he's talking about HAM as BSH (Bosch and Siemens Home Appliances). They're currently hea…

The cost of hardware at scale dwarfs the cost of software. If it means paying 5 people a %25 percent premium to save $1m then it's probably worth it.

Re: Qt or HTML5? A Million Dollar Question

#43

Post by majewsky »

jlebrech wrote: post #34

If QT could produce a "themable" web app where you can give the theme.css of whatever it generates to a designer would be nice.

Qt Widgets has supported CSS stylesheets for at least a decade: http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/stylesheet.html

However, even with styling, you cannot deform the widgets and layouts entirely. Which is a good thing in my book, but appears to hurt designers' feelings.

Re: Qt or HTML5? A Million Dollar Question

#45

Post by jacobush »

donjoe wrote: post #32
solarkraft wrote: post #17

Real link: http://content.cdntwrk.com/files/aT05NDQwMzEmdj0xJmlzc3VlTmF... While this does read a bit like an ad I find the points to be valid. I also think interface quality can be achieved to be better with Qt Quick than with HTML. Unfortunately there is a somewhat higher entry barrier, but that shouldn't be a problem for a company this large. I am glad one company didn't follow the hype of putting web technology e…

What I'm missing are some points regarding: - Maintainability: Who will maintain a Qt application once it's deployed? How fast can a Qt application become modified? - Cost for/of developers/development: How easy is it to find good Qt frontend developers/maintainers? - System upgrades: How will HAM upgrade its appliances? I assume he's talking about HAM as BSH (Bosch and Siemens Home Appliances). They're currently hea…

And licensing. Qt is LGPL or commercial. HTML is (in practice) more liberally licensed.

(Edit: not GPL, but LGPL. Which is almost as bad for embedded systems as GPL itself is. How do you let the user relink Qt or replace Qt with their own version, in the field? Nightmare. Just pay up. Qt LGPL is (or was) fine for desktop apps pre app stores. Now, not so much.)

Re: Qt or HTML5? A Million Dollar Question

#46

Post by mkl »

jacobush wrote: post #45
donjoe wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'm missing are some points regarding: - Maintainability: Who will maintain a Qt application once it's deployed? How fast can a Qt application become modified? - Cost for/of developers/development: How easy is it to find good Qt frontend developers/maintainers? - System upgrades: How will HAM upgrade its appliances? I assume he's talking about HAM as BSH (Bosch and Siemens Home Appliances). They're currently hea…

And licensing. Qt is LGPL or commercial. HTML is (in practice) more liberally licensed. (Edit: not GPL, but LGPL. Which is almost as bad for embedded systems as GPL itself is. How do you let the user relink Qt or replace Qt with their own version, in the field? Nightmare. Just pay up. Qt LGPL is (or was) fine for desktop apps pre app stores. Now, not so much.)

Qt has been LGPL as well for years now.

Re: Qt or HTML5? A Million Dollar Question

#47

Post by jokoon »

Like in everything, the more precisely you define your software, the faster it will run, but it will have a higher development cost.

So either pay in programming hour, or in hardware. Often you just do something in html, make some compromise because programming hours are much more expensive than hardware, and hack you way through it.

I just wish wasm will even things out, because at the end of the day, Qt is also another hack to make some interface code work cross platform. Qt might be fast but it's not easy to come by since it's maintained by only one authority.

Re: Qt or HTML5? A Million Dollar Question

#48

Post by Iv »

tjoff wrote: post #13
kbart wrote: post #10

I've done both and the real answer is "it depends". If performance is all that matters, the yes, it's Qt hands down. But Qt is also significantly harder to develop and maintain, especially if you want optimized application for minimal hardware.

If you want an optimized application for minimal hardware then surely HTML isn't an alternative anyway? Not sure I agree that QT is harder to develop and maintain, it depends on what you are used to.

As a C++ developer who finds javascript painful to work with, I know I am orders of magnitude more productive on Qt.

Re: Qt or HTML5? A Million Dollar Question

#49

Post by bb88 »

TwoBit wrote: post #35

Good luck getting any serious technical support with Qt. At least with HTML5 there's a huge amount of users and technical resources. I was never able to get answers to any technical questions that weren't trivial.

So there is a business model for Qt technical support and has been for more than a decade (maybe 2 now?)

https://www.qt.io/

I would expect that they would know everything about qt.

Re: Qt or HTML5? A Million Dollar Question

#50

Post by bb88 »

mxschumacher wrote: post #30
_pdp_ wrote: post #26

This article purely concentrates on mobile - keep that in mind. There is no debate the native is better than web apps - but now we have React Native so... I am not sure what the point is here.

from what I understand it talks about embedded devices (a screen on a fridge or in an airplane). It doesn't say which one is better - it makes an argument based on cost.

I will say that cost is largely the most important metric, especially when building millions of devices.
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