Live data from Hacker News

Technical Vision for Qt 6

blog.qt.io

11–20 of 184 posts

Re: Technical Vision for Qt 6

#11
post #5

I hope QML/js crap will be abandoned, and C++ API will be prioritized.

C++ (and even Rust) is not the best language to build UIs. Even if your app heavily uses C/C++ to do heavy computations, "scripting" language will be preferable for "glue code". QML is not a crazy new idea, for example Tk used Tcl.

And due to C++ API, Qt has poor language bindings, compared to GTK and many others with C API.

Re: Technical Vision for Qt 6

#12
Thanks for supporting CMake and deprecating qmake. Not that cmake is the best tool ever, but having to deal with several build systems in the same project has always been a nightmare.

Re: Technical Vision for Qt 6

#13
post #8

Would there be a chance of rust integration with these stronger types they mention?

There are a couple of projects attempting Rust integration with QML. In particular, I forked Jos van den Oever's seemingly unmaintained bindings generator:

https://gitlab.com/rhn/rust-qt-bindings-generator

It's for Qt5, and I think I know how to achieve strong typing (just turn everything into different QObjects, they don't get converted), but haven't implemented that idea yet.

Re: Technical Vision for Qt 6

#15

“should as such not be disruptive to our users” and “Elements of artificial intelligence will be more commonly used in applications and devices, and we will need to have easy ways to integrate with those.” told me everything I need to keep away. Focus QT! What do you want? Do that well.

Uggh, yeah. I'm excited (well, as excited as I can be as someone who writes server/web software these days) about some of the stuff mentioned, but this is off-putting. It has no place in a GUI-focused framework in my opinion.

Re: Technical Vision for Qt 6

#16
post #11
post #5

I hope QML/js crap will be abandoned, and C++ API will be prioritized.

C++ (and even Rust) is not the best language to build UIs. Even if your app heavily uses C/C++ to do heavy computations, "scripting" language will be preferable for "glue code". QML is not a crazy new idea, for example Tk used Tcl. And due to C++ API, Qt has poor language bindings, compared to GTK and many others with C API.

>C++ (and even Rust) is not the best language to build UIs.

Why? And why are scripting languages better?

Re: Technical Vision for Qt 6

#17
post #12

Thanks for supporting CMake and deprecating qmake. Not that cmake is the best tool ever, but having to deal with several build systems in the same project has always been a nightmare.

Oh yes, finally! That's such a good news! Learning, using, maintaining a qmake + cmake build setup for various platforms is really a pain in my (limited) experience.

Re: Technical Vision for Qt 6

#18
post #16
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C++ (and even Rust) is not the best language to build UIs. Even if your app heavily uses C/C++ to do heavy computations, "scripting" language will be preferable for "glue code". QML is not a crazy new idea, for example Tk used Tcl. And due to C++ API, Qt has poor language bindings, compared to GTK and many others with C API.

>C++ (and even Rust) is not the best language to build UIs. Why? And why are scripting languages better?

Developer productivity when building or redesigning a UI is often far more important than raw performance. There's usually no noticeable difference for a user whether the dialog they opened via a button click is built in highly optimized C++ or from an XML resource stream that is read, parsed, and the UI constructed on the fly by effectively interpreting the UI description.

It's okay to have expensive abstractions where a few milliseconds simply don't matter, but tasks can be done in minutes instead of hours. Declarative UI descriptions also have the benefit of being friendly to visual designer applications, so you need fewer build/run/test cycles (which are far from quick with C++).

Re: Technical Vision for Qt 6

#19
post #16
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C++ (and even Rust) is not the best language to build UIs. Even if your app heavily uses C/C++ to do heavy computations, "scripting" language will be preferable for "glue code". QML is not a crazy new idea, for example Tk used Tcl. And due to C++ API, Qt has poor language bindings, compared to GTK and many others with C API.

>C++ (and even Rust) is not the best language to build UIs. Why? And why are scripting languages better?

Memory management.

Re: Technical Vision for Qt 6

#20
post #16
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C++ (and even Rust) is not the best language to build UIs. Even if your app heavily uses C/C++ to do heavy computations, "scripting" language will be preferable for "glue code". QML is not a crazy new idea, for example Tk used Tcl. And due to C++ API, Qt has poor language bindings, compared to GTK and many others with C API.

>C++ (and even Rust) is not the best language to build UIs. Why? And why are scripting languages better?

The user interface tends to be a relatively dynamic part of the application.

Most of this is no longer as relevant in C++, can't speak for Rust. Programming languages have been converging for quite some time, C++ of today is more dynamic and convenient than any version that came before.

That being said, you can't beat dynamic languages for some tasks. Runtime code generation/eval being the most obvious I can think of. Any kind of extension/plugin architecture has everything to win from going all in with a full scripting language from my experience.

Post reply on HN