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Nokia to developers: no Qt for Windows Phone development

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21–30 of 69 posts

Re: Nokia to developers: no Qt for Windows Phone development

#21
post #20

Isn't Qt covered under GPL? Could someone else run with it for their development platform? Or would there be patent problems etc?

I think Nokia even relicensed it under LGPL (http://qt.nokia.com/products/licensing). And Qt is made by a Norwegian company, and as far as I know at least the Norwegian patent office doesn't grant software patents. They might have patented it in other countries, though.

Makes me happy. Would be sad if a nice (commercial with GPL option) product had ended up as unusable for everything but GPL-ed applications.

Re: Nokia to developers: no Qt for Windows Phone development

#22
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not know that :) So if you can use C++ on iOS, why the hell are people using the horror that is Objective-C?

Because Objective-C is far from being an horror language, but perhaps your impression (and so mine) is conditioned by your past experience with your languages of choice.

I'm probably being unfair, I've never actually done any development in Objective-C (I have in C++), so I'm going on how it "looks" from the code I've seen, I just find it very unreadable. But in fairness I haven't tried to get into it, and I'm probably biased toward the C#/Java style syntax...

Re: Nokia to developers: no Qt for Windows Phone development

#23
post #18

Well, this shows just how good are these buyouts by big corporations: 1. create great product 2. get people on board 3. success 4. get bought by BigCo 5. ??? 6. get crushed when BigCo focuses on something else

So, this is ok if the payout in 4. is sufficient compensation for the existence and effort you put into the company.

If, 4. is a desperation move, and you're hoping bigco is going to help your company reach heights you're unable to reach on your own, then you're rolling the dice.

I've had exactly this experience. The founders expected BigCo to take them to new heights, but eventually bigco dismantled the company piece by piece.

Literally the economic winds changed slightly, success wasn't immediate and so the BigCo CEO got all excited and went off chasing something new and shiny.

Re: Nokia to developers: no Qt for Windows Phone development

#24
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not know that :) So if you can use C++ on iOS, why the hell are people using the horror that is Objective-C?

On iOS C++ is generally only used when you don't need to make much use of the Cocoa Touch APIs. If you do, you will be using the hybrid 'Objective-C++' language, and you will still need to use some Objective-C. See this Stackoverflow answer: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3804219/what-is-the-diffe... Basically, it's probably easier and less messy to just learn Obj-C.

Actually .. Toll-free bridging between Obj-C and C++ objects makes it very, very easy to mix the use of objects throughout your codebase. About the only 'difficult' thing about doing this is to remember that your c++ source files have to have the ".m" prefix instead of ".cpp" .. :)

Re: Nokia to developers: no Qt for Windows Phone development

#25
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Objective-C is far from being an horror language, but perhaps your impression (and so mine) is conditioned by your past experience with your languages of choice.

I'm probably being unfair, I've never actually done any development in Objective-C (I have in C++), so I'm going on how it "looks" from the code I've seen, I just find it very unreadable. But in fairness I haven't tried to get into it, and I'm probably biased toward the C#/Java style syntax...

Your initial reaction to Obj-C is not at all uncommon amongst developers used to C++/Java/C#. My impression is that most of them quite like it once they get past the novelty.

Re: Nokia to developers: no Qt for Windows Phone development

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cant imagine anyone switching to Silverlight now, its already dying, as MS have admitted, they only cant kill it before they release HTML5 for WP7 later this year.

Silverlight on the web is dead, but MS is pushing it hard as a local app platform, and for business applications. In those segments, it's far from dead.

I can see Silverlight perhaps finding a niche in internal application development - but that's a pretty big come down from the original goals of the technology (i.e. a Flash killer). So wouldn't that make Silverlight, if not dead, severely wounded?

Re: Nokia to developers: no Qt for Windows Phone development

#27
post #17

I just hope Qt doesn't die.

I don't hope so either. Although GTK is starting to look pretty nice with version 3, I've always preferred QT from both a a programming and UI perspective.

Nokia seems truely cluesless.. every day, another strategy

- Maemo was GTK based

- Nokia bought TrollTech

- Maemo was said to be ported to QT

- Maemo was abandoned for Meego

- Now they're giving up Meego, and going to MS...

sigh

Re: Nokia to developers: no Qt for Windows Phone development

#28
post #2

So, what will happen? 1) Qt c++ devs will invest in Visual Studio and learn silverlight/XNA or 2) Qt c++ devs simply switch to c++ development for iOS + Android

How about all the .Net developers out there? I'm one. Although I don't have time right now, from now on Windows on Nokia platform will be the native choice for me when I have time to play with it.

It's even better than MS + HTC or something. Being on Nokia has better visibility, especially in the eastern side of the world.

For Nokia, some Qt guys making the change + .Net ppl can't be smaller than than the current developer base.

Re: Nokia to developers: no Qt for Windows Phone development

#29
post #12
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android now offers the possibility to create entire apps in C++ using the NDK. On iOS you can also use C++.

I did not know that :) So if you can use C++ on iOS, why the hell are people using the horror that is Objective-C?

Back when Java was my favorite language, I was once challenged to spend an hour looking at Objective-C and see if I didn't grok it in that time period, and then a week working with Cocoa-- and was promised that I'd love it if I did.

They were right.

I still believe Objective-C, paired with Cocoa is far and away the best programming language and environment out there. I've worked on the internals of windows, lots of C++, lots of Java (used to be my favorite), done .net, done a bunch of scripting languages, python, perl, lingo and actionscript, and lisp and erlang.

On the server it should be erlang (for serious code, for less serious use your favorite script)... and on desktop and mobile, Objective-C and Cocoa are really quite spectacular.

Re: Nokia to developers: no Qt for Windows Phone development

#30
post #28
post #2

So, what will happen? 1) Qt c++ devs will invest in Visual Studio and learn silverlight/XNA or 2) Qt c++ devs simply switch to c++ development for iOS + Android

How about all the .Net developers out there? I'm one. Although I don't have time right now, from now on Windows on Nokia platform will be the native choice for me when I have time to play with it. It's even better than MS + HTC or something. Being on Nokia has better visibility, especially in the eastern side of the world. For Nokia, some Qt guys making the change + .Net ppl can't be smaller than than the current dev…

nokia is virtually non existent in korea, pulled out of japan, and is getting eaten alive in Indonesia by chinese phones, malaysia is building a wimax/android 4g ecosystem. and iphones are _everywhere_.

but nokia is huge, i get your point.

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