Live data from Hacker News

Nokia to developers: no Qt for Windows Phone development

engadget.com

41–50 of 69 posts

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

#41
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...

Cocoa is an incredible API. Much more pleasant to work with than Qt, hands down.

The runtime method dispatch of Objective-C (protocols!) makes it possible. Basically Objective-C gives you what Qt had to kludge in with qmake/moc. And it's still pretty fast!

When I see how little code I have to write to do something basic in Cocoa/Obj-C, and how well it turns out, any problems I have with syntax go out with the window.

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

#42

Learning moment: developers can't be wedded to a particular technology. Qt is fantastic but it's not the business. We can't invest ourselves in companies that are floundering and Nokia has been floundering for a number of years. If you find yourself investing your talents in a company that has multiple directional changes you need to consider the likelihood that the company will ever return to good times.

so by that logic:

- if you develop for Palm WebOS, you're relying on company whose main business is selling printer ink

- if you develop for Android, you're relying on company whose main business is selling ads

- if you develop for iOS, you're relying on company whose main business is selling audiovisual content and portable players for it

then Microsoft IS the only company that you can rely on, since it's primary business is selling software?

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

#43

Why didn't they choose Android?

Android is growing, but it's hard for carriers to differentiate themselves on top of it. The carrier UIs (other than Sense, perhaps) tend to be dislike versus stock Android, so that makes the only way to stand out on Android seem less attractive.

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

#44
post #42

Learning moment: developers can't be wedded to a particular technology. Qt is fantastic but it's not the business. We can't invest ourselves in companies that are floundering and Nokia has been floundering for a number of years. If you find yourself investing your talents in a company that has multiple directional changes you need to consider the likelihood that the company will ever return to good times.

so by that logic: - if you develop for Palm WebOS, you're relying on company whose main business is selling printer ink - if you develop for Android, you're relying on company whose main business is selling ads - if you develop for iOS, you're relying on company whose main business is selling audiovisual content and portable players for it then Microsoft IS the only company that you can rely on, since it's primary bu…

if you develop for Palm WebOS, you're relying on company whose main business is selling printer ink.

Yes, I would not develop for WebOS at this point.

if you develop for Android, you're relying on company whose main business is selling ads

Yes but you are helping them to sell ads.

if you develop for iOS, you're relying on company whose main business is selling audiovisual content and portable players for it

Yes, but you are adding value to their main product.

then Microsoft IS the only company that you can rely on, since it's primary business is selling software?

I don't think so. In markets where Microsoft does not have a monopoly it has been quite willing to change directions irregardless of its impact on developers. For example Silverlight. In markets where they do have a monopoly well they have a monopoly. You can make money serving that monopoly with consulting but you can't do much with independent products.

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

#45

Why didn't they choose Android?

SE, Samsung, Motorola, HTC are all heavily invested in Android and are miles ahead of Nokia. They can chose to run an outside lane in that race, or they can lead up Windows Phone 7. All people with WP7 devices are just token efforts, Dell, LG aren't major players like the aforementioned companies are, HTC owe everything they have to Android. Nokia can take WP7 and become the market leader, with Microsoft investing heavily and Nokia providing world class hardware they can provide a point of differentiation as opposed to becoming one of the crowd.

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

#46
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

Where was the success? If Nokias application development strategies were such a success they would not be doing this.

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

#47
post #8
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

As a Qt dev, neither option is appealing to me right now. Maybe when things calm down... By the way, the consensus in the Qt community is that this is bad news both for Qt and for the entire community.

And for the C++ community - not on mobiles.

What gui framework can we now use - MFC and Gnome?

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

#48
post #29
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?

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…

This is my experience too. I resisted learning Objective-C very much, and tried to avoid learning it via MacRuby. But once I actually resigned myself to really learning Objective-C, I really enjoyed it.

Like Ruby/Python it has a specific style that gives you a different perspective than other languages. I now find myself using ObjC style-isms in other languages.

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

#49
post #46
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

Where was the success? If Nokias application development strategies were such a success they would not be doing this.

The success was at Trolltech, before they got bought by Nokia.

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

#50
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is my experience too. I resisted learning Objective-C very much, and tried to avoid learning it via MacRuby. But once I actually resigned myself to really learning Objective-C, I really enjoyed it . Like Ruby/Python it has a specific style that gives you a different perspective than other languages. I now find myself using ObjC style-isms in other languages.

I think people find a language they like- maybe their first language, or one of the first couple- and then it is really hard to be interested in everything else. If you can't read it right off the bat, it "sucks".

This is how I felt about erlang. But the importance of concurrency was so high to me that I forced myself to learn the language, and now I love it.

A couple times learning a new language after being annoyed that it isn't like the language you already know, and I think people might recognize that every language has a reason for being....

Post reply on HN