Marketing. I used to work with Qt before 2000. In the beginning it was "Quasar Toolkit". Nobody cared and most people I knew - including some of the libraries developers - were fine with kju-tee.

I tried pronouncing it as "cute" for a few months before the inertia of everyone I work with calling it "que-tee" won out. I figure if you work on Qt rather than with Qt, saving the syllable is a big win.

Descriptivism vs prescriptivism, or something

My TA in college said it stood for Quite Terrible.

I've used it once since then on an embedded vehicle guidance system, and it seemed fine, once you learn all it's quirks.

For me it will always be "cutie". It is feels better to use as noun but is still somehow cute.