Hacker News Reader

Comment by torginus | Hacker News Reader

Why do you think Qt sucks? Other than the C++ focus, and basically the framework's decision to make you use everything they give you, which is controversial.

But apps made with Qt as an end product don't think suck. Qt is a fully featured and modern and high quality framework.

View on HN

I agree. Modern Qt is great - you get the performance of C++ and the ease of use (simpler than React!) of creating UIs in QML. I've built my note-taking app with a from scratch block editor[1] (like Notions's) with it. Now working on a mobile version[2]. Also working on a LLM client[3]. And working on a library that will simplify and help others build such apps easily - which is my solution to the original article author's problem.

[1] https://get-notes.com/

[2] https://rubymamistvalove.com/notes-mobile-swipe-stack-view.M...

[3] https://www.get-vox.com/

So, are you using QT for the mobile version as well?

Yes! I'm not using Qt's built-in components like StackView, but reimplementing them from scratch to better support swipe gestures, etc so they feel native-like.

Apps made with qt are mostly good but the engine sucks hard indeed. The programming is difficult, let's say compared to GTK, the SDK interface change totally every couple of years forcing apps to rewrite everything from scratch. Probably related to that, the documentation is splitted in an hundred places, often undecipherable between what is obsolete or for current version. Most parts of the framework are not really documented anyway, there is just automatically generated reference guide from the code that is missing most part that is needed. Like you have an option name, now what does it mean? What this option to be used for? It's hard to extend simply to bypass default behavior of the SDK that could be limiting. Let me not speak of the whole qml craziness and the qtuieditor... And the worse of it is that the license is (or was because I don't know recent evolution) totally shitty. Like free to use in that case and that case, and commercial in that case and that case. No one serious would like to build something on a private garden like that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com