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0 pointsthrowaway20373y ago0 comments

All this sounds great from the perspective of retail shrink wrap software. Today, the major use cases for Qt on the desktop are in-house corporate software. And, no one cares about "uncanny valley". Only HN and online nerds care about that stuff. Average, non-technical, corporate users care about functions, not form. Hell, they are happy with a VBA app! Also, lots of in-car and in-seat (aeroplane) entertainment systems are built in Qt.

    If you want a "Premium" native look and feel

Who is doing this in 2023? No one outside my examples above.

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5 comments · 2 top-level

whstl3y ago· 3 in thread

There's a reason in-house corporate software started becoming web based 15-or-so years ago: web is cheaper, easier to hire for, faster to develop and deploy, doesn't require installation or updates, easier to troubleshoot, doesn't need special pipes for communicating with the server (yeah I remember the days of DCOM, CORBA, WCF and other weird protocols instead of HTTP).

It is things like Qt that only HN and online nerds care about.

Don't get me wrong: I really like well made native apps and I think they're great. But Qt apps are almost never as great as software made with native toolkits directly.

throwaway2037OP3y ago

No, long term, web apps are more expensive because the front end needs to be completely re-written ever few years. A desktop app written in Qt can be kept running for a decade with very little work. (This assumes no Qt library upgrades, which for in-house apps, are most unnecessary.)

The primary advantage of web apps is "zero install", which is a major point of friction at large corps.

jpc03y ago

> ...needs to be completely re-written ever few years.

No it doesn't, the HTML spec hasn't changed, whereas QT has. The issue is how the webapps were built in the first place. You don't need Nextjs and all it's friends to post a form to a backend once an hour but somehow that is becoming the standard approach...

whstl3y ago

“because the front end needs to be completely re-written ever few years”

Citation needed. I’m currently working in a jQuery+Coffeescript app that still works like a charm.

Like the sibling post says, Qt itself had breaking changes that HTML/JS/CSS didn’t.

whstl3y ago

> Who is doing this in 2023? No one outside my examples above.

For macOS check apps made by Apple (Logic, Final Cut), Panic, Rogue Amoeba, or apps like Pixelmator, Affinity, Pixelmator, TablePlus, Tower, Dash... there's more.

There's even open source ones like IINA providing a premium look+feel.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

5 comments · 2 top-level

whstl3y ago· 3 in thread

It is things like Qt that only HN and online nerds care about.

Don't get me wrong: I really like well made native apps and I think they're great. But Qt apps are almost never as great as software made with native toolkits directly.

throwaway2037OP3y ago

The primary advantage of web apps is "zero install", which is a major point of friction at large corps.

jpc03y ago

> ...needs to be completely re-written ever few years.

whstl3y ago

“because the front end needs to be completely re-written ever few years”

Citation needed. I’m currently working in a jQuery+Coffeescript app that still works like a charm.

Like the sibling post says, Qt itself had breaking changes that HTML/JS/CSS didn’t.

whstl3y ago

> Who is doing this in 2023? No one outside my examples above.

For macOS check apps made by Apple (Logic, Final Cut), Panic, Rogue Amoeba, or apps like Pixelmator, Affinity, Pixelmator, TablePlus, Tower, Dash... there's more.

There's even open source ones like IINA providing a premium look+feel.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse