[mnafees]

I wrote Qt C++ for 7 years as an open source contributor to KDE. This reminds me of QtWidgets’ .ui files—custom XML files following a specific schema. Later, Qt introduced QML, which I personally found unintuitive, and over time I lost interest in Qt altogether. That said, I still think XML for UI definitions makes sense, and it’s understandable that some larger environments continue to use it.

[hermitcrab]

Some of us are still programming in Qt using just C++ and .ui files. Never bothered to switch to QML. I wasn't convinced there were enough advantages to make it worth the effort.

[jdranczewski]

I've been writing a UI framework for experiment automation and small tools using Qt Widgets with Python bindings (https://puzzlepiece.readthedocs.io) and it still works pretty well! I like the API, and it being immediately cross-platform is very useful. It does lack looks on Windows a little imo, but to be honest I'm not opposed to the utilitarian way the apps end up looking.

[hermitcrab]

The 'Fusion' style on Windows looks a bit slicker than the base Windows style IMO.

[happyweasel]

I always wanted to check out https://qskinny.github.io/ it looks compelling and sticks to c++

[mnafees]

Hah, that is awesome. How does Qt fare these days in the non-Linux world though?

[dekhn]

This weekend I asked Gemini Pro to create a Python Qt app (a serial file sender- something you'd use to send g-code files to a CNC machine or laser cutter). I did most of the dev on Windows but the app will run exactly the same on all 3 main platforms. Eventually I asked Gemini to extract the UI to its own .ui file, which it did. The resulting app worked better than the previous one I had coded myself (handling some various race conditions and other challenging issues much more quickly than me).

If I wanted, I coudl ask gemini to port the app to C++. (Gemini isn't the point here- that's just speeding up what I would have done on my own).

[hermitcrab]

Good on Windows. Pretty good on Mac, but never quite looks 100%. Not sure how well Qt is going to cope with macOS 26 style transparency though.

[mroche]

Nearly every widely-used commercial or in-house tool in the VFX and Animation sector of M&E are Qt based. The main difference compared to tradition desktop developers is the general attitude of design; the industry takes the stance of providing the same application experience across platforms, rather than trying to adhere to each platforms' UI/UX guidelines.

Examples: Autodesk Maya, 3DS Max, Mudbox Foundry Nuke, Mari, Katana SideFX Houdini Substance Painter, Designer

[mentos]

I believe the Blizzard game launcher uses QT?

Blizzard to me has always had the best execution of UI in their software/games.

Curious if there are any Qt projects you’d single out as being great?

[mnafees]

I didn't know Blizzard uses Qt! In terms of some good Qt apps, VirtualBox remains my favorite.

[badsectoracula]

AFAIK GOG Galaxy also uses Qt. In a game dev studio i worked on a few years ago the engine's editor was also written in Qt.

[felipefar]

The Telegram desktop app also uses Qt Widgets.

[bmn__]

XMLUI has 3%-4% of the features in designer. They have to catch up with 30 years first until it's worth a second look.

[n3storm]

And wxwidgets and glade files...