Saying that Qt is sane sounds kind of flame bait. If you need own custom preprocessor which is bolted on "some" compiler to be able to build your GUI.. well I prefer something else. Like GTK.
Hey! At least QT based desktops can run over a not accelerated or buggier graphics driver and I t will work without slugines or graphical artefacts. The last time that I try Gnome 3(on Debian 7), it keeps eating 90% of the characters in the screen !