Hacker News Reader

Comment by Apocryphon | Hacker News Reader

I’m sure those are all great cross-platform solutions, and Qt in particular has been around forever and predates smartphones, but you never hear about high-profile app examples that use them. Unlike React Native, which has lost more high-profile companies that previously tried them than I’ve ever heard of any firm using Xamarin.

I wonder why is that. Doubtlessly you can make great apps with say NativeScript, or in Pascal with Delphi or Lazarus, but no one chooses those frameworks for some reason.

View on HN

> but you never hear about high-profile app examples that use them.

part of the reason for that is that a bunch of companies are paying TQTC for their tech stack not being known. But if you are looking for high-profile stuff using Qt, how about :

- the Tesla UI (https://twitter.com/qtproject/status/998902009922285568?lang...)

- and a lot of the modern in-vehicule infotainment stack actually

- LG screens (https://www.qt.io/lg-electronics-built-with-qt)

- Allegorithmic Substance stuff (https://blog.kitware.com/from-one-software-to-many-at-allego...)

- The Blizzard launcher (https://www.quora.com/What-front-end-and-back-end-technologi...)

- Amazon Lumberyard (and its grandfather CryEngine) : https://github.com/aws/lumberyard

- Microsoft Onedrive

- AMD Radeon panel (https://www.qt.io/amd-built-with-qt)

etc etc..

but generally speaking, it is not in the DNA of Qt-using companies to post nice articles on reddit / HN which has the pernicious effect of reducing its place in the dev mind marketshare and making it harder to hire...

There are plenty of high-profile Qt apps running on four wheels, and I bet with more users than all Flutter apps combined.

Sure, but are they running on smartphones?

> but you never hear about high-profile app examples that use them

The entire UI of Maya (Autodesk) has been implemented in Qt since Maya 2011. I guess that's about as "high-profile" as it gets.

Not that I'm a fan of Qt, IMHO it's a bloated mess. But that doesn't mean high-profile apps don't use it ;)

Can you explain what you mean about React Native? If I understand, you're saying more companies have tried and then abandoned React Native than Xamarin? Can you provide evidence of this please?

Sure. The major apps that were previously using React Native are AirBnB and Udacity, who are fairly prominent as far as startups go. As far as companies currently using the framework, they are respectably impressive:

https://facebook.github.io/react-native/showcase.html

I haven’t heard of anyone similar using Xamarin, not even Microsoft-related ventures. Maybe because they’re mostly not in the U.S.?

https://www.altexsoft.com/blog/mobile/13-apps-made-with-xama...

Lack of ecosystem. You'll find yourself having to write ports/bindings/however these are called on your own.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com