Hesitation between XCode and Qt [closed]

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I'm planning to develop a suite of application on various plateform using common module. I'm still hesitating between XCode and Qt. Here is my development plan:

1. I need to develop a product A soon for MacOSX with simple user interface
2. I want to develop a similar product (B) on iOS using common modules with simple user interface
3. I want to develop a new product (C) cross plateform (Windows/MacOSX/Linux) using common modules with complex user interface

Here are the list of stuff to know:

• Product A deals with graphics and video and needs strong performance (60fps not 58 or 59).
• I'm worrying about developing product A on XCode because XCode is * but I'm wondering if there is some performance issue if I'm not doing native code.
• I could eventually use Android for Product B but most of my client use iOS
• Qt is perfect for product C.

My question is shall I start with XCode and then pass to Qt or start with Qt directly? I'm a start up so times matter but product B can be delayed. I need to take this decision right now so I would like to hear from you fellows :-)

Answer 1

Probably I will be beaten for such answer, but that based on around 15 years experience in Qt development (first version I started to work was 1.33.. OMG).

I am developing Qt cross platform application for most of my professional life (Win32/Linux/MacOS/embedded). Developing cross platform applications suppose to follow certain style of coding, libraries/3rd party tools you are going to use additional to Qt, but main issue is what should be you prime development platforms and others will be just targets.

And regarding development platform (although I am mainly MacOSX and Linux user) I think VS is the best one. Probably is a subject for another topic, but I believe that Visual Studio is fastest C++ development platform available. QtCreator (although it a very nice tool) never will be so good integrated in OS kernel for debugging purposes as native MS product. Same applied for Mac and Linux. Everything you debugging is at the end just front-end to GDB.. if you need to develop fast its about everything, how fast your editor, how fast you switch from Debug Command till first breakpoint reached.. And sadly for me, within Unix world there is nothing so integrated for development as Visual Studio for WinXX..

I am using Mac's last 10-12 years.. My current development machine is MacBook Pro (late 2011) + 16Gb.. and development within Parallels VM + Win7 + VS2012 is much much much faster and efficient then XCode or QtCreator.

I know that GDB shipped with Mac is older then my grad mom car, and updating it to latest stable make QtCreator 10 times more responsive..., but still then you make 1000+ lines of code daily overall speed is just not good enough.

That's not because XCode is bad, but XCode is an Objective-C platform and I dont think it's a right way to try fit Qt in..

Important note: everything said above not applied to VS2010 which is pure MS mistake. It's slow and buggy environment which shouldn't be considered as a production environment for anything. My path was (although I has all major MS VS releases) 6.0 -> 2008 -> 2012..

Answer 2

You can still use XCode for MacOSX applications, it's alot easier and quicker to use since all of the tools and preset graphics are there already.