Ubuntu's Unity Written In Qt/QML For "Unity Next"

[dee.]

Stupidity is defined as trying the same thing over and over again and hoping for different results. If they kept doing what they had always been doing, then they have no hope of changing things and becoming a big player. It works in real life too.

Nope that's insanity not stupidity. Stupidity can manifest in lots of different ways. For example putting a cow in a centrifuge and expecting to get milkshake.

[dalingrin]

I don't get why do people have something against OOP? Is it something in the linux culture to hate modern programming practices? If it's not assembly you're not man enough or what?

While I do prefer Qt, I actually prefer plain old C. OOP is not necessarily always better despite what they teach in school these days. Some people are just a little more rigid in their style and can't stand OOP. I see uses for both styles. C++ is not the most elegant language and that seems to turn off a lot of people.

[coder543]

Nope that's insanity not stupidity. Stupidity can manifest in lots of different ways. For example putting a cow in a centrifuge and expecting to get milkshake.

{Stupidity, Insanity, Idiocy} all fit in that quote. The original may have been insanity, but the quote has been rewritten many, many times since then and it applies equally well to all three common forms. I see you're nitpicking though, which doesn't bode well for your argument.

[johnc]

Stupidity is defined as trying the same thing over and over again and hoping for different results. If they kept doing what they had always been doing, then they have no hope of changing things and becoming a big player. It works in real life too.

I could be completely wrong on this but I think Canonical would do better as a non-free OS. Charge maybe $10 for an initial desktop install and $5 for each update thereafter (or $5 / yr). Maybe have a free version that doesn't have support for new updates (i.e., non-security related updates to the PPAs).

The point would be to 1) generate revenue so they can do bigger things and 2) be more in tune w/ customer needs and desires (i.e., the opposite of GNOME).

[coder543]

I could be completely wrong on this but I think Canonical would do better as a non-free OS. Charge maybe $10 for an initial desktop install and $5 for each update thereafter (or $5 / yr). Maybe have a free version that doesn't have support for new updates (i.e., non-security related updates to the PPAs).

The point would be to 1) generate revenue so they can do bigger things and 2) be more in tune w/ customer needs and desires (i.e., the opposite of GNOME).

With the Software Center growing the way it is, they're far more likely to make a net profit off of running an app store than trying to bully their users into paying money. I agree they need to turn a profit, but I don't think that would work out with the community oriented the way it is.

[Luke_Wolf]

While I do prefer Qt, I actually prefer plain old C. OOP is not necessarily always better despite what they teach in school these days. Some people are just a little more rigid in their style and can't stand OOP. I see uses for both styles. C++ is not the most elegant language and that seems to turn off a lot of people.

Well I would say that it depends upon how you define the word "better", for me better is defined as code maintainability and ease of development in the long run, because that's where OOP tends to be an excellent because it's a natural extension of modular programming techniques. On the other paw it makes development for things that would otherwise be considered trivial take up a lot more development time initially. Let's take the example of an irc chat bot for instance, this is a kind of program that is usually considered trivial and so people don't give a damn about design principles when they write it, it's very quick and easy to write using non-OOP techniques while it takes actually quite a bit of design and planning to write it in an OOP fashion. So in the short run if you just want a bot that does one or a few things and don't really have any plans on extending it in the future then going non-OOP is fine and easy, however if you plan to have other people being able to use it and thus the problem of requiring extensibility that comes with it, it's far better to write OOP because it pays off in the long term, because once you have the infrastructure set up (which is relatively hard compared to non-OOP) it becomes rather trivial to extend whereas with non-OOP it can become more tricky.

So again it's a question of what's your situation and what is "Better" to you?

[Pawlerson]

It has been a wild ride with Ubuntu but I can always understand why they are doing what they are doing. Looking forward to it! Ubuntu is awesome.

That's very true. I love to hear Unity will be Qt based and I hope entire Ubuntu will be Qt based as well.

[Pawlerson]

Do these people have absolutely no direction? What the hell is going on there?

First they adapt GNOME 2 with a patchset from hell. Then they adopt GNOME3 elements, but write their own interface called Unity. Then they design a 2d look-alike called Unity 2D written using Qt. Then they drop it. Now they are rewriting Unity in QML.

It must be hell for their developers. Tomorrow someone might come in and say "Forget it boys, today we're rewriting everything in C# and FLTK". Who makes these decisions?

Maybe they believed Gtk will become more cross platform friendly, but it seems it failed.

[bakgwailo]

It's an estimate. Let's say that you can get a decent programmer for $40000 a year. That's 10 guys working for 2.5 years.

LOL, a decent developer for 40k a year?

[pingufunkybeat]

LOL, a decent developer for 40k a year?

Hey, it's crisis!