Starter Edition Insights
29.08.2013
We asked Program Committee Member, Kévin Ottens what he thinks about this year’s Qt Developer Days Program. Here’s what he had to say:
In your opinion, what is the best part of the program?
Best part are the talks. They’re a good way to get the vibe of the community and see concerns it has to the coming year. Looking forward to this talk in particular QmlWeb – Running QtQuick Applications on the Web. It looks like a great technology to strengthen Qt position in the hybrid (web+rich client) applications field. So I’m really curious about these kinds of technologies.
What can we find in the program this year that we haven’t seen before?
This year the program is very different in focus than last year. Some of the
usual topics are still covered like OpenGL or in-depth exploration of Qt
modules, but from the submissions we got it was clear that there’s been a
shift in what the community is focused on.
For instance, we’re seeing the beginning of a surge in design related
submissions. We got three good quality submissions this year: one about design
trends, one about how to deal with design specs to see a successful
development, and one on using Qt for prototyping even if Qt isn’t used in the
final product. In my opinion it’s interesting to see those submissions as it
marks Qt as a mature technology which caters to more than just a developers
audience.
Also we’ve been surprised at the amount of proposals around tooling and
performance aspects. Again to me that’s a sign of maturity for Qt. It is well
established, and now we can really focus on getting the most of it performance
wise while trying to have the shortest possible time to market with a premium
tooling.
Last but not least, the C++ community is all about the C++11 standard these
days and the Qt community is no exception. That’s why we got a surprising
amount of C++11 related submissions. They all show new and exciting techniques to
support the work of Qt developers and make them even more productive.
What can the seasoned Qt Developer look forward to in this year’s schedule?
As I mentioned earlier we still have what I would call “classical” topics. I’m
personally really looking forward to some of the in-depth talks, the web
related ones as we’re seeing more and more hybrid applications or the talks
about Qt addons like KDE Frameworks 5, QtConnectivity or the Python 3
bindings. Of course it wouldn’t be a Qt conference without covering
portability and that’s addressed with talks focusing on the latest platforms
supported (namely Android, WinRT and iOS).
I hope you’ll find this year program as exciting as I do. It was nice to
assemble and I think we got it well balanced.