Qt programming: More productive in Python or C++?

Question

Trying to dive into Qt big time but haven't done a large project with it yet. Currently using Python, but I've been thinking -- which is really the better language to use in terms of programmer productivity?

In most comparisons between the languages, Python is the obvious answer, because you don't have to mess with memory management and all that.

However, with Qt I'm not so sure. It provides enough added features to C++ that (from what I can tell) a line of Python code is roughly equal to a line of C++ code most of the time (excluding some additional things like class definitions and structure components). Qt does nearly all the memory management for you as long as you stick with its classes, and provides equivalents to the nice containers you would find in Python.

I've always preferred statically typed languages, but have gotten on the Python bandwagon for various reasons. If programmer productivity is similar with C++, however, I may jump back that way for its other benefits -- more efficient code and fewer dependencies for users to install.

Thoughts?

Answer 1

If one or the other, I'd actually suggest Python in spite of being a C++ enthusiast. With Python code you don't have to bother with the MOC, portability, build times, etc. I find it to be much less of a pain to deal with widgets this way (much greater productivity). You can still invoke C++ code from Python in cases where you need the added performance.

If you do use a combination, consider extending Python rather than embedding it. Python is generally better suited to embed C/C++ code than to be embedded into a C/C++ system. It also tends to make more sense that way as applications are generally composed of far more mundane, non-performance critical code than performance-critical code, so writing your application primarily as a python application with C/C++ functions attached to it fits that kind of system design better.

Answer 2

With Python you don't have to build your project. That's enough of a time saver I guess. And Pyqt bindings are awesome. I'm definitely more efficient with pyqt than with qt/C++.

Answer 3

Whether you use python or C++ depends more on the application you are building and not so much on Qt. If you are building an application which is resource heavy and needs lots of resources like CPU and memory, C++ would be a better bet. On the other hand, if you application is more UI driven, python provides lot of other benefits in terms of rapid development and rich libraries.

Answer 4

My Opinion (having tried out C++ and Python in general and specifically in Qt case) is Python always wins in 'programmer productivity' and 'peace of mind' wise. PyQt represent Qt very well and hence question doesn't remain of "Qt with Python" or "Qt with C++", in general python is more productive unless off-course you need speed or something which isn't available in python.

Best way for you to arrive at the answer would be to write a simple project first in C++ and then same project in python and compare, but that could be biased towards python as after coding the project once you may find it easy in Python, so try another project too and first do it in Python and then in C++.