I agree. But what I would prefer even more, would be a Maemo emulator running straight from Qt Creator. Anyway, there is a Brainstorm about this:

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=33371

http://maemo.org/community/brainstor..._and_maemo_sdk

I would also like to use Qt designer with Maemo styles, but don't know whether this is possible. I think the Qt designer is a nice tool for a beginner even though it easily drives your code to follow some kind of God Object pattern.

Hmmmm I'm torn now, lol. Having never ever looked at Python. Why would it be a better option? What can't it do that Qt can? etc?

I noticed that there is an app for Maemo 5 called PyGTKEditor does that only do the auto-indent, syntax highlight, etc. Or could I write something and run/test/compile it on the device?

Thanks for everyones replies btw. I'm currently downloading QT Creator and QT SDK (though it seems it's only for Symbian atm, what is hte difference between the Symbian and Maemo SDK - when it's out - I thought QT was meant to be multiplatform - or am I being think?) and will work through the Address Book tutorial to see what I can learn.

Python runs on top of interpreter, so no need to compile and learning curve is considered to be very low compared to C++. Python also enables using C libraries, and Qt bindings for Python do exist.

Nokia is not promoting well known PyQt bindings because of licensing issues, it's building its own bindings called PySide. My current knowledge is that latter is quite immature currently, so stick to PyQt. Licensing difference between these two is that PySide is LGPL, PyQt uses the heavy one.

I too was going to start programming a basic app in Qt, but got completely put off in Qt Creator a few weeks ago. Might jump back in.

+1 for PyQt/PySide

While I took some C++ classes in college, after years of inactivity I found it too daunting/frustrating trying to jump back into it, let alone wrap my head around the fact that Qt kind of bends the rules as far as C++ is concerned.

At that point I decided to learn Python and PyQt at the same time, which was surprisingly easy. The aforementioned lack of a compile cycle reduced the time it took to recover from simple errors, the syntax/indentation rules helped to keep my code clean and readable, and the documentation is among the best I've seen.

As for PyQt/PySide themselves, I find Qt to be the most powerful, attractive, and versatile toolkit of them all. GTK lacks native docking widgets and is an eye sore on Macs, and IMHO wxWidgets has too many widgets that feel incomplete -- where as Qt has less widgets, but each is pretty flexible. I also like the idea that I can write code once and run it presumably anywhere-- Linux, Mac, Windows, and even mobile platforms!

As for learning, I found Rapid GUI Programming with Python and Qt to be superb, but the online Qt and Python documentation may be enough for you. Be forewarned, the PyQt documentation is lacking in some places, citing C++ code instead of Python code in some places, though the differences are generally easy enough to sort out.

[shameless plug]

For an overview how this whole Python - Qt - Maemo thing works, take a look at the Summit PyQt presentation

There is a Python/Qt dev guide also on the way from yours truly, but writing docs is not nearly as fun as coding so it's coming along a bit slower than expected

[/shameless plug]

Is there an alternative to the QTCreator? I'm an eclipse junkie and (normally programming Java) started dooing some C and C++ with eclipse and it feels so much better than the QT-Creator, for coding. The QTCreator is great for the creation of the GUI aspects. Are there tools to integrate QT tighter into eclipse - are there QT-eclipsers out there?

There is a Qt plugin for Eclipse: http://qt.nokia.com/developer/eclipse-integration
Unfortunately, it is not available for Mac OS X.

In this post timoph posted a nice link to a very easy to follow book on Qt programming with C++. Definitely worth a read!

Jan