Enrolling in Qt University
Everywhere you look there are so-called corporate, product, and technology wars. There's Linux versus Windows, AMD versus Intel, cable versus DSL, Microsoft versus the universe, and so on. One of the most interesting wars is the one between the two popular, open source, graphical desktop environments, KDE and GNOME. If I had to bet on the outcome of that particular battle, I'd put my money on KDE. Now I happen to prefer KDE to GNOME even more than ever now that KDE 2.1 is out the door. But that has little to do with my forecast. What I'm really betting on is the Trolltech GUI programming toolkit, Qt, upon which KDE is based. (GNOME is based upon GTK, aka the Gimp Toolkit).
I could provide a number of technical arguments in favor of Qt over GTK, though I've also heard some good technical arguments that favor GNOME over KDE. Regardless of which side you take, neither argument really matters very much as far as my prognosis is concerned. History demonstrates clearly that technology is usually only a minor ingredient in the recipe for success.
Qt has three things going for it that are more important than pure technology: a foot in the door of major universities, a promising start in embedded systems, and good portability (you can compile Qt applications to run on Windows and there are plans for portability to other systems).
Addressing the first point, Trolltech is about to announce a program called Qt University. Right now universities have to pay license fees to teach Qt on Windows. The only way a computer science department could give students free hands-on experience with Qt was to use Linux, because there was no free edition of Qt for Windows. Now, through the Qt University education program, Trolltech is planning to give away free site licenses for the Windows version of Qt to computer science departments.
Obviously, this is a win-win arrangement for Trolltech and the universities that choose to participate. Universities will get freebie toolkits for the Windows platform and Trolltech will get thousands more developers that will doubtlessly know and love Qt.
Geeks love Qt, but if Qt were overly geekish, the plan might not work. Fortunately, one reason Qt is likely to take off in computer science departments is that there are friendly professional-quality development tools for Qt and KDE. Right now Kdevelop (see Resources for a link) is one of my favorite development tools for Qt and KDE, but KDE Studio (see Resources for a link) is quickly wooing me away. There is a version of KDE Studio that is free for the download, but you can also purchase the more comprehensive KDE Studio
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