Get on with Qt

tomy

Hello all,

It's nearly a year or more I'm away from Qt. In the past I started learning Qt by a book which was the only official Qt book at the time, named C++-GUI-Programming-with-Qt-4-2nd Edition and studied a few first chapters of it. My Qt Creator IDE was Qt 5.10.0 and now I suppose the latest version is far much higher.

Few questions:
1- How do I get back to Qt?
2- I'm interested in books. If I need to re-start by a book, will it yet be the above one please? Isn't there any "complete reference" on Qt but up-to-date?
3- What version of Qt shall I install on my Win 7 x64 machine, please? I'm going to use it for both Qt and QML.

Thanks so much in advance for your guidance.

sierdzio

@tomy said in Get in with Qt:

1- How do I get back to Qt?

Write some simple apps. Best way to learn any framework / language. Can be anything, really, but preferably something that is interesting or entertaining, to make it easier to stick to it and go through the inevitable hard parts.

2- I'm interested in books. If I need to re-start by a book, will it yet be the above one please? Isn't there any "complete reference" on Qt but up-to-date?

The cadaques book is popular, and it recently got funding from Qt Company and will be updated / expanded.

Other than that, the C++ GUI Programming is still relevant and good (but lacks any info on QML).

Then there are many more: https://wiki.qt.io/Books

3- What version of Qt shall I install on my Win 7 x64 machine, please? I'm going to use it for both Qt and QML.

Does not matter. You can still use your 5.10, or you can update to 5.11. But for learning it makes little difference - all the basic APIs are the same and work the same. New Qt versions only add new functionality and modules (and bug fixes), they don't change existing ones.

ODБOï

Hi, welcome back !
Qt related links collection

You can use online downloader and install Qt.
https://www.qt.io/download

Take for exemple Qt 5.11.2 (uncheck compilers you don't need (i checked only MinGW 5.3.0 32bit )) you can add/Delete auther versions/tools later with the
MaintenanceTool

tomy

Thank you both very much. I'm currently downloading qt-opensource-windows-x86-5.11.2.exe.

If I din't see some new books on the top of the books page such as, Mastering Qt 5 - Second Edition and Hands-On GUI Programming with C++ and Qt5, probably I would have no own choice about choosing the books except for C++-GUI-Programming-with-Qt-4-2nd Edition for Qt and cadaques book for QML, but seemingly those new books each supports both Qt and QML per se with a close look at (or possibly based on) C++. It seems great actually.

Now one simple question. Do you think it's better to read any of these new books (for both Qt and QML) instead of previous ones in terms of both being up-to-date and also a complete reference, please?

tomy

How to have the Mastering Qt 5: Create stunning cross-platform applications using C++ with Qt Widgets and QML with Qt Quick, 2nd Edition book or read it online? I can't buy that because of my local. :(
I'm very interested in it.

mrjj

@tomy
Hi
What about from here ?
https://www.packtpub.com/web-development/mastering-qt-5-second-edition

tomy

@mrjj
Hi :)

Unfortunately it isn't possible either. The reason is my country, Iran.
Here people have no credit cards like Master or Visa. Sanctions are another obstacle. Therefore, the majority of students rely on the PDF versions of western books. I tried to find its file but unfortunately it's not been published yet. :(

I'm looking at its google version although I don't know whether or not it's complete.

mrjj

@tomy
Hi
Ah, well its pretty new. have not seen any pdf version around at all. maybe in a few months.
Normally the google versions have pages missing.

tomy

@mrjj
Hi :)

Yeah, right. Apparently it's unfortunately impossible to read the book from this point I've decided to go on learning Qt.

Could it be better than C++-GUI-Programming-with-Qt-4-2nd Edition in terms of teaching newcomers Qt? I doubt it, although it's very old and it's bothering me sometimes.
I also have mastering-qt-5-guillaume-lazar.

Do you agree I stick to C++-GUI-Programming-with-Qt-4-2nd Edition once again for Qt and cadaques book for QML, please?

sierdzio

@tomy said in Get on with Qt:

Do you agree I stick to C++-GUI-Programming-with-Qt-4-2nd Edition once again for Qt and cadaques book for QML, please?

Sounds like a good plan.

I'd still strongly recommend doing some simple apps to train yourself. That always exposes all the gaps in memory, and it will make you look into Qt documentation, which is very good ad explaining stuff, too.

tomy

@sierdzio

look into Qt documentation

Unfortunately I haven't got a good memory of Documentations. Whenever I've visited some items regarding my problems there I've not reached a practical remedy and in return have been very confused by them. This has been asserted many times by many users but it's rather astonishing the suppliers of Documentation don't pay enough attention to that, seemingly.

I'd still strongly recommend doing some simple apps to train yourself. That always exposes all the gaps in memory,

The last page I read was Part II: Intermediate Qt (of the official book). The progress and the apps I personally was dealing with were fantastic indeed. The most prominent app on Qt was a spreadsheet program. I'm sure if you've read the book, which is quite likely, you remember that. I also tried to add some new features to the app, using my background C++ programming skills. On the other hand, for QML too, during reaching the section 5.3. Advanced Techniques, I worked on a personal game called Pingpong. I have the code for both files.

I suppose you agree if I try figuring both programs out thoroughly so that I can recall every aspect of the two (Qt & QML) to the extents I'd proceeded using the books. Am I right, please?

sierdzio

@tomy said in Get on with Qt:

This has been asserted many times by many users but it's rather astonishing the suppliers of Documentation don't pay enough attention to that, seemingly.

Hm, that's unusual. I'm using Qt documentation on a daily basis, and I also used it to learn Qt itself. It was really helpful, and sooo much better than documentation of other frameworks I've seen.

I've also read through (most) of GUI Programming with Qt 4 2nd Edition, it is indeed a very good book. But I read it back in the day when it wasn't as old as it is today :-)

I suppose you agree if I try figuring both programs out thoroughly so that I can recall every aspect of the two (Qt & QML) to the extents I'd proceeded using the books. Am I right, please?

Nice to hear you've done so much already, this is great.

Whether you're right - it's a personal thing, I guess, "best" is different for every body. When I speak of simple apps, I mean something new, not from a book - something where you have to figure everything out yourself. It does not need to be hard, even a simple comic reader (something like daily Garfield https://garfield.com/comic or xkcd - but an app, not a web page). The great benefit of such approach is that you can't "cheat" by peeking into the book to see what's next - you have to think about it yourself.

In my experience, the usual outcome is that I find that I know nothing :D All the things that seemed so easy in the book are suddenly very hard when I have to do the thinking myself. But, once I get through the initial fear, the learned value is huge.

tomy

@sierdzio

Thank you so much for dedicating time to help. :)

That's actually magic to me to learn Qt all on Documentations from scratch as a beginner, even though it's stylish, organised and up-to-date. I learnt (some of) English, C++ and also a little Qt and QML just using self-determination and self-study, so it's pretty ordinary for me to learn something from a reference without taking part in classes or having a tutor teach me that. Yet, I find Docs by no way easy to read, or so-called beginner friendly! I wish it were. That way I wouldn't have to read a good, but old book. :(

Do you think differently? OK, that's good news. Will you give me a sort of paths to go through? I've been given many web pages of Docs beforehand, of course, but after a little while I'd stop because they looked mysterious and ambiguous making it almost impossible to discover the next step that is quite relevant taking the needs of a newcomer all into account for learning properly, unlike a book. They are, in fact, by no means well-prepared for a starter of Qt to make progress and learn the matter correctly without a great deal of guidance. (According to me experience). Needless to say, they (Docs) may be better than those of other frameworks. It does make sense, yes.

Anyway, back to your nice suggestion. I must say I appreciate your trying to help me. Without the help of members here I couldn't afford to step forward and work out my issues. But something to know is that, neither the spreadsheet app (my version, of course), nor the Pingpong game is of their books totally! the game is of mine completely. Hhhhhh
Throughout my period for learning programming I've always tried to be rather innovative! :)

By the way, the web page is quite difficult to understand for me. :(
Still don't that agree to follow those two apps, please? :)

jsulm

@tomy I agree with @sierdzio : best way to learn programming and frameworks like Qt is "learning by doing". And you should consider to take a look at the examples Qt provides. Reading a book is good, but really not enough - you have to use Qt to write programs. Start with small and simple applications and then go forward to more complex applications. Qt documentation is really good, but you should have enough background in C++ and learn/understand Qt basics like signals/slots, child/parent hierarchies and similar - everything else works more or less in the same way then.

sierdzio

@tomy said in Get on with Qt:

Still don't that agree to follow those two apps, please? :)

That's not exactly what I said. If you want to go forward with spreadsheet and pingpong apps - by all means, do! And if you need any help, post on the forum and we will help.

J.Hilk

@tomy
Maybe look into coding challenges and try to complete them with qt and c++?

Also I suggest looking into the Videos of Voidrealm
Those helped me a lot when I started
@aha_1980 has a post here with usefull links hin YouTube channel is on of them.
Can‘t search and link against the post right now.
I‘m at #QtWs2018 right now and only have ne phone on me 🙈

sierdzio

@J.Hilk said in Get on with Qt:

@aha_1980 has a post here with usefull links hin YouTube channel is on of them.

Here is that link.

tomy

@J.Hilk
Hi. :)
You followed and helped me much on my Pingpong game at that time. I hope you remember.

Thanks for all of you dear guys. I appreciate your help completely. :)

J.Hilk

@tomy
Jep
I do remember, since then I discovered that there‘s a Pingpong game example in the official Qt Examples

Knowing that beforhand could have come in handy
🙈

tomy

@J.Hilk

Jep
I do remember, since then I discovered that there‘s a Pingpong game example in the official Qt Examples

Knowing that beforhand could have come in handy
🙈

Really? They might have been tracing me and afterwards copied what I was working on! It's cheating! :( Hhhhhh
:) :)