Is the qt4 interface for VLC on the mac so horrible that they are better off starting over from scratch?

They're doing what programmers like doing best. Create their own product.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

In hindsight, I think it's pretty safe to say that keeping with the old code would never have led to anything like the modern Firefox.

It's jut not Mac. Stands out like a sore thumb.

I wonder if that really matters for a media player. Media players really require UI's quite far removed from the usual routine of "File Edit View Search Tools" anyway. For example in Gnome, Totem blends in seemlessly with the desktop... but feels like a text editor that's been modified to be a media player. VLC clashes a bit with the HID and is as overly-busy as any KDE app. But for a media player, I think that's probably appropriate.

rather than a slow and buggy product, not ready for prime time (but with perpetual "awesome nightlies!")

Exaggerated? That's understating the case a bit.... how about *dead wrong*!?

"rather than a slow and buggy product, not ready for prime time (but with perpetual "awesome nightlies!")

Is the qt4 interface for VLC on the mac so horrible that they are better off starting over from scratch?

"Is the qt4 interface for VLC on the mac so horrible that they are better off starting over from scratch?

I speak as a developer who, when he has something new to build, goes out and finds somebody who has already done it, download the code and discover that it’s an ugly, unmaintainable, over-engineered mess that’s more effort to redesign and repurpose than to simply start from scratch.

[...] I wrote my own. I throw away and write my ownâ€"new and betterâ€"tool for almost every third party piece of code I come across.

"I speak as a developer who, when he has something new to build, goes out and finds somebody who has already done it, download the code and discover that it’s an ugly, unmaintainable, over-engineered mess that’s more effort to redesign and repurpose than to simply start from scratch.

[...] I wrote my own. I throw away and write my ownâ€"new and betterâ€"tool for almost every third party piece of code I come across.

I find this to be a gross mis-characterization of what things were really like. I've been using Firefox since it was Phoenix and started somewhere around the .5 series.

That article of Joel's is often quoted, and indeed is probably accurate for most projects. But consider it's central example - the abandonment of the old Netscape code in favour of what eventually became Firefox.

Is the qt4 interface for VLC on the mac so horrible that they are better off starting over from scratch?

This will happen, and will keep on happening, and is why even with QT4 so well developed, developers will *still* opt to roll their ownâ€"because it would take too much effort to change the fundamental design of QT4 than it would be to just write something new.

I _hate_ Qt4 apps on OS X. They are awful, unwieldy pieces of crap. They look worse than an amateur OS X programmer starting out with their first app.

The reason why Firefox had to take a completely new direction was because of that disastrous decision by Netscape over version 6, or what should have been version 5. That pretty much finished them and the browser off in that incarnation to the point where Mozilla had no real choice.

I speak as a developer who, when he has something new to build, goes out and finds somebody who has already done it, download the code and discover that it’s an ugly, unmaintainable, over-engineered mess that’s more effort to redesign and repurpose than to simply start from scratch.

It depends what you are doing and why you are doing it. If you are doing it for fun, or it is some sort of project where you have your own skin in the game, then I fully agree with you. If you are getting paid to write code, typically it is to get a job done, not to create a masterpiece.

Note to people who seem a bit confused: Firefox was not a rewrite of Mozilla. It was a strip-down and streamlining of Mozilla. The stupid mistake was in throwing out so much of Netscape's mature and tested code back in 1998 and 1999... long before Phoenix/Firefox.

It was mature and tested but struggled to support CSS. Even the earliest buggiest betas of Mozilla and Netscape 6 had superior CSS support to IE6. The rendering engine was solid, most of the problems came with the decision to render the UI with XUL rather that sticking the new rendering engine in a more conservative UI.

Sure, you can get something else to run, but it'll suck in comparison.

In hindsight, I think it's pretty safe to say that keeping with the old code would never have led to anything like the modern Firefox. And without Firefox kick-starting competition between browsers, I don't see that we'd have ended up with anything like the modern Web - we might, god forbid, be stuck with IE6 as the pinnacle of browser design...

"Sure, you can get something else to run, but it'll suck in comparison.

How ironic that 'that other platform' thats kicking all of our asses is controlled by a company that, for whatever reason (by accident or incompetence, you decide), never did get around to establishing a deep, consistent, universal look-act-n-feel (even this company's own apps don't all look/behave the same) and thus their platform never really fell into this elitism trap...

and that is probably part of the reason *why* they are kicking our asses.

You can talk about nicely written code etc etc, but delivering something which works on time is what gets the bills paid. Sometimes you gotta bodge and hack to get stuff to work when time limits are tight.

Enjoy all the stress

And there's a difference between someone who prefers native app (while still being willing to put up with non-native if necessary), and someone who just automatically turns their nose up at any non-native app. The former is a reasonable position, the latter is the very definition of putting form over function.

That's how I read Bryan's post (as an example of the former sentiment),

I don't really see where you're getting the platform elitism thing from.

That's a bit of a false dichotomy. For one, there's no shortage of GUI visual inconsistencies to be found on OS X (even among Apple's apps).

I doubt Microsoft's policies/philosophies on application visuals has much to do with it.

If a lack of visual standards makes a platform a success, then Java GUI apps should have overtaken everyone else years ago.

"And there's a difference between someone who prefers native app (while still being willing to put up with non-native if necessary), and someone who just automatically turns their nose up at any non-native app. The former is a reasonable position, the latter is the very definition of putting form over function.

That's how I read Bryan's post (as an example of the former sentiment),

"I don't really see where you're getting the platform elitism thing from.

"That's a bit of a false dichotomy. For one, there's no shortage of GUI visual inconsistencies to be found on OS X (even among Apple's apps).

"I doubt Microsoft's policies/philosophies on application visuals has much to do with it.

"If a lack of visual standards makes a platform a success, then Java GUI apps should have overtaken everyone else years ago.

The mistake of deciding to rewrite from scratch was made long before Netscape 6.