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one difference is that windows/mac api's are already well developed and qt just adds multi-platform to the mix. Haiku's api is very primitive compared to QT and people may use QT for those features rather than wait for a more robust haiku api.

I agree. The timing seems unfortunate to me.

[quote="boldingd"]
"Stacking up software" isn't a bad thing. The problem with Linux is that the development of the various sub-systems isn't being coordinated, which is leading to a patchwork of imperfect integration and competition between multiple solutions to the same problem.
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The problems you mention are not the only ones, there's also the problem of there being too much OS portability cruft. For ex. if I use Linux, I want a desktop environment that is custom made for Linux, not one full of portability cruft, abstraction layers so it can run on every platform (that I don't care about) in existence. That's also part of the "stacking up software" problem.

[quote="boldingd"]
That's just fear-mongering. You'll notice that Qt hasn't injured Mac OS X or Windows development, even tho it's available for those platforms. Apps that target Haiku will still be written using Haiku's native toolkits, in all likelyhood; all the availability of Qt is going to do is make it easy to make existing multiplatform apps that already use Qt available for Haiku, too. And make it easier for developers to move to Haiku. Neither of which are bad things. [/quote]

The Linux desktop experience is totally *ruined* because of this, because of portability cruft, competing components, bad integration, incoherent mess etc... Also on Linux you have to learn "10,000" different styles of APIs to get something done as far as programming which is really substandard.

The problems you mention are not the only ones, there's also the problem of there being too much OS portability cruft. For ex. if I use Linux, I want a desktop environment that is custom made for Linux, not one full of portability cruft, abstraction layers so it can run on every platform (that I don't care about) in existence. That's also part of the "stacking up software" problem.
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People on this site are exagerating the problems with the Linux desktop and software stack. Sure, problems exist, but they're not nearly so extreme as people are making them out to be. I use Linux on a daily basis on two computers, I get along just fine with it, and the UI actually looks pretty damned good (well, on the Ubuntu one; the other's running RHEL4, so... old Gnome).
Another point is that "portability cruft" is only a bad thing if it's A) actually cruft - i.e. poorly written and B) you're not trying to do anything with the software that's in any way unusual. I'm not really even sure what you're talking about, as I can't really think of a good example of something in the desktop stack that's nothing but an unstable portability hack -- but, conceding the point that they do exist, one of the nice things about Linux is that you can do weird stuff with it, like run it off a live CD, or have three different Linux installs (and/or BSD installs, or whatever else) share the same /home/ partition. Or, move to a completely different processor platform and have most of your software available again with a recompile. Stuff that people who use OS's that don't have "portability cruft" might never even think to try.

The point being, you should stop running around screaming "HAIKU WILL BECOME LAYERED LIKE BORKENED LI-NUX!" like it's the end of the world. Linux (distributions) is (are) not suffering nearly so much for their layered design as you're acting like they are.



The Linux desktop experience is totally *ruined* because of this, because of portability cruft, competing components, bad integration, incoherent mess etc...
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The Linux desktop experience, while certainly not the best it could possibly be, is also far from "ruined." See above.



I'm not an excellent programmer, or even a particularly good programmer, and again, I'm managing to get along pretty well. GTK actually offers a really nice, deep C API. The POSIX interface is, for the most part, quite approachable -- at least, in so far as I've used it. And if you'd like to talk about extreme programmer productivity... PERL.

In short: programming on Linux is not nearly so unpleasant as you're trying to make it sound -- at least, not for the year I've spent doing it; any of the much more experienced and knowledgeable people here are welcome to contradict me. Again, you're trying to make a cataclysm out of a success just so you can scare people into feeling bad about something you don't want to happen.

PS:
I do not think the Quote tag works like you think it does.

Increasingly, you only need to learn Qt (which is ironically the topic at hand).