I have recently gave a look at Qt after 5 years and it seems lots of things have changed for the better. You get the same hot reload like flutter when modifying GUI using QML (with V-Play you can even hot reload not just on simulator/emulator but on real device). Qt material theme has good look and feel. Sadly iOS theme is a little bit lacking.
C++ is probably not the most productive language to write business logic but on the bright side Qt Company recently started supporting Qt for python (Pyside2) - sadly not on mobile devices for now. However it seems you can use PyQT5 on mobiles nowadays. This would be the best of all worlds IMO: 3 highly popular languages with rich libraries, tools and ecosystem -> C++ for speed critical code, Javascript/QML for UI and layout, Python for business logic and as a glue.
Qt also gives me more confidence that is not going away anytime soon. It survived many years and acquisitions (Trolltech, Nokia, Digia) and have some big clients/users in automobile and open source (KDE).
I will closely follow Flutter thought as well as React Native. The latter one also it seems noticed what a pain is writing all those bridges and looks like they are working on it to fix it with new architecture.
Try to download it from qt.io. You will have to go through several screens saying "Are you sure you are able to comply with the LGPL? Wouldn't you rather get the commercial version for peace of mind?". If that isn't an implied threat, i don't know what is.
I don't like this but I also kinda understand why they do so. Many devs around me (I live in Korea) don't care about GPL/LGPL and it is important for Qt to let them know. Qt is commercial software anyway.
I don't approve of that tactic (in fact it drives me nuts), but I will say, Qt's license fees are quite reasonable, and then you get to link statically with no risk of violating the GPL.
Reasonable? It's about $500 / month / developer with additional royalties if you are shipping devices with Qt firmware. Sure I think Qt/QML is the best UI toolkit available but this crazy pricing is driving me towards any possible alternative. So I'm really hoping Flutter will take off (for desktop/embedded as well, not only mobile).
Note that Qt is GPL3 nowadays so you can't really ship embedded devices with Qt without paying.
Actually Trolltech was doing pretty well while selling Qt (which was full GPL at that time) for a fixed price per major version.
Then Nokia bought it and made it LGPL because they were planning on using it as the foundation for (some of) their mobile phones. Unfortunately, they couldn't decide which phones and went on a downwards slide.
Then Microsoft bought most of Nokia, and Qt got spun off into an enterprise thingy that takes their sales tactics from Oracle. Yes, I know the LGPL allows me to link dynamically for free, no, I don't trust Digia not to sue me for that.
Their pricing is also out of reach of anyone who's not in an industry that charges an arm and a leg due to regulation or niche.
Actually what I predict is the return to shareware/public domain models, where the free software is only the tip of the iceberg of the stack one actually needs for production code.
The trend is already visible with SaaS, Cloud, IoT,...
Ok I'll admit I'm not familiar with medical certification. I know that the so called Qt Safe Renderer for ISO26262 compliance is a bit of a joke at least.
I have seen two very big Qt projects being cancelled due to Android. Not the Android Auto app but native Android for IVI.
I don't see any indication of your vision for shareware. The trend is towards more and more software being licensed under licenses such as MIT.
C++ is probably not the most productive language to write business logic but on the bright side Qt Company recently started supporting Qt for python (Pyside2) - sadly not on mobile devices for now. However it seems you can use PyQT5 on mobiles nowadays. This would be the best of all worlds IMO: 3 highly popular languages with rich libraries, tools and ecosystem -> C++ for speed critical code, Javascript/QML for UI and layout, Python for business logic and as a glue.
Qt also gives me more confidence that is not going away anytime soon. It survived many years and acquisitions (Trolltech, Nokia, Digia) and have some big clients/users in automobile and open source (KDE).
I will closely follow Flutter thought as well as React Native. The latter one also it seems noticed what a pain is writing all those bridges and looks like they are working on it to fix it with new architecture.