(Good reply Marco. And good luck with the book I think we need a good new book on Qt. ) If I may add my few cents to that: C++ programmers know there are many ways and styles to use C++. Try to find out the Qt way of doing things. Its a good way, and it saves you a lot of time. For example: Make sure you understand the implicitly shared data types, and the smart pointers. They save you a lot of effort. QML is definitely the way to go, IMO, not just for cross-platform. For databinding to the UI (QML), I like QProperties, but there's a lot of ceremonial code required for them. You need to find a good snippet, macro, code-completion thingy in your IDE to take care of all the typing you have to do for them. An alternative to QProperties, if you have dumb objects consider using QDeclartivePropertyMaps. They're a quick way of making simple objects that automatically bind to your QML. I have some other tips in this blog post/[^]. Good luck.