This may be off-topic but I'm wondering if there is any chance to see cross platform and cross language toolkits any time soon. Something based on WebAssembly so that we don't have to worry or bash about programming languages. Dart is cool but should we all learn Dart now?
Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development
11–20 of 92 posts
Re: Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development
#12Codename One ( https://www.codenameone.com/ ) runs circles around fluttr.
> 180M DEPLOYED APPS
This is quite a claim...
Edit: It's customary to include a disclaimer you work for the product your spruiking FYI.
Re: Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree, but I'd take it one step further actually. For me it doesn't cut it if the widgets just LOOK correct. I want them to BE correct. So, native widgets only please, no mimicking.
Not only that but if you reimplement the widgets then your always playing catch up when they change. It's better to just use the platform's 'primitive views' then constantly reinventing a wheel that looks similar. Someone else also mentioned accessibility which to me is a deal breaker if your app doesn't match a native apps accessibility.
Is there any such toolkit? What exactly is "platform's 'primitive views'"? Usually the "native" implementations are actually bindings to the native APIs which require heroic courage(a lot of manual tweaking), not to mention that you still need to catch up/update your bindings when these APIs change.
Re: Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development
#14Codename One ( https://www.codenameone.com/ ) runs circles around fluttr.
> 180M DEPLOYED APPS This is quite a claim... Edit: It's customary to include a disclaimer you work for the product your spruiking FYI.
Not as much for a product that's been around since 2012 and has a history that dates back to 2007
Re: Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 180M DEPLOYED APPS This is quite a claim... Edit: It's customary to include a disclaimer you work for the product your spruiking FYI.
Not as much for a product that's been around since 2012 and has a history that dates back to 2007
I guess your definition of 'app' is a lot more liberal than most other people's. iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile has a combined 7m apps on their respective stores.
Do you work for Codename One? Your HN history seems to suggest you're quite 'involved' with it.
Re: Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development
#16Codename One ( https://www.codenameone.com/ ) runs circles around fluttr.
>https://www.codenameone.com/gallery.html
The Codename One app gallery says otherwise.
Re: Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development
#17Nice write-up. I've been popping my head on over to their project every few months to check out their progress. Something that's pretty cool is that they're using Flutter to write Fuchsia's UI [0]. My favorite thing about Flutter is that it looks like they took some heavy inspiration from React. If anyone reading this isn't familiarized with React, or they don't really "get it", I'd highly suggest reading the Removin…
[disclaimer: I work on the Flutter project] One of the reasons we picked Dart was that is compiles to ARM (native) code. Dart has been pretty efficient for the project so far, but we haven't yet looked very deeply at battery life. Something to keep an eye on!
Do you use GC or RC on iOS?
Re: Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development
#18Codename One ( https://www.codenameone.com/ ) runs circles around fluttr.
> 180M DEPLOYED APPS This is quite a claim... Edit: It's customary to include a disclaimer you work for the product your spruiking FYI.
Maybe it refers to app downloads/installs? Wouldn't that count as deployed? :)
Re: Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development
#19Re: Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development
#20Definitely interested in seeing how Flutter progresses, IMO it has the optimal architecture for developing native, x-plat iOS/Android UI (https://flutter.io/technical-overview/):
- High perf Skia based UI for pixel perfect rendering and high-level Material design widgets
- React inspired, productive development model
- Fast dev/iteration cycles with hot reloading
- Productive and high-performance Dart language, natively compiled (AOT on iOS)
- Enable native interop with underlying iOS/Android APIs
- Actively developed by Google
Unfortunately I've run into a few issues with React Native that I've had to workaround which I've submitted repros to months ago but received no response from the React Native team except in the last couple of days where they've closed it without even looking at it because it didn't receive comments/activity from other devs. In the last 2 days React Native has closed 773 other issues because they consider it low priority:
https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues?q=label%3AIc...
This gives me low confidence that React Native will be a high quality platform with current low-priority issues lingering indefinitely so I welcome competition from Google with Flutter and will be anxiously looking forward to trying it out when it gets out of alpha.