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Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development

sethlopez.me

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Re: Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development

#41

Post by johnfn »

gman83 wrote: post #40
johnfn wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally, I think it makes sense to differentiate between something which takes one child and something which takes an array of children. Could you please explain this - it doesn't make sense to me. To me it seems clearly and unambiguously true that a single child is not a special case vs multiple children, but rather just a list of children that is 1 long. I can't think of any cases where handling both as an arr…

Take the Container class in Flutter, it can only take a single Widget as a child. Having to write a list of children that is 1 long every time I use a container doesn't make sense to me, and to me seems confusing as it will lead to people trying to add more items. I don't know, that's my opinion, maybe I'm wrong :)

Hmm, perhaps it's me not understanding the flutter paradigm, but if something only accepted a single child, I would stop calling it a child and start calling it a more precise name. Like perhaps contents in the case of a container?

Re: Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development

#42

Post by tomatsu »

svdev wrote: post #29

I had high hopes for flutter but gave up after a while. It feels like their design meetings were spent arguing about grammar and splitting hairs, rather than thinking about ergonomics and how people would use it. In Flutter, everything is a nested pile of objects with too many APIs to keep track of. Take this example: https://github.com/flutter/flutter/blob/master/examples/stoc... Why do I need to care if something t…

> Why do I need to care if something takes a `child: (single object)` argument or a `children: [LIST of objects]`?

The IDE tells you what's needed and the latest version of the plugin automatically adds a list literal and places the cursor inside it:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/flutter-dev/LXafJQqS...

Personally, I think it makes sense to differentiate between exactly one and zero or more.

> Why do I need to memorize which objects take which styling arguments?

The IDE should do that for you.

Re: Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development

#43

Post by on_and_off »

mythz wrote: post #20

Definitely 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, nat…

I have very low hopes for React Native too.

It is sad but the name Facebook on any engineering project makes me think twice before considering adopting it.

Flutter looks like it could be really interesting framework.

Especially since it should allow to write apps for iOS, Android AND Fuchsia.

I am quite happy with kotlin on Android & Swift on iOS (and their respective native frameworks) but if Google publishes Fuchsia as Android's replacement with Flutter as its app framework, it could be an interesting switch :

Rewrite your app in Fuchsia. It is going to take a while of course BUT you are going to be able to publish the new on both Android & Fuchsia (in order to still support 'legacy' for a while)

Re: Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development

#44

Post by yrio »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #38

>Though Flutter doesn’t use the native UI widgets, it’s a cross-platform framework and has widgets for both Android and iOS. [...] On iOS, the biggest thing that stuck out to me was the scrolling. It didn’t quite feel right because of the physics, but I’m sure that would just require a little tweaking by the Flutter team. Count me a skeptic. This is the same approach taken by Java's Swing (now JavaFX) toolkit and app…

AFAIK, Qt also uses the same approach (it does not use native widgets), yet it does not get the same bad reviews like Swing & JavaFX.

On the opposite, I think people generally like it.

I wonder why?

Re: Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development

#45

Post by Const-me »

Awesome stuff. And the license appears to be OK. The only thing that worries me is their language choice, for some people that would be too much new stuff in a single project i.e. too risky.

Finally, people outside Microsoft started to realize modern GPUs and high-resolution screens need a purposely-built GUI framework, designed for GPU rendering from the ground up. Especially on mobile platforms. MS did that in 2006 with the first release of WPF, and with WinRT/XAML they continue to pursue the approach.

Re: Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development

#47

Post by blikdak »

svdev wrote: post #29

I had high hopes for flutter but gave up after a while. It feels like their design meetings were spent arguing about grammar and splitting hairs, rather than thinking about ergonomics and how people would use it. In Flutter, everything is a nested pile of objects with too many APIs to keep track of. Take this example: https://github.com/flutter/flutter/blob/master/examples/stoc... Why do I need to care if something t…

That's the first thing I thought too re JSX or something like that, it looks like they are trying to shoehorn Java and full OO into what is basically React, replacing JSX and json with a huge pile of different classes. Over-engineering and obfuscating in much the way GWT did back in the day. The web is the web, there is only the DOM guys, deal with it and move on.

Re: Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development

#48

Post by blikdak »

on_and_off wrote: post #43
mythz wrote: post #20

Definitely 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, nat…

I have very low hopes for React Native too. It is sad but the name Facebook on any engineering project makes me think twice before considering adopting it. Flutter looks like it could be really interesting framework. Especially since it should allow to write apps for iOS, Android AND Fuchsia. I am quite happy with kotlin on Android & Swift on iOS (and their respective native frameworks) but if Google publishes Fuchsi…

Ahem, GWT anyone?

Re: Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development

#49

Post by fauigerzigerk »

yrio wrote: post #44
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #38

>Though Flutter doesn’t use the native UI widgets, it’s a cross-platform framework and has widgets for both Android and iOS. [...] On iOS, the biggest thing that stuck out to me was the scrolling. It didn’t quite feel right because of the physics, but I’m sure that would just require a little tweaking by the Flutter team. Count me a skeptic. This is the same approach taken by Java's Swing (now JavaFX) toolkit and app…

AFAIK, Qt also uses the same approach (it does not use native widgets), yet it does not get the same bad reviews like Swing & JavaFX. On the opposite, I think people generally like it. I wonder why?

Perhaps because Qt occupies a couple of niches that don't have a particularly entrenched native look and feel or are not very widely used.

Home entertainment systems, in-vehicle entertainment systems, kiosks, medical devices, avionics, Linux desktop apps, printer displays, navigation systems, industrial equipment controls, these are the sort of things that Qt is mostly used for.

Do you use a Qt desktop or mobile app on a day to day basis? The only Qt app I have ever used is QtCreator. It's a good development environment, but the look and feel is definitely a bit weird.

Re: Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development

#50

Post by yrio »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #49
yrio wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK, Qt also uses the same approach (it does not use native widgets), yet it does not get the same bad reviews like Swing & JavaFX. On the opposite, I think people generally like it. I wonder why?

Perhaps because Qt occupies a couple of niches that don't have a particularly entrenched native look and feel or are not very widely used. Home entertainment systems, in-vehicle entertainment systems, kiosks, medical devices, avionics, Linux desktop apps, printer displays, navigation systems, industrial equipment controls, these are the sort of things that Qt is mostly used for. Do you use a Qt desktop or mobile app…

I have not used Qt, which is why I'm asking (but I've used Swing in the past)
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