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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

#51

Post by tomatsu »

blikdak wrote: post #47
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.

> The web is the web, there is only the DOM guys, deal with it and move on.

Flutter doesn't use a WebView. There is no DOM.

That's why it's fast.

Re: Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development

#52

Post by Const-me »

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…

Microsoft also did that in WPF.

For Windows PCs, it was already a widely used native look and feel. Also wide selection of native Win32 controls, mostly implemented in ComCtl32.dll.

Yet in WPF I can easily replicate native look and feels, if I want so.

Re: Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development

#53

Post by kyrra »

blikdak wrote: post #48
on_and_off wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

GWT had its purpose. You need to remember that it was released before jquery was a thing. And also to realize it was the first (was it?) framework to push the large single page apps that worked in all browsers. It was created so Google could make the AdWords and Adsense UIs.

Today's AdWords UI uses AngularDart. So they've moved away from GWT. But 11 years ago the JavaScript landscape was very different.

[I work for Google, but I was doing GWT dev for 4 years before joining]

Re: Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development

#54

Post by nathan_f77 »

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'm a huge fan of React Native, and I just finished my first project with it. But I have to agree, it seems that bugs don't get any attention. I've found and reported a few myself. My general impression is that Facebook needs to invest more resources in maintenance and bug fixes, and Microsoft needs to do the same for react-native-windows.

Re: Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development

#55

Post by nathan_f77 »

themihai wrote: post #11

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?

I'm developing a game with React Native [1], and I have a single codebase that works on iOS, Android, Windows, and web (via react-native-web, although it needs a lot of work.)

I've had to write a few 'native modules' for various platforms, but it has to be platform-specific code anyway (e.g. ad networks, in-app purchases, game services)

I've been looking for a way to write some native code that I can compile to JS, and have decided to use C (or C++) with emscripten [2]. Rust or Kotlin might be fun, but I'm comfortable with C and it's easy to compile for iOS, Android (NDK), and Windows.

[1] https://sudoblock.com

[2] http://kripken.github.io/emscripten-site/

Re: Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development

#56

Post by [deleted] »

tomatsu wrote: post #42
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…

[deleted]

Re: Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development

#57

Post by eklavya »

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…

Don't you use vlc?

Re: Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development

#58

Post by mkl »

invalidname wrote: post #30
madeofpalk wrote: post #12

Earlier 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.

OK, I think it's pretty obvious from my comment history but fine...

Do you go and look through the commenter's history for every comment you read?

Re: Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development

#59

Post by steveklabnik »

nathan_f77 wrote: post #55
themihai wrote: post #11

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?

I'm developing a game with React Native [1], and I have a single codebase that works on iOS, Android, Windows, and web (via react-native-web, although it needs a lot of work.) I've had to write a few 'native modules' for various platforms, but it has to be platform-specific code anyway (e.g. ad networks, in-app purchases, game services) I've been looking for a way to write some native code that I can compile to JS, a…

Rust should be just as easy to compile for those platforms.

Using something you're comfortable with is good though!

Re: Exploring Flutter for Cross-Platform Mobile Development

#60

Post by fharper1961 »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #3

Nice 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…

I had the same concern re: battery life, so I looked at CPU use while running an app, scrolling through lists, and then idle.

The CPU use seemed to be very similar to well behaving native apps.

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