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Flutter Release Preview 2

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Re: Flutter Release Preview 2

#31

Post by tananaev »

nevi-me wrote: post #23

EDIT: formatting Almost everyone here talks about abandonment. It's become a sad Google reality, but I'd hazard that some people are posting from Google Chrome, which would defeat the point about worrying. I use Flutter, I've released an app that's been in prod for about 5 months now. Flutter runs on Dart, which is a Google-bred language. From my little knowledge, most/some of the people working on Dart are the team…

I haven't tried Flutter yet, but I want to provide my experience of what non-native mobile development usually looks like comparing to native. Through my mobile development career I have tried C/C++ cross-platform development on mobile, JavaScript frameworks (e.g. PhoneGap), Xamarin and React Native.

Cross-platform frameworks always seem attractive because you can write code once and run it on both Android and iOS. When you start development it might also feel productive at first because you finish 80% of the project much faster than with using native platform frameworks. Problems begin when you need to interface with native code or if there are some small annoying issues. You get stuck for hours and days trying to solve something that would take much less if you dealt with native platform SDK. In the end you are not completely satisfied with your hacky solution and it took as much time as native app would take.

My opinion is that if you have a very simple app, it might be OK to write it in, for example, React Native of Flutter. But if you have a more complicated app and it's an important part of your business, you should go native.

Re: Flutter Release Preview 2

#32

Post by riku_iki »

village-idiot wrote: post #27
threeseed wrote: post #10

I spent quite a few months comparing this with React Native. Flutter has done cross-platform right. And it's somewhat sad and counter-intuitive but pretending to be native is a lot better than actually being native. iOS and Android are just too dissimilar in areas to provide a common layer on top of. In particular routing which is a mess with React Native. Flutter also has the best development experience period. Noth…

If it were a google product, I wouldn’t trust it for a second. It seems that very few consumer facing products from Google are safe from being cut these days. If google is using it internally, the risks change. After the Angular 2.0 debacle I’d fear Google Just up and changing everything and not providing a smooth migration pathway because they can. They probably won’t cut it, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t in…

Angular 2 is just very different product, smooth migration (reliable auto translating sources from js to ts?) would require a lot of effort..

Re: Flutter Release Preview 2

#33

Post by MarkMc »

I first started developing with Flutter about a year ago.

One thing that has really impressed me is how responsive the Flutter team is to developers. Often when I posted a question on Stack Overflow it would be answered perfectly within 24 hours by a member of the Flutter team.

Contrast this with React Native where Facebook's attitude seems to be to develop what they need themselves then 'throw it over the wall' to for others to improve.

The Flutter team is like a dog that really wants you to be happy. The React Native team is like a cat that doesn't really care about you as long as she gets fed.

Re: Flutter Release Preview 2

#34

Post by nevi-me »

strken wrote: post #30
nevi-me wrote: post #23

EDIT: formatting Almost everyone here talks about abandonment. It's become a sad Google reality, but I'd hazard that some people are posting from Google Chrome, which would defeat the point about worrying. I use Flutter, I've released an app that's been in prod for about 5 months now. Flutter runs on Dart, which is a Google-bred language. From my little knowledge, most/some of the people working on Dart are the team…

The migration from Chrome to Firefox takes between 30 seconds and 30 minutes, depending on how much stuff you choose to move over, and has nothing to do with migrating code between two platforms. It's not a fair comparison unless you're talking about developing browser extensions, and even then the API is very close to being cross-platform[0]. I don't think most people are making a principled stand against the use of…

But that's my point (which other people are making). There's a difference between Google APIs, products and software platforms. Some are riskier than not.

It adds little to the conversation if someone just says "scared of abandonment" without providing more context. Yes, one's entitled to that opinion, but it's slightly misplaced sentiment.

Out of interest, how long would it take for one to migrate from Go to say C or Java (if Go is killed)? Similarly, how long to go from some Google cloud service to either another provider or a different other service?

I agree with you about instinctively performing a risk analysis, but was offering a different perspective that perhaps one should separate Google into a few categories, then make judgement per category.

Re: Flutter Release Preview 2

#35

Post by village-idiot »

riku_iki wrote: post #32
village-idiot wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it were a google product, I wouldn’t trust it for a second. It seems that very few consumer facing products from Google are safe from being cut these days. If google is using it internally, the risks change. After the Angular 2.0 debacle I’d fear Google Just up and changing everything and not providing a smooth migration pathway because they can. They probably won’t cut it, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t in…

Angular 2 is just very different product, smooth migration (reliable auto translating sources from js to ts?) would require a lot of effort..

From a marketing perspective, that was an awful choice. Releasing an effectively unrelated product and calling it 2.0 is just asking for trouble.

Second, they immediately announced no migration path and no more bug fixes at the same time. I’m not sure if they stuck with that, I was in the backbone camp at that time, but that is a painful pill to swallow. That they made that call without considering the downstream pain is a sign to me that I should be wary about depending on them

Re: Flutter Release Preview 2

#36

Post by RobertRoberts »

It's really sad how Google can possibly (I won't bother wasting my time to find out) make something really truly awesome, and it just doesn't matter at all. Their brand has a stink to it that won't wear off any time soon, if ever.

They chose an evil path of manipulating users into giving up privacy. Talking out both sides of their mouth with politics and freedom of speech and other things. Creating and dumping tech like hot potatoes. Attempts at mass manipulation of the internet (AMP, messing with the location bar). The list goes on...

Google is schizophrenic, and I don't know if they can come back from this in the long term. I won't even bother looking at any of their tech anymore, there are plenty of great alternatives to every service they offer without all the Google baggage.

Re: Flutter Release Preview 2

#37

Post by benatkin »

stickfigure wrote: post #28
pier25 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has abandoned products, but has it abandoned technologies?

Was Wave a product or a technology? Both, I guess. That said, Wave doesn't seem comparable. Maybe GWT? If so, I'd be perfectly happy if Flutter has the lifespan of GWT, which is some 12 years old now and still viable (if perhaps a little crusty). 12 years is a phenomenal run for a piece of frontend tech.

I'm not completely sure what the difference between a technology and a product is, but I think it was a product, because it was SaaS with only one provider and closed source until the shutdown announcement, and very few developers were integrating with it. Only when the shutdown was announced did they open source it, and it became more of a technology than a product.

I think the Android userspace might count as a technology that's been shut down. When Android first came out, it looked a lot like a mobile counterpart to a Linux distro with Gnome or KDE, with built in simple open source apps, like music, photos, downloads, and notes (now Keep). Now all these apps are littered with tie-ins to Google, and Samsung and Huawei have gone off and developed alternatives because it's annoying to use these apps without fully buying into Google (same to a lesser extent for Maps and Chrome). This might be a stretch though, and besides this I don't know of any Google technology that was popular and useful and got shut down in a way that reminds me of Google Reader.

Re: Flutter Release Preview 2

#38

Post by nevi-me »

tananaev wrote: post #31
nevi-me wrote: post #23

EDIT: formatting Almost everyone here talks about abandonment. It's become a sad Google reality, but I'd hazard that some people are posting from Google Chrome, which would defeat the point about worrying. I use Flutter, I've released an app that's been in prod for about 5 months now. Flutter runs on Dart, which is a Google-bred language. From my little knowledge, most/some of the people working on Dart are the team…

I haven't tried Flutter yet, but I want to provide my experience of what non-native mobile development usually looks like comparing to native. Through my mobile development career I have tried C/C++ cross-platform development on mobile, JavaScript frameworks (e.g. PhoneGap), Xamarin and React Native. Cross-platform frameworks always seem attractive because you can write code once and run it on both Android and iOS. W…

Yes, that was my conclusion a few months ago. I'm currently working on an Android app, and even though I published the Flutter app in "record time", the drawback is the amount of mental energy needed to make certain platform tasks work.

Background execution was the biggest for me, I didn't want to write a Flutter plugin that interacts with a background service (because even though that's now possible, it still feels confusing to me).

Simple(r) app, Flutter's very good at that. I'll see what happens post 1.0

Re: Flutter Release Preview 2

#39

Post by riku_iki »

village-idiot wrote: post #35
riku_iki wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Angular 2 is just very different product, smooth migration (reliable auto translating sources from js to ts?) would require a lot of effort..

From a marketing perspective, that was an awful choice. Releasing an effectively unrelated product and calling it 2.0 is just asking for trouble. Second, they immediately announced no migration path and no more bug fixes at the same time. I’m not sure if they stuck with that, I was in the backbone camp at that time, but that is a painful pill to swallow. That they made that call without considering the downstream pai…

> and no more bug fixes

Angular 2 was released in Sep 2016. AngularJS continued releases up until Jul 2018, with 3 years of security fixes after that. 5 years is plenty of time to rewrite your app.

Re: Flutter Release Preview 2

#40

Post by ReverseCold »

threeseed wrote: post #10

I spent quite a few months comparing this with React Native. Flutter has done cross-platform right. And it's somewhat sad and counter-intuitive but pretending to be native is a lot better than actually being native. iOS and Android are just too dissimilar in areas to provide a common layer on top of. In particular routing which is a mess with React Native. Flutter also has the best development experience period. Noth…

Seconded about the development experience. I wrote the same app in native Swift/Java, Flutter, and React Native. I did Flutter last, and even though I had never written a line of dart in my life, everything almost just worked.

There are still some really weird problems that occur, but after fixing those with `flutter clean`, it's hands down the best experience I've ever had making a mobile app.

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