Flutter Release Preview 2 • Hacker News Board

Re: Flutter Release Preview 2

#41

Post by RobertRoberts » Thu, Sep 20, 2018, 4:19 AM UTC

timsneath wrote: post #26

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…

Thanks for the kind comments! I'm one of the product managers on the Flutter team, so you're welcome to apply suitable skepticism to anything I might say in response to your last point, but I will say that Flutter is already being used in many strategic projects here at Google, as well as for many customer apps, some of which already have tens of millions of users. For example, Alibaba are using it to build one of th…

I think you are attempting to present a solution to a problem you can't possibly help with.

No individual at Google can assuage any concerns caused by the corporation as a whole. (maybe the CEO could?)

Re: Flutter Release Preview 2

#42

Post by mixedCase » Thu, Sep 20, 2018, 4:23 AM UTC

timsneath wrote: post #26

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…

Thanks for the kind comments! I'm one of the product managers on the Flutter team, so you're welcome to apply suitable skepticism to anything I might say in response to your last point, but I will say that Flutter is already being used in many strategic projects here at Google, as well as for many customer apps, some of which already have tens of millions of users. For example, Alibaba are using it to build one of th…

Hey, thanks for the data point. I'm actually fairly interested in Flutter, but I have no interest at all in Dart since I find it severely lacking compared to modern, more popular production languages for mobile development such as TypeScript or Kotlin (which have features such as algebraic data types which have become an absolute must-have for me and my team), to the point it completely deters me from adopting it.

Is there any chance that the Flutter core could get bindings to another language in the future? Regardless, thank you for your work on Flutter; if not Flutter, at least it has paved the way for demonstrating a "native-imitation" makes a lot of sense with regards to developer productivity and performance, something that sorely needed more buy-in from the mobile community.

Re: Flutter Release Preview 2

#43

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 20, 2018, 4:24 AM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: Flutter Release Preview 2

#44

Post by jrs95 » Thu, Sep 20, 2018, 4:24 AM UTC

RobertRoberts wrote: post #36

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 l…

There really isn't an alternative for what Flutter does, which is high quality cross platform apps that don't require separate UI code. Xamarin has Forms, but the UX is not nearly at the level of what you get from Flutter, and it would require some serious rework of how they render their widgets for that to change. Other solutions like Qt are just lagging behind, as much as I wish that weren't the case. Ultimately I think Google has the ability to make Flutter the primary platform for developing mobile apps in the future, if they emphasize it as the preferred way of making new Android apps and especially if they make it relatively easy to integrate Flutter into existing native apps. If it were possible to easily drop one screen into an iOS and Android app with Flutter, this would start getting immediate adoption because of how much time and money it can save. Ultimately that matters a lot more than "Google baggage" that only a small fraction of developers really care about.

Re: Flutter Release Preview 2

#45

Post by Apocryphon » Thu, Sep 20, 2018, 4:24 AM UTC

benatkin wrote: post #37

stickfigure wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tec…

Fabric?

Re: Flutter Release Preview 2

#46

Post by k__ » Thu, Sep 20, 2018, 4:27 AM UTC

MarkMc wrote: post #17

tananaev wrote: post #5

Are those SO popularity comparison numbers real? If they are, I feel they were somehow artificially inflated. I have nothing against Flutter, but I don't think at this point it's as widely used as Xamarin and React Native. For Angular numbers should be even higher.

I don't know where they got those numbers. This graph seems more realistic to me [edit: maybe not - see subcomments]: http://sotagtrends.com/?tags=[ionic-framework,react-native,f... That is, Flutter is shooting up and overtaking Xamarin but still only half the popularity of React Native. This also roughly correlates with mentions on Google Trends: https://g.co/trends/y9Z8q On job websites React Native is way ahead -…

Yes, these numbers (GH stars, SO questions, etc.) don't seem to tell much.

A few months ago I read that React is way ahead of and still growing much faster than Vue, but people nevertheless hype it based on its GH stars.

Re: Flutter Release Preview 2

#47

Post by jrs95 » Thu, Sep 20, 2018, 4:32 AM UTC

mixedCase wrote: post #42

timsneath wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the kind comments! I'm one of the product managers on the Flutter team, so you're welcome to apply suitable skepticism to anything I might say in response to your last point, but I will say that Flutter is already being used in many strategic projects here at Google, as well as for many customer apps, some of which already have tens of millions of users. For example, Alibaba are using it to build one of th…

Hey, thanks for the data point. I'm actually fairly interested in Flutter, but I have no interest at all in Dart since I find it severely lacking compared to modern, more popular production languages for mobile development such as TypeScript or Kotlin (which have features such as algebraic data types which have become an absolute must-have for me and my team), to the point it completely deters me from adopting it. Is…

The great development experience is largely tied into Dart and it's toolchain, not to mention all of the underlying Dart code in the project. However, you can get the same kind of control flow out of Dart albeit with a little less static checking (https://github.com/dart-lang/sdk/issues/33079) so from a pragmatic standpoint this really shouldn't be something that's holding you back. The cost of not having ADTs is much lower than the cost of maintaining two separate iOS and Android apps (or even dealing with the downsides of other cross platform approaches IMO).

Re: Flutter Release Preview 2

#48

Post by RobertRoberts » Thu, Sep 20, 2018, 4:35 AM UTC

jrs95 wrote: post #44

RobertRoberts wrote: post #36

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 l…

There really isn't an alternative for what Flutter does, which is high quality cross platform apps that don't require separate UI code. Xamarin has Forms, but the UX is not nearly at the level of what you get from Flutter, and it would require some serious rework of how they render their widgets for that to change. Other solutions like Qt are just lagging behind, as much as I wish that weren't the case. Ultimately I…

At one point there wasn't an alternative to Angular either, look what we have now. Not only that, there's still native. Which means anyone can easily hold out that is on the fence for who knows what comes in the future.

Principles matter at some level, which is why many businesses abandoned Godaddy a few years back. But also there's simple budget considerations. Google has cost us tons of money over the years adjusting to their services. Now we don't have to anymore, and it's a relief.

If I am forced to spend money I'd rather spend it on something competition than to bolstering a belligerent monopoly and also support a system that will still be around, or at the very least, give two craps about our situation.

Maybe you are too young to remember the bad old days with Microsoft was the mean kid on the block. Google is getting worse than Microsoft ever was. And that is really bad.

(edit:React confusion)

Re: Flutter Release Preview 2

#49

Post by benatkin » Thu, Sep 20, 2018, 4:36 AM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #45

benatkin wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tec…

Fabric?

I'm not too familiar with Fabric, but that sounds like it would count, because it was a technology that external developers were building on that got shut down without a clear migration path.

Re: Flutter Release Preview 2

#50

Post by nevi-me » Thu, Sep 20, 2018, 4:39 AM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #45

benatkin wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tec…

Fabric?

Fabric had it coming. Twitter sold it because they no longer wanted to focus on it.

When Google bought it, it felt a lot like buying the market. What Fabric tools are you going to miss, which Firebase does not have/support?

It doesn't make sense for Google to maintain two platforms that do the same thing indefinitely.

Twitter didn't have viable alternatives. They could have sold it to someone else, but who?

- Apple? Forget about Android support - Facebook? Not interested, they killed Parse - Google? Made sense, because the value of Fabric was the number of devs using it.

Fabric Crash Analytics was a strong product, why not bring in the team that developed it to gradually bring its features into Firebase?

Fabric is not a good example; it wasn't "abandoned" as developers were given alternatives. It also works better for us developers, because now I don't have to bundle a Fabric SDK and a Firebase SDK.

Lastly, given that Twitter is shutting down access to third-parties to their API, the value of Fabric's integration with Twitter might have dwindled for some people.