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Google's cross-platform Flutter UI toolkit goes 1.0

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Re: Google's cross-platform Flutter UI toolkit goes 1.0

#111

Post by dragonwriter »

nailer wrote: post #38
warent wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I just don't trust it to be around long enough to be an investment for me." Normally I would be inclined to agree with you given that this is Google, but the good news is that Flutter is open source. So even if Google discontinues internal development on it, it's likely that the community will continue it anyway.

Dart (the lang used in Flutter) already failed to gain traction in the web dev community and nobody seems to be maintaining it there.

> Dart (the lang used in Flutter) already failed to gain traction in the web dev community and nobody seems to be maintaining it there.

Dart for web underlies Hummingbird, Google's Flutter-for-web effort that was also announced as a sneak peak alongside the Flutter 1.0 announcement, so Dart for web is very much alive and maintained at Google.

Re: Google's cross-platform Flutter UI toolkit goes 1.0

#112

Post by Apocryphon »

pjmlp wrote: post #100
thosakwe wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's strange to me that after all this time, every time a thread about Flutter reaches Hn or proggit, there are multiple comments about the choice of the Dart language. I think they've made it pretty clear by now that they don't have intentions of switching from Dart. Heck, they've published an entire "Why Flutter uses Dart" article explaining their reasoning. It's like beating a dead horse. Besides, you could always…

Their whole reasoning just feels like justification after fact. specially when one has experience with older development environments which offered similar developer workflows. I guarantee to you that if they had choosen a proper modern language, Flutter's uptake would be much higher. As it is, you will see many of us complain about Dart until Flutter ends up being replaced by something else, unless they force Androi…

Then why bother to post to complain? Is it necessary to also post in React Native threads about how that framework does not fit your needs?

Re: Google's cross-platform Flutter UI toolkit goes 1.0

#113

Post by forgot-my-pw »

parvenu74 wrote: post #34

The widget layer of flutter is Skia which is written in C++ and Flutter apps compile to ARM binary (native) code. Someone else asked about whether a Flutter app can be ported to Linux; why not compile both the logic and the UI directly to WebAssembly?

There's Flutter desktop: https://github.com/google/flutter-desktop-embedding

And web: https://medium.com/flutter-io/hummingbird-building-flutter-f...

Re: Google's cross-platform Flutter UI toolkit goes 1.0

#114

Post by weberc2 »

wootie512 wrote: post #71

I have been a freelance Android Dev for past 4 or 5 years. I have recently built out a flutter app for a client. And honestly I am now looking for more Flutter work. UI development in Android is such a pain and I feel like I spend most of my time trying to get the UI just right. With Flutter I am building UI so much faster and getting to focus on the actual logic of the code. Dart was fine, I learned it as I went. I…

I haven't touched Android development since 2012. I remember the experience being a terrible hodge-podge of XML and Java which effectively required an absolutely attrocious IDE and an impossibly slow emulator. I assume things have changed since then, but I wonder by how much and if Flutter's workflow skirts any of these issues altogether.

Re: Google's cross-platform Flutter UI toolkit goes 1.0

#116

Post by rhodysurf »

wootie512 wrote: post #71

I have been a freelance Android Dev for past 4 or 5 years. I have recently built out a flutter app for a client. And honestly I am now looking for more Flutter work. UI development in Android is such a pain and I feel like I spend most of my time trying to get the UI just right. With Flutter I am building UI so much faster and getting to focus on the actual logic of the code. Dart was fine, I learned it as I went. I…

Dart is "Fine" is the perfect description. It is pretty basic, but pleasant enough to use that it doesn't get in the way.

Kotlin, swift, rust, etc are more fun languages for me but Flutter is productive enough with Dart I am not about to ditch if becasue the language is decent at best.

Re: Google's cross-platform Flutter UI toolkit goes 1.0

#117

Post by forgot-my-pw »

bluetidepro wrote: post #2

Congrats on their 1.0 launch! I haven't looked too closely at Flutter yet, to be honest. How does it compare to React Native (besides what a basic Google search will yield)? Has anyone jumped ship for either or after trying one of them?

Reflectly rewrote their app from RN to Flutter: https://medium.com/reflectly-engineering/reflectly-from-reac...

Re: Google's cross-platform Flutter UI toolkit goes 1.0

#118

Post by marstall »

pier25 wrote: post #101
tabs_masterrace wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a fan of Dart either, but common JavaScript/TypeScript isn't exactly the holy grail either. JS is basically unusable due to, well lack of types, and TypeScript hacks them into it by hugely increasing complexity of everything. Should have gone with Kotlin. Would just sweep over huge amounts of existing Andoid devs too.

Or Swift

That would turn a lot heads!

Re: Google's cross-platform Flutter UI toolkit goes 1.0

#119

Post by rhodysurf »

weberc2 wrote: post #114
wootie512 wrote: post #71

I have been a freelance Android Dev for past 4 or 5 years. I have recently built out a flutter app for a client. And honestly I am now looking for more Flutter work. UI development in Android is such a pain and I feel like I spend most of my time trying to get the UI just right. With Flutter I am building UI so much faster and getting to focus on the actual logic of the code. Dart was fine, I learned it as I went. I…

I haven't touched Android development since 2012. I remember the experience being a terrible hodge-podge of XML and Java which effectively required an absolutely attrocious IDE and an impossibly slow emulator. I assume things have changed since then, but I wonder by how much and if Flutter's workflow skirts any of these issues altogether.

Those are still the not fun parts to work with in Android, although its better now kotlin extensions so you no longer have to refer to the XML directly to manipulate views.

Flutter doesn't use any of that, you just code and thats pretty much it. No XML or anything, and you can use VSCode which is a lot lighter than android studio.

Re: Google's cross-platform Flutter UI toolkit goes 1.0

#120

Post by coldtea »

pjmlp wrote: post #105
coldtea wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - They inevitably don’t look or work like native apps in ways both big and small, frustrating and annoying users. We're way past that in the mobile world, where both Google, Facebook, and other top dogs use non-native cross platform frameworks and looks (e.g. Material UI).

Material UI just happens to be the official Android UI.

Which is irrelevant to my point, which is that it's also used where it's not native.
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