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Flutter desktop shells

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Re: Flutter desktop shells

#111
post #3

I really want to like Flutter, but I someone really don't want to spend the time to learn Dart. I can't really quantify it--some mix of yet-another Proprietary Google Technology, yet another ecosystem, yet another X. I'm tired I just want to build stuff that solves problems.

>I really want to like Flutter, but I someone really don't want to spend the time to learn Dart.

If you have the time to spend to build an app, learning Dart to do it will be the less of your concerns.

Re: Flutter desktop shells

#112
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, still miles better in terms of performance I am sure then. Thanks!

Have you used a good electron application, like VSCode or Figma?

While VSCode is great in a lot of ways, it does not have good performance. What is has is adequate performance and great extension support. It regularly stutters quite badly on my beefy Dell Precision when running on the integrated GPU.

I use it as my daily driver, but its performance pales in comparison to something like Sublime.

Re: Flutter desktop shells

#113
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general it's just really disappointing that in 2019 the development frameworks we have available are still objectively worse in terms of developer productivity, reliability, and documentation than what we had with Microsoft Visual Basic or Borland Delphi back in 1996. I totally understand that these modern frameworks are superior when it comes to cross-platform compatibility and easy application distribution, but…

Xerox Alto [1] had GUI, Smalltalk 72 dev env and TCP/IP networking in 1973. How much real progress has there been in software technology since then? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto

Considering I can do extraordinarily more complicated tasks today, and a whole more of them, a lot.

But we also missed a lot of good stuff that we used to have.

Re: Flutter desktop shells

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but to parent’s point... is it going to last? Is it yet another thing Google will abandon? Is it worth learning, because learning another language has a real cost imo. If Google walks at any point, does Flutter or Dart survive? I’m with him, I want to like the idea, but I think the adoption has been slow and it doesn’t appear like it’s going to suddenly take off. I could be wrong, I just don’t see any successful…

> is it going to last? Is it yet another thing Google will abandon? It's apparently the primary language for Google Ads. As such, I expect it to be maintained as long as Google continues to sell ads and if they do move away from it you'll have plenty of warning.

>It's apparently the primary language for Google Ads.

That's Dart, not Flutter.

And even so, Dart transpiles to JS for the Google Ads. They could switch to plain JS, or Typescript, or even move to a whole new implementation of Google Ads, and pull the plug.

They also used to use GWT, did that hold on?

Re: Flutter desktop shells

#115
post #61
post #3

I really want to like Flutter, but I someone really don't want to spend the time to learn Dart. I can't really quantify it--some mix of yet-another Proprietary Google Technology, yet another ecosystem, yet another X. I'm tired I just want to build stuff that solves problems.

To me Dart is pretty disappointing. Modern languages like Swift and Rust have shown the power of incorporating functional features like sum types and pattern matching. Dart just feels like the same sort of OO language we've been getting since Java became popular. Edit: Also the continued existence of null in new programming languages is a baffling choice to me.

What's wrong with null?

Re: Flutter desktop shells

#116
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but to parent’s point... is it going to last? Is it yet another thing Google will abandon? Is it worth learning, because learning another language has a real cost imo. If Google walks at any point, does Flutter or Dart survive? I’m with him, I want to like the idea, but I think the adoption has been slow and it doesn’t appear like it’s going to suddenly take off. I could be wrong, I just don’t see any successful…

AFAIK Flutter will be the primary SDK for writing apps in Fuchsia. If this is true, and if the other rumors about Fuchsia replacing Android are also true, then I doubt Flutter and Dart are going anywhere.

Except if Google gets bored with Fuchsia, like it has with tons of projects.

Heck, from what you say, it already got bored with Android -- if Fucshia is to replace it in say 2022, it means that Android just lasted around 15 years as a platform.

Re: Flutter desktop shells

#117

Every so often for the past several years I'll go evaluate options for cross-platform desktop app development and I always come back with an enormous handful of options and all of which fall short on some measure. I would really think that this "problem" would have a great solution by now. But I think most of the developer attention is on web for obvious reasons (more ease, more conducive to mistakes/novices/etc). Ho…

I hate using services and having my data all on some remote service w/ little options for privacy and safety/backup, etc. How would non-tech users handle backups?

They could choose a Saas service (Dropbox, iCloud, WinBin/whatev). Hell, I'd probably do this but encrypted where I like.

In this way you'd have the data storage decoupled from the app so the choice would be there.

Re: Flutter desktop shells

#118
post #115
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me Dart is pretty disappointing. Modern languages like Swift and Rust have shown the power of incorporating functional features like sum types and pattern matching. Dart just feels like the same sort of OO language we've been getting since Java became popular. Edit: Also the continued existence of null in new programming languages is a baffling choice to me.

What's wrong with null?

A null is not a string or an integer or a MyClass instance, etc. So why does it pollute variables of all those types?

https://medium.com/@hinchman_amanda/null-pointer-references-...

https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Null-References-The-Bill...

https://www.quora.com/Why-was-the-Null-Pointer-Exception-in-...

https://www.lucidchart.com/techblog/2015/08/31/the-worst-mis...

Re: Flutter desktop shells

#119

Every so often for the past several years I'll go evaluate options for cross-platform desktop app development and I always come back with an enormous handful of options and all of which fall short on some measure. I would really think that this "problem" would have a great solution by now. But I think most of the developer attention is on web for obvious reasons (more ease, more conducive to mistakes/novices/etc). Ho…

Cross platform desktop app development will always fall short. Not all platforms have the same user interfaces/paradigms. What is the Windows equivalent of the OSX dock? What is Linux's equivalent? Most cross platform frameworks solve that kind of problem by letting you write platform specific code. The problem there of course is that you're just writing multiple apps again, often in a non-native or at least second c…

> Most cross platform frameworks solve that kind of problem by letting you write platform specific code. The problem there of course is that you're just writing multiple apps again, often in a non-native or at least second class, language.

Isn't this throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Only a very small portion of your code should be platform-specific (10-20%?), which is still a huge win over maintaining multiple native apps. Of course, in practice, there are many other disadvantages of using cross-platform frameworks that may outweigh the benefits, such as the inevitable impedance mismatch between languages, APIs, concepts, etc.

Re: Flutter desktop shells

#120
post #3

I really want to like Flutter, but I someone really don't want to spend the time to learn Dart. I can't really quantify it--some mix of yet-another Proprietary Google Technology, yet another ecosystem, yet another X. I'm tired I just want to build stuff that solves problems.

This is a weird comment, Dart is open source and evolves as well, like Swift from Apple, Kotlin from Jetbrains, Typescript from Microsoft etc. What is the difference? Or you don't like any of these?
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