Flutter: a Portable UI Framework for Mobile, Web, Embedded, and Desktop • Hacker News Board

Re: Flutter: a Portable UI Framework for Mobile, Web, Embedded, and Desktop

#221

Post by rohan1024 » Wed, May 08, 2019, 3:54 AM UTC

yesimahuman wrote: post #40

Flutter for Web is heavily reminiscent of Famous with its custom layout system and off-DOM rendering (or guessing DOM rendering support w/ CSS transforms of divs). To see, just view-source on the NYT demo. Quite divergent from the web platform in my opinion. The fact that they have to re-implement copy and paste (and, accessibility features!) further adds to that: https://medium.com/flutter-io/bringing-flutter-to-the…

I am pretty sure these web apps can't be indexed by google at the moment and am not sure how they are going to solve that.

Re: Flutter: a Portable UI Framework for Mobile, Web, Embedded, and Desktop

#222

Post by MarkMc » Wed, May 08, 2019, 3:58 AM UTC

bradhoffman wrote: post #3

I’ve given Flutter a try with one of my client’s apps, and in some cases, it’s obviously better than native development. Mainly because you can develop for both platforms. I’d be curious to hear where other developers think Flutter is a good framework to use instead of developing native code.

You might be interested to see a graph of Android, Flutter and React Native questions on Stack Overflow over time: http://sotagtrends.com/?tags=[ionic-framework,react-native,f...

Short version: Flutter is growing nicely

Re: Flutter: a Portable UI Framework for Mobile, Web, Embedded, and Desktop

#223

Post by cageface » Wed, May 08, 2019, 4:06 AM UTC

otobrglez wrote: post #57

Love the concept, love the push. But to be sincere, won't touch it with a pole because of Dart. However,... Why o why is this thing not written with/for TypeScript?

Why does everything have to be in JS? I'm all for making JS better for the environments where you have no choice but honestly even with TypeScript it's still a pretty deeply flawed language.

Any decent dev should be able to get up to speed in Dart in a week.

Re: Flutter: a Portable UI Framework for Mobile, Web, Embedded, and Desktop

#224

Post by ranci » Wed, May 08, 2019, 4:11 AM UTC

skavi wrote: post #190

sandGorgon wrote: post #182

Can someone from the Google team comment on what's going on - https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/07/kotlin-is-now-googles-pref... > Android development will become increasingly Kotlin-first,” Google writes in today’s announcement https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/07/google-launches-jetpack-co... > Google today announced the first preview of Jetpack Compose, a new open-source UI toolkit for Kotlin developers who want to use…

There's a chance that in the future, Android will just be a legacy environment within Fuchsia. Fuchsia's main UI framework will be Flutter.

Probably inevitable

Re: Flutter: a Portable UI Framework for Mobile, Web, Embedded, and Desktop

#225

Post by sbstnb » Wed, May 08, 2019, 4:25 AM UTC

fwip wrote: post #163

baybal2 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, not new. They take features of regular toolkits like gtk and qt, claiming them as new, paradigm shifting, bigger than sliced bread things. Except it is still a very early stage product and feature set of one tenth of what QT or GTK would have provided.

Unlike GTK and QT, Flutter targets mobile and web.

Mobile: https://www.qt.io/mobile-app-development/

Web: https://wiki.qt.io/Qt_for_WebAssembly

Re: Flutter: a Portable UI Framework for Mobile, Web, Embedded, and Desktop

#226

Post by christocracy » Wed, May 08, 2019, 4:26 AM UTC

dikei wrote: post #198

sandGorgon wrote: post #182

Can someone from the Google team comment on what's going on - https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/07/kotlin-is-now-googles-pref... > Android development will become increasingly Kotlin-first,” Google writes in today’s announcement https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/07/google-launches-jetpack-co... > Google today announced the first preview of Jetpack Compose, a new open-source UI toolkit for Kotlin developers who want to use…

You can't avoid learning Kotlin & Java, that's the native language for Android platform. Even if you use Flutter, leaky abstraction mean you will probably have to dig down to the native layer as your apps get more complicated.

That’s right. I’m a professional plugin developer. I’ve got my hands in both worlds, making dart APIs into the Obj-c/Java bridge where I’m implementing native APIs.

And several universes as well...I do plugins for React Native and Cordova, as well: same thing but JavaScript APIs into the Obj-c/Java bridge.

Re: Flutter: a Portable UI Framework for Mobile, Web, Embedded, and Desktop

#227

Post by dethac » Wed, May 08, 2019, 4:28 AM UTC

sandGorgon wrote: post #182

Can someone from the Google team comment on what's going on - https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/07/kotlin-is-now-googles-pref... > Android development will become increasingly Kotlin-first,” Google writes in today’s announcement https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/07/google-launches-jetpack-co... > Google today announced the first preview of Jetpack Compose, a new open-source UI toolkit for Kotlin developers who want to use…

Invest in Kotlin. Kotlin is useful for Android NOW. Whenever Dart starts becoming more mainstream, you'll know and have enough time to react to it.

Re: Flutter: a Portable UI Framework for Mobile, Web, Embedded, and Desktop

#228

Post by sandGorgon » Wed, May 08, 2019, 4:33 AM UTC

zengid wrote: post #191

sandGorgon wrote: post #182

Can someone from the Google team comment on what's going on - https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/07/kotlin-is-now-googles-pref... > Android development will become increasingly Kotlin-first,” Google writes in today’s announcement https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/07/google-launches-jetpack-co... > Google today announced the first preview of Jetpack Compose, a new open-source UI toolkit for Kotlin developers who want to use…

I don't mean to be cynical, but the answer may be 'whichever language wins'. Maybe Google wants to support Dart because its built in-house, while simultaneously supporting Kotlin because it is so well loved by developers. Just a guess.

No. Mobile Dev is not anything close to web dev : developers don't have control of run time devices.

Google is now mandating 64 bit APK for its apps (after years and years of trying) - that's a end device support issue. React native has had 64 bit problems for years.

Viewmodel is a lifecycle aware component. Android Q will come with foldable-aware SDK. Will that be supported both on Dart & AndroidX/Kotlin ?

Someone has to explain to Google management that an ecosystem that has gazillion different devices , that are not in developer control is a far different beast than web dev .

Microsoft understands this better than anyone else. Look at their bug-compatibility spanning 30 years.

We cannot afford a fight-to-the-finish when my customers are on a gazillion different devices with different hardware. NBU markets like India operate at a very different level of complexity than the two-device markets of North America.

Re: Flutter: a Portable UI Framework for Mobile, Web, Embedded, and Desktop

#229

Post by christocracy » Wed, May 08, 2019, 4:35 AM UTC

fopen64 wrote: post #215

sandGorgon wrote: post #182

Can someone from the Google team comment on what's going on - https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/07/kotlin-is-now-googles-pref... > Android development will become increasingly Kotlin-first,” Google writes in today’s announcement https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/07/google-launches-jetpack-co... > Google today announced the first preview of Jetpack Compose, a new open-source UI toolkit for Kotlin developers who want to use…

I'd say Flutter/Dart.

And what do you think those plugins implementing the native sensors or CLLocationManager / FusedLocationProviderClient is written with? Obj-c/Swift and Java/Kotlin.

Re: Flutter: a Portable UI Framework for Mobile, Web, Embedded, and Desktop

#230

Post by lone_haxx0r » Wed, May 08, 2019, 4:42 AM UTC

solarkraft wrote: post #13

saagarjha wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure why this is downvoted, as it summarizes Flutter pretty well. Flutter’s “Cupertino” theme is obviously an emulation if you use it for more than a minute. If you want your app to look like an Android app on both platforms, though, I think it does pretty well at that.

Do users care? It doesn't feel exactly native on Android, but is still fast and looks great (it might indeed be better than native). Afaik the main alternatives, RN and Web (for fully reusable UI) are both heavy and don't feel that native either, yet are popular with developers.

To me, smartphones are like plungers: They are dirty, ugly (from a software perspective), and I don't like using them, but they are pretty convenient to have most of the time.

I only want them to get the job done and then get out of my sight, so I don't care about the UI being pretty. I would say "elegance is reserved for desktop PCs", but those are ugly too (x86 is horrible, all OSs suck).