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

#351

Post by macspoofing » Wed, May 08, 2019, 11:26 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…

>This is massively confusing. Do we invest in Kotlin ...or do we invest in Dart ?

Oh come on. Pick one. That's what you do for every other platform. Hell, even for web development, you'll have to make framework and transpilation decisions. This is no different.

>These guys can't afford 10$ courses on udacity and Coursera.

Yeah, too bad there are no free ways to learn programming languages on the internet.

But there is something arrogant about stating that programmers in developing nations somehow aren't capable of reasoning about tool choices for Android development.

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

#352

Post by kristoffer » Wed, May 08, 2019, 11:28 AM UTC

Nokinside wrote: post #343

kristoffer wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your last sentence is a bit hard to comprehend but not paying for Qt and shipping a commercial embedded product is pretty difficult due to the anti-tivoization clauses of GPL3. I agree with parent poster that flutter is very interesting for Embedded GUI development.

Qt has LGPL3 license Not GPL3. It's really easy to ship commercial Qt app with LGPL3 (except few modules that are GPL3) You just provide sources or linkable object files. Qt intentionally avoids explaining how to do this because they are selling commercial licenses. If you are in software business and can't figure this out, maybe you should consult someone. (disclosure: I own commercial Qt license and stock in the co…

No need for the tone.

That is really easy as you say. What you seem to have overlooked are the implications of doing this. You are forced to help customers replace the Qt libraries in your product. That has quite large security/warranty implications.

So ... no thanks!

I do contract work for a company licensing Qt5. I'm hoping for Flutter or something else to kill Qt in the long run.

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

#353

Post by achikin » Wed, May 08, 2019, 11:28 AM UTC

Hixie wrote: post #239

on_and_off wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

edit : I am not a Googler, but that's what I gathered from talking with them Here is what is happening : A couple of years ago, when the dart team failed at getting their runtime embedded into the browsers, they started searching for a problem to solve. They thought they had hit jackpot with multiplatform development. So they started working on Flutter. This is all entirely independent from the Android team at Google…

(I'm the Flutter TL.) As far as the bit about Flutter goes: Flutter was started by engineers from the Chrome team, and myself (who worked in the open source team as editor of the HTML standard). We had no relationship with the Dart team at all until some times into the project, when we were looking around for a language to replace JavaScript in our project (codenamed Sky at the time). We considered a large number of…

What other Javascript replacements did you consider?

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

#354

Post by the_duke » Wed, May 08, 2019, 11:32 AM UTC

ajconway wrote: post #337

Apocryphon wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not convinced that Flutter needs to beat native to survive- it just needs to be better than React Native, Xamarin, and PWAs.

The biggest advantage of React Native is that it makes use of native UI. You won’t be able to embed a browser, or a performant video player into a Flutter app (on iOS, at least).

Sure you will: https://pub.dev/packages/webview_flutter

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

#355

Post by Nokinside » Wed, May 08, 2019, 11:33 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #245

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…

Internal politic wars at Google, with management having popcorns to see who wins at the end. If you are confortable with Qt, JavaFX, Xamarin, there is hardly anything to see with Flutter, plus they are based on programming languages that you actually want to have on your CV, instead of one that was dropped from Chrome and rescued at last minute by AdWords team. Plus, even Fuchsia is not so focused on Flutter anylonge…

> Internal politic wars at Google

If you allow internal politics in technical decisions, the old is drowning the new child that is tasked with killing the old every time.

This is what really killed Nokia's platform domination in mobile phones. Google should take a note.

Nokia had dominating smartphone platform (Symbian) and market dominance in mobile phones. It was becoming old, messy and outdated but still doing fine at the moment. Instead of choosing and committing they allowed innovation but allowed the most critical decision for the company to be the question of internal politics. Linux/Qt based new system was sabotaged from inside buy people whose careers were based on the old Symbian. Of course the VP who overseeing overseeing billions in revenue is looked differently than VP that is tinkering with the new platform with bunch of young Linux hackers.

Netflix is perfect example of how to execute technological transition correctly. They made the decision to move from DVD rental to steaming when disc rental was still making money and there was time. They committed to it. People working in the money making disc rental side were shut down completely from the discussions where the company future was planned and made.

Google has so much market dominance that it can make these attempts and never commit, but it also guarantees that they will never succeed. Developers outside the company know that everything is just 'another try out' and it's not worth of getting into it.

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

#356

Post by fauigerzigerk » Wed, May 08, 2019, 11:35 AM UTC

ubercow13 wrote: post #317

geerlingguy wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of a select few cities, getting anything more than 100 mbps down is literally impossible unless you have the budget to pay a company to run fiber to your home (at least tens or hundreds of thousands). And outside of major cities, 10 mbps might be the best you can get. Not to mention there are a thousand situations even inside of the major cities where a few mbps (if that) is all you can muster. I for one hate…

Even in London I think some places only get 10Mbps

I'm getting 32 mbps from BT for £52.49. My O2 mobile internet hardly works at all. London really has terrible internet infrastructure. I wouldn't be surprised at all if some people got no more than 10 mbps as you say.

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

#357

Post by the_duke » Wed, May 08, 2019, 11:36 AM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #350

romanovcode wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also slow.

Flash was fast. Much faster than JavaScript+DOM at the time. In fact, it was only within the last few years that browser JavaScript and rendering engines became more performant.

Not sure why you are downvoted, you are right.

The initial loading time was there, but then execution was pretty fast.

With the amazingly optimized JS engines we have now, it's easy to forget how slow things were just 10-15 years ago. (I think Chrome really kicked of the competition there)

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

#358

Post by Wintamute » Wed, May 08, 2019, 11:40 AM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #350

romanovcode wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also slow.

Flash was fast. Much faster than JavaScript+DOM at the time. In fact, it was only within the last few years that browser JavaScript and rendering engines became more performant.

Saying anything remotely positive about Flash is an auto-downvote on HN, even if factually accurate.

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

#359

Post by tobiaswk » Wed, May 08, 2019, 11:42 AM UTC

I simply love Flutter for Android and iOS development and have been using it since alpha. I haven't tried the web application part; I'm pretty sure I never will. Here's my opinion. I've created several apps with Flutter and every time I enjoy it. The UI is easy to make beautiful and the resulting code easy to read. It feels like all what the current Android SDK is missing. The current Android SDK is old and quite frankly painfull to work with. You just can't create beautiful apps with ease; it's always a hassle. It's also messy and not easy to read the resulting code. The way the whole way the framework is structured entails ugly code in my opinion. This all becomes evident when you use different apps on Google Play. You get the sense that every app reinvented their UI; there is no real UI continuity. Google became a freeloader after JetBrains created Kotlin and marketed it will. The thing is Kotlin made just a little better; in terms of boilerplate stuff; the framework I still hate compared to Flutter. What I really like about flutter is the framework and “it’s all a widget” idea. You can basically do crazy things in UI with ease and on the other hand just use the standard UI components with a great result.

As an example I've created an alternative to Nissan's Connect EV app. It's basically a way to control and monitor your electric vehicle from Nissan. The official app is I’m very disappointed by; it’s slow and full of wrong decisions. My alternative is called "My Leaf" and its available on Google Play and the App Store; https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dk.kjeldsen.ca... https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/my-leaf-for-nissan-ev/id1436...

It's completely open source.

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

#360

Post by Nokinside » Wed, May 08, 2019, 11:53 AM UTC

kristoffer wrote: post #352

Nokinside wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qt has LGPL3 license Not GPL3. It's really easy to ship commercial Qt app with LGPL3 (except few modules that are GPL3) You just provide sources or linkable object files. Qt intentionally avoids explaining how to do this because they are selling commercial licenses. If you are in software business and can't figure this out, maybe you should consult someone. (disclosure: I own commercial Qt license and stock in the co…

No need for the tone. That is really easy as you say. What you seem to have overlooked are the implications of doing this. You are forced to help customers replace the Qt libraries in your product. That has quite large security/warranty implications. So ... no thanks! I do contract work for a company licensing Qt5. I'm hoping for Flutter or something else to kill Qt in the long run.

> No need for the tone.

I think I'm allowed for the tone when you respond with the following:

>You are forced to help customers replace the Qt libraries in your product. That has quite large security/warranty implications.

The above is completely wrong.

You develop and distribute your closed source software and link it with QT libraries like you would do normally. Nothing is needed from the customers. Your closed source software can be statically linked to LGPL binaries (to fix another common misconception).

What is needed from you is a way for the customers to get things separately. It can be written offer, link to files in the website (used to be directory in DVD). You can be almost 100% certain that your customers will never use or notice this option. It's just there to comply with the license.