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Flutter 3

docs.flutter.dev

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Re: Flutter 3

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was enjoying the frog book (The Dart Programming Language, Gilad Bracha & Erik Meiker) but that was 2015, and now very out of date. Its strange to see there is no up to date book from major publisher, like the Rust book at https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/

The incentive structures around technical books are pretty weird. Most major publishers pay quite small royalty rates, so even a popular tech book won't actually make the author much money. And the effort to write a good technical book is pretty huge. Also, the set of people who will actually finish writing a book is quite a bit smaller than the set of people who aspire to. (An editor at O'Reilly told me once that on…

Alternative to (3) - Company that owns a language and is willing to pay decent money for someone qualified to write a book in order to increase popularity

Re: Flutter 3

#262

Despite many maturity issues in practice Flutter is the only realistic option for true cross platform UIs that run everywhere. Apart from Qt , but the licensing issue is a hindrance. And yes, the web backend isn't ideal, but it will improve over time. I just wish Google had built Flutter on a low level core that isn't tied to Dart, so it would be usable from other languages. Dart isn't horrible and is getting better,…

> Flutter is the only realistic option for true cross platform UIs that run everywhere. I understand that argument but 100% disagree. The web is the cross platform that runs everywhere (as in in a browser or webview). True it has many issues and some forms of it (electron) are not ideal for some use case but I believe it’s a better platform than flutter in almost every way. You say “true” cross platform and could arg…

>"The web is the cross platform"

Nope, The web is The Platform. And while it offers numerous benefits it has plenty of flaws / inability to do some things as well.

Re: Flutter 3

#263
post #4

Does anybody know of any good Flutter for Windows applications that are worth looking at?

Rows [0], a spreadsheet app, has its Windows and macOS versions built in Flutter. It's quite fast from my usage. The marketing video they did for Flutter [1] goes into a little detail as to how they did it but they also have a tech talk that goes into more detail [2]. Their spreadsheet engine is open source as well [3].

[0] https://rows.com/download

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEdQXBUPYOE

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv_mzbEtUmU

[3] https://github.com/rows/swayze

Re: Flutter 3

#264
I like and use Flutter myself, I recommend others use it as well if you see other comments in my profile, but one thing that annoys me is that it feels as if the major updates are coming too fast, in a way. As in, they say things like Flutter Web are now "stable" but if you actually use them, you'll find that they are clearly not stable. Windows was mentioned to be stable in the last release, but it too has issues. I am now wary of just how "stable" these macOS and Linux versions really are.

I think the marketing is getting ahead of the actual development of the framework. If parts are truly not stable, why call them stable, if not for wanting Flutter to be in the news cycle every so often?

Re: Flutter 3

#265
post #49

What are big and highly used apps that use Flutter?

My app[1] has 5 figure daily users (if that's considered somewhat big) and is written in Flutter. I love Flutter. It made all this so much easier. [1] https://stockevents.app

Just trying to be honest here, but using this as an example on my iPad Pro with magic keyboard... flutter apps do not feel great on iOS IMO. Animations have an initial low fps/jerkyness to them. Lot of weirdness when trying to use an the iPad trackpad, horizontal directions seem to be inverted. Scrolling inertia and feel just feels off in general to me. I'm sure flutter is great on Android and all but it still feels like they have a bit of work to do on iOS in order to really cross that uncanny valley gap.

Regardless I'm sure what you have is a great app here so hope you don't feel like I'm targeting you or your app directly here, and at the end of the day if flutter allows you to make your customers happy more power to you and hope it works out the best for you.

Re: Flutter 3

#266
post #217
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep hearing this, but none of the cross platform apps I run use Flutter. It's all Electron and Qt. I don't think I've ever seen Flutter in the wild.

> ever seen Flutter in the wild. So what is this made in then? [0] Hint it is not Electron. [0] https://rows.com/download

Xamarin?

Re: Flutter 3

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Important for web apps or web sites ? There's a difference, a product's landing page will need SEO, definitely, but the app itself, ie app.example.com, likely does not need SEO. For example, an easy example is Figma. The landing page is built with HTML, CSS and JS, but the actual app itself is actually built with WASM [0], very similar to the canvas based implementation of Flutter apps. https://www.figma.com/blog/web…

I'm not sure there's a good distinction between web apps or websites today. Would you consider Instagram or Twitter a website or a web app? If I type 'IG ${username}' or 'Twitter ${username}' or '@${username}' in a search engine, you should expect what is to be expected within the first result.

True, if the app needs SEO, then yes it should be built with HTML, CSS and JS, and not Flutter which uses a canvas element. However, there are many apps where SEO is unneeded, such as Figma above (no one will search for your company's design files on Google) or other such corporate apps, and that's where Flutter comes in handy.

Re: Flutter 3

#269
post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The incentive structures around technical books are pretty weird. Most major publishers pay quite small royalty rates, so even a popular tech book won't actually make the author much money. And the effort to write a good technical book is pretty huge. Also, the set of people who will actually finish writing a book is quite a bit smaller than the set of people who aspire to. (An editor at O'Reilly told me once that on…

Former O'Reilly editor here: story checks out. The 1/3 might be a bit low -- I had some surprises (one guy joined the Peace Corps and moved to South America, plus usual divorces and deaths and job changes) but it felt more like 80% completed. This might be the rosy glasses of memory, though. There's also a weird difference in incentive between writing the first edition and working on updates: if the author was just a…

That is fascinating. As someone who has writing a technical book as a life goal, I'd love to ask--do you have any insights you'd be willing to share regarding how to get started?

Re: Flutter 3

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Flutter is the only realistic option for true cross platform UIs that run everywhere. I understand that argument but 100% disagree. The web is the cross platform that runs everywhere (as in in a browser or webview). True it has many issues and some forms of it (electron) are not ideal for some use case but I believe it’s a better platform than flutter in almost every way. You say “true” cross platform and could arg…

I have yet to see a world in which local file access, background services, local notifications, timers, alarms, native media controls, etc, works as well on web as in native apps. A lot of it is there "in theory", but web tech has the achilles heel of only allowing stuff that would be safe to have in a random website that some asshat links you on twitter. Of course this is only relevant if that deeper plumbing into t…

That plumbing is there and easily doable, but up to Apple… just like how the proliferation of QR codes in America didn’t happen until Apple decided to include it in the camera app. It (QR codes) was widely used for maybe almost a decade in China due to inclusion in the ubiquitous Wechat app.

However given the app store is a cash cow for Apple I highly doubt they’d want to integrate web more deeply.

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