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Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

plei.one

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Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#81

Post by kjksf »

amelius wrote: post #14
killjoywashere wrote: post #10

I feel like this is similar the conversations we heard about Rust and Go 5-10 years ago. late edit: 5-10 years ago people were complaining about these languages having issues binding databases, network protocols, etc.

Do Rust and Go have good (complete) Desktop UI libraries yet?

I don't know about Rust but Go doesn't.

And probably never will. There are a bunch of projects but they are not very good or complete.

The problem is that "good" requires massive amounts of work that is beyond the capacity of single person / small team of volunteers i.e. typical open source project.

Which is why Flutter (and Electron) are the only reasonable technologies for desktop apps that I see today (and in the future).

They get majority of investment from other place: 99.99999% investment in Electron is investment in Chrome.

99% investment in Flutter Desktop is investment in Flutter Mobile.

Flutter Desktop and Electron will continue to benefit from massive investments in Chrome and Flutter Mobile. No other project building desktop UI can come anywhere close this level of investment.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#82

Post by satvikpendem »

mhoad wrote: post #61
satvikpendem wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google AdWords is made with Dart, specifically AngularDart, not Flutter. Edit: yes, Google Ads the mobile app is made with Flutter.

Sorry I was referring to the mobile apps not the web experience.

Where does it show that the mobile app is in Flutter?

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#83

Post by capableweb »

malkia wrote: post #76
capableweb wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google’s single biggest money maker Ads is built with it You mean Google Adwords right, the admin panel? I can't see any evidence of that, nor is it listed at https://flutter.dev/showcase , where you get this from?

Google Ads is written in Flutter - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and... - if you go download, skip the welcoming bits, and go to licensing you'll see lots of flutter libraries including flutter itself

Right, when people say "Google’s single biggest money maker" they're talking about Adwords, which is usually accessed via the web, not a Android app called "Google Ads".

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#84

Post by sorokod »

tekkk wrote: post #23

To me as someone who recently got into Flutter to make a side-project (mobile game) the most glaring problem isn't the lack of ecosystem or little UI issues the author mentions but the language itself. You had a green field to make the best programming language for creating UIs and you made Dart? Like what. I don't have particular issue with the heavy OOP paradigm but the fact you have to write so much boilerplate fe…

Center here, Container there

Is that really determined by Dart and not by how Flutter chooses to do things?

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#85

Post by account-5 »

wiseowise wrote: post #30
account-5 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? I'd love to know what's so bad about it...

Covariant generics for starters. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18517514

Looks like I'm going to have to find out what generics are and then why they shouldn't be covariant!

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#86

Post by malkia »

amelius wrote: post #14
killjoywashere wrote: post #10

I feel like this is similar the conversations we heard about Rust and Go 5-10 years ago. late edit: 5-10 years ago people were complaining about these languages having issues binding databases, network protocols, etc.

Do Rust and Go have good (complete) Desktop UI libraries yet?

Coworker of mine is using Fyne (for Go). So far the one issue that was found was the use of OpenGL, which on certain video cards, on Windows, in a remote-desktop session may not work (it works if you have NVIDIA drivers for example), or if you force `mesa` software rendering on top.

These little details are usually not a concern, until they become a sudden requirement. Another one is Accessibility, which actually helps in other ways - you can automate UI test, or just automate things through it without relying (to a degree) on the kit's framework. In a way it serves to prove that the UI toolkit does diligent job of presenting it's widgets to a Reader.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#87

Post by strongpigeon »

tekkk wrote: post #23

To me as someone who recently got into Flutter to make a side-project (mobile game) the most glaring problem isn't the lack of ecosystem or little UI issues the author mentions but the language itself. You had a green field to make the best programming language for creating UIs and you made Dart? Like what. I don't have particular issue with the heavy OOP paradigm but the fact you have to write so much boilerplate fe…

I’m not sure why the Dart hate honestly. It’s a pretty solid language in my opinion and I like the direction they’re taking (non-nullable, record, pattern matching). The ecosystem is weak for sure, but that’s not a gripe on the language itself.

I’m curious what do you dislike about it apart from semi-colons and the constructor syntax (which seem fine to me?).

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#88

Post by synergy20 »

amelius wrote: post #14
killjoywashere wrote: post #10

I feel like this is similar the conversations we heard about Rust and Go 5-10 years ago. late edit: 5-10 years ago people were complaining about these languages having issues binding databases, network protocols, etc.

Do Rust and Go have good (complete) Desktop UI libraries yet?

not at all

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#89

Post by kaba0 »

satvikpendem wrote: post #42
tekkk wrote: post #23

To me as someone who recently got into Flutter to make a side-project (mobile game) the most glaring problem isn't the lack of ecosystem or little UI issues the author mentions but the language itself. You had a green field to make the best programming language for creating UIs and you made Dart? Like what. I don't have particular issue with the heavy OOP paradigm but the fact you have to write so much boilerplate fe…

They've answered why Dart many times. It's a language that fits their needs, since it has JIT, AOT, compilation to JS and now WASM. Back then there weren't many languages that could do all that, and even today there aren't many. Kotlin (and other JVM languages) and TypeScript (and other compile-to-JS-only languages) are already out since they are not AOT, only JIT even now. More importantly, it was a Google language…

Java fits all the bills and Google already has ample experience/tooling working with it, including a very great java to js compiler.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#90

Post by dsabanin »

loic-sharma wrote: post #43

Hello, I'm from the Flutter desktop team. Thank you for the excellent feedback, this is truly invaluable. Here are some updates from our side: 1. Custom context menus - We just added this feature in Flutter 3.7, which was released two weeks ago. Please give this a try and let us know what you think! 2. Multi-window - This is a high priority for the Flutter team, we have several engineers working on this project curre…

Thank you for the great work! Flutter and Dart are awesome and keep getting better. I'm coming from the land of Scala, Erlang, Clojure, TypeScript, and I'm loving the general approach to the engineering and design that Flutter and Dart teams have. Kudos!
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