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Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

plei.one

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Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#91

Post by nu11ptr »

A couple of thoughts (doesn't address all the concerns):

1. I write in Rust, so my plan was to write the UI in flutter and use the rust/flutter bridge so I can write most of the client code in Rust. Gets around _some_ of the lack of flutter libs by using Rust ecosystem instead (but not for the UI itself)

2. There is a new lib out called platform ui that wraps mac/windows/linux UI transparently (it is just a wrapper that wraps fluent ui and macos UI libs, etc). Not sure how well it works, but might worth a shot and gets closer to native l&f for desktop

https://pub.dev/packages/platform_ui

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#92

Post by IshKebab »

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 think you give Dart too little credit. Consider the other popular languages of today - Python, JavaScript, C++. Dart is far nicer than those. I'd say it is nicer than Go too.

I'm not sure what you mean about boilerplate. The way you create UIs in Dart is one of the main draws of Flutter. Would you rather Android's XML? Or QWidget?

The language design is not an issue with Flutter. Flutter's issues are mainly ecosystem size and performance.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#94

Post by strongpigeon »

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

It’s not as pure, but I think from a usability point of view they made the right call there.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#95

Post by chairhairair »

zerr wrote: post #56
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…

> so much boilerplate feeling code (Center here, Container there) That's Flutter, the framework. I like Dart and I wish some conventional imperative Qt/Delphi-like GUI toolkit was available for it.

You can use Flutter as an imperative framework. Just ignore widgets (the reactive top layer of Flutter) and use the underlying imperative elements directly.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#96

Post by satvikpendem »

kaba0 wrote: post #89
satvikpendem wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Java, again, is not ahead of time compiled, or at least did not have a good solution for that ten years ago. Even Android apps now run as AOT compiled apps with Android Runtime (ART), discontinuing the Dalvik VM.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#97

Post by satvikpendem »

sorokod wrote: post #84
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?

No you're right, it's Flutter, they are misconstruing Dart and Flutter.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#98

Post by davidkuennen »

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…

First of all: Thank you for your outstanding work!

And sorry to ask this here, but how have the recent layoffs affected the flutter team?

We're using flutter as our main framework for our app and it's quite important.

The layoffs have sparked some fears that flutter development might slow down.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#99

Post by [deleted] »

mhoad wrote: post #9
preommr wrote: post #5

Flutter is going to be 5 years old soon. It's not even the leading solution for cross-platform development for mobile let alone desktop. It's great to be positive and supportive but realistically, if someone had to bet months of dev work on building something non-trivial - would they really choose flutter?

It’s hardly some toy SDK that is only suitable for MVPs. Google’s single biggest money maker Ads is built with it. It’s hardly a Google specific thing either there are a number of mega sized players also strongly betting on it for some fairly mission critical stuff if I understood correctly.

[deleted]

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#100

Post by never_inline »

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…

Last time I used flutter for desktop, setting custom window size required an external package. I think it's a significant use case for many people.
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