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Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

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Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#121

Post by kitsunesoba »

izacus wrote: post #19
CharlesW wrote: post #6

For me, Flutter mobile isn't there yet either. I can see where it might be great for games with completely custom UIs, but I find the uncanny valley of pretend native controls a very uncomfortable place to be. Flutter could be a fantastic solution if it supported native controls and used JavaScript. I don't understand why Flutter's creators are so seemingly religious about Dart and reimplementing OS UI capabilities.

Sure, but most common mobile apps ARE completely custom UIs which insist on their own branding and look. The UI designers usually really hate if they have to use standard components and are unable to express themselves. Flutter just recognises that.

On iOS it's not too difficult to build a fully custom UI with just UIKit. You want a totally custom button? No problem, don't fight the styling inherent with UIButton, just subclass its parent class UIControl instead which is a blank canvas, but still gets you 90% of the perks of a standard UIButton with minimal effort. It's pretty easy to write entirely custom widgets with unique behaviors too.

It's a bit more messy to do that with Android Framework, and because of that I see more of an argument for using Flutter there than on iOS. Jetpack Compose seems to be a lot better in that regard though.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#122

Post by wiseowise »

kjksf wrote: post #69
wiseowise wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google’s single biggest money maker Ads is built with it. If Flutter disappeared tomorrow nobody would even notice it. How much functionality do you think is there?

In March 2021 there were 150 thousand Flutter apps in Google Play store. In May 2022 - 500 thousand. See: https://www.nomtek.com/blog/flutter-app-examples Today: I'm too lazy but you can google for more up-to-date stats. "nobody" is gigantically wrong. Flutter is extremely popular in mobile. Web and desktop support is behind but it'll improve and popularity of Flutter on desktop and web will grow too.

I meant in Google Ads. How much is the front end there anyway?

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#123

Post by dsabanin »

loic-sharma wrote: post #114
dsabanin wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any pointers for someone who would love to contribute to Flutter and Dart as an open source contributor? Is there some guideline for what kind of contributions will be considered, areas where contributions are desired, etc?

Please check the contribution guide: https://github.com/flutter/flutter/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.... We strive to be an open community. Anyone can become a Flutter team member if they contribute frequently :)

Thank you! I think that's a great attitude and a key to the long-term success.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#124

Post by dsabanin »

timsneath wrote: post #115
dsabanin wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any pointers for someone who would love to contribute to Flutter and Dart as an open source contributor? Is there some guideline for what kind of contributions will be considered, areas where contributions are desired, etc?

We've got a guide here that covers some of these areas: https://github.com/flutter/flutter/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.... For a lot of first-time contributors, improved documentation and added tests are a great way to dip toes into the water. We also have a 'good first contribution' tag on our issues log that might be a source of inspiration: https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Ai...

Awesome, thanks!

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#125

Post by kitsunesoba »

kodah wrote: post #58
hbn wrote: post #17

The more "solutions" that are developed for desktop + mobile cross-platform applications, the more I see highlighted how different the paradigms are, and how the streams really shouldn't be crossed. They're both UIs viewed on a screen that you interact with by pointing and clicking, but the similarities end there. The entire output of this cross-platform effort has been awkward applications that run everywhere but fe…

Fully native isn't especially realistic. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, general purpose tooling written by a small team can't support multiple native UIs. What often works for me is something like Wails, but it has its limitations. For instance there's no multi-window functionality there either, and while the new Wails supports more OS integrations there's still some aspects that need improvement to co…

Having worked on projects for both mobile platforms with small teams, I find that cross platform UI frameworks only really make sense for somewhat simplistic apps. The more involved the app in question is, the more these frameworks incur overhead with the extra surface area for bugs to occur on which is multiplied by the number of supported platforms.

The story on desktop is a little better but the same principle applies to some degree.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#127

Post by pritambarhate »

satvikpendem wrote: post #96
kaba0 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Java had AoT compilers for more than 20 years, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excelsior_JET

If Google really wanted they could have wrote one.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#128

Post by tekkk »

strongpigeon wrote: post #87
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?).

Okay I guess I should provide more details. Constructor syntax fine? Jesus how come you can't use the constructor parameters as the default values but have to either resort to using `late` or that weird `: {}` after constructor like in C++, can't remember how it was. I just added `late` and thought whatever. Probably there are nuances I've missed but how come you had to reinvent that - thought it should be intuitive from the get-go.

While stating itself to be statically typed you can also shoot yourself in the foot by simply using `as Type`, similar to TypeScript. Because that just assigns it to a type and doesn't cast it like you do it in say Rust.

The extreme use of classes with `abstract class` and whatnot feels kinda 90's to me, just a lot of abstractions and for what? Just feels unnecessarily complicated for something seemingly simple.

Maybe it's just little too enterprisey for my taste. Maybe that's it. I'm glad they are taking steps to improve it, I think making it more functional would help it. Even just to distinguish it from the other OOP languages.

And how come simple state management seemed so difficult as well? I tried using my tried and true MobX which is implemented for Dart as well but was disappointed in its complexity and the fact it requires you to run a code generator to wrap your classes with observables. What? Insane.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#129

Post by eddieroger »

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…

> Idk, you'd think an org like Google had the resources and the talent to make something truly amazing

One would think that, which is why I struggle to believe Google is really invested in Flutter's success. They keep it alive and talk about it, but I wonder how much they actually care about it.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#130

Post by nileshtrivedi »

loic-sharma wrote: post #108
davidkuennen wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google's Flutter team was affected by layoffs and we lost some wonderful folks. However, the number of Googlers working directly on Flutter has grown substantially in the last year. Please keep in mind that Flutter is a community project. Google is one of Flutter's many sponsors, many of our contributors are from other companies.

> Flutter is a community project

A quick WHOIS search for flutter.dev and pub.dev domains tells me that this is not really the case.

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