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Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

plei.one

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Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#161

Post by satvikpendem »

kaba0 wrote: post #160
satvikpendem wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More importantly, it was a Google language that they could mold for their own needs, not so possible if it's an outside language like TypeScript. For example, early on, they asked the Dart team to create an AOT compiler since Apple does not allow JITted code apparently (not sure how React Native gets around this then), or maybe it didn't back then, and the Dart team was able to do it successfully for the Flutter te…

Why would you need to modify the language? Dart is the most basic managed language without any novel feature. There is zero reason why, say, java couldn’t have been fitted for this particular niche.

How will you convince the Java team to add things you want to make it work better for your framework? You could try adding them yourself but you'd be forking and making your own Java dialect at that point. They did that instead with Dart which they own.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#162

Post by satvikpendem »

dmitriid wrote: post #150
easythrees wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Flutter open source?

It's open source the way Chrome is open source: the source is there, but the development is ~100% by Google

Not 100%, at least 30% of PRs are done by outside Google contributors.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#163

Post by satvikpendem »

plq wrote: post #159
nileshtrivedi wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Is there a CLA? Do I have to waive ownership of my contributions for my code to be merged? If yes then it's not a community project. Domain ownership has little to do with it. Look at who owns github.com :)

CLAs are always a good idea if one is maintaining an open source project. I'm not going to track down every single contributor who made some small PR perhaps, just to make a license change.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#164

Post by moomoo11 »

justeleblanc wrote: post #145
loic-sharma wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A community project? Flutter.dev literally says "Flutter is an open source framework by Google [...]" There is no list of sponsors on their webpage either, only a list of companies using Flutter. Google owns the logo and the trademark, controls the github repository, etc. Having contributors from other companies does not make the project into a community project.

You’re supposed to feel better, not ask questions. Besides they won’t say anything that affects their own job security (nor should they imo).

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#165

Post by moomoo11 »

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…

The point of seriously (key word) using x platform tools is to ship fast and solve customer problems.

If the particular experience you want isn’t supported, creativity is required to either:

A) use an alternate experience. Users literally don’t care as long as their problem is solved. They don’t care if it’s using X api or multi window or whatever. Just use tabs for all they care.

B) build the experience as a lib and maybe open source it

Anything else is for hobbyists.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#166

Post by whiplashoo »

Last year, I built a desktop app with Flutter with native-looking UI, for both macOS and Windows: https://blog.whidev.com/native-looking-desktop-app-with-flut...

Indeed, multi-window support is absolutely missing right now, but it's the Flutter's team top priority. Context menus are now available with 3.7.

Generally, I found Flutter/Dart easy to pick up and build a quality desktop app with ease. Currently, I am not convinced that it can be used for performance-critical apps yet without a lot of developer effort and experience (there is, for example, Rows, an Excel clone built with Flutter). However, it works for building general-purpose apps on desktop, without messing with the native toolkits that are in a strange place, especially on Windows.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#167

Post by kaba0 »

satvikpendem wrote: post #161
kaba0 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you need to modify the language? Dart is the most basic managed language without any novel feature. There is zero reason why, say, java couldn’t have been fitted for this particular niche.

How will you convince the Java team to add things you want to make it work better for your framework? You could try adding them yourself but you'd be forking and making your own Java dialect at that point. They did that instead with Dart which they own.

What would you need for a framework that can’t be implemented as a library? Will we recreate every language from scratch for the next logging, gui lib, web framework as well?

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#168

Post by satvikpendem »

kaba0 wrote: post #167
satvikpendem wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will you convince the Java team to add things you want to make it work better for your framework? You could try adding them yourself but you'd be forking and making your own Java dialect at that point. They did that instead with Dart which they own.

What would you need for a framework that can’t be implemented as a library? Will we recreate every language from scratch for the next logging, gui lib, web framework as well?

For example, making an AOT compiler. Or adding other features. Or making the implementation more suited to client side apps. There are many things you can do to a language to make it easier for a specific use case. In the extreme, this is what DSLs are.

I don't understand why you don't understand that having first class control over a language's development is a useful thing to have.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#169

Post by mixmastamyk »

satvikpendem wrote: post #50
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…

If you have the money, make everything native, but until then I can build a Flutter app that works on 6+ platforms for the price of one, which is a real competitive advantage for a solo developer running a startup.

One thing I learned though... if you say are going to deploy on say, Android, you are not getting away from its dev toolchain and API if you want to do anything non-pedestrian. Same for iOS and possibly Windows.

So you often end up really having to learn N+1 platforms.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#170

Post by phist_mcgee »

mda wrote: post #151
miiiiiike wrote: post #140

If there's anything I've learned from using Google projects it's this: It's not going to get fixed. It almost doesn't matter what it is. If you've used any Google OSS project seriously you're going to come across an obvious defect and run to GitHub to open an issue. But, there's already an open issue for the problem.. And it's been open for almost as long as the project has existed. It will have an inscrutable priori…

Well it seems there are 11K open issues and 66K closed issues in their github page. So maybe some issues got fixed at least?

The dreaded, 'closed due to inactivity' strikes again.
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