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I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

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Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#151

Post by wrayjustin »

scarface_74 wrote: post #32
tkiolp4 wrote: post #15

I don’t buy it. As software developers we learn technologies for breakfast. We learn them, and then we forget them. We recollect the wisdom gained and apply it in our next gig using a different technology. It works for mobile development, for frontend, for backend, for infra, for almost anything. I have worked for years with PHP, Apache, Ansible and MySQL. Nowadays not anymore. And in 7 years I’ll be using something…

Yes because I know Java (hypothetically I haven’t touched Java since two years after it was introduced) I can become an efficient Android developer “in a few days”. Better yet, since I did Windows CE development for ruggedized devices using C# Compact framework back between 2007-2010, I should have no problem picking up iOS development “in a few days” and start being a productive member of a team right? Or better yet…

Your hyperbolic comment is not far from reality when applied correctly.

I've long said, and would stand by: Programming/Development is logic; learn logic. Languages are just syntax; if you understand logic, you _can_ learn the syntax.

Taking concepts from one language to another shouldn't be an onerous task.

Of course, none of that means you'll get that _senior_ language -focused position, or any particular position at all.

But let's not act like picking up a new language, for a developer, is the equivalent of switching from development to medical practices, or even networking/system administration/etc.

Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#152

Post by BiteCode_dev »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #103
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one thing knowing the language, it's another being productive with the ecosystem. One takes between a few days and a few months. The other is a few years, unless you get pro training. I guarantee most people starting with Python from another language will be productive quickly. But they will curse the packaging ecosystem because they will follow a lot of tutorials that don't follow this: https://bitecode.substac…

You're seriously arguing that someone with general knowledge of programming is going to get hard-stuck not knowing specifics of a language you and thousands of others have blogposted about for years, while linking your own posts? Let's be real here. What percentage of companies are in dire need of 'experienced [language] programmers' who know these specifics that haven't already been set by previous devs or have anot…

Yes.

Last week I talked with a guy who was pitching to rewrite their entire product in another language because he never heard of python GIS ecoshst and was doing spatial calculations by hand. Would cost hundred of thousand euros.

The HN bubble strikes again.

Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#153

Post by scarface_74 »

malux85 wrote: post #146
jmull wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Modern development requires knowing the toolchain framework, idiosyncrasies, foot guns, best practices, etc. All this stuff is the same as learning the details of the language. Once you know the pattern it’s not hard to use it in a context with incidental differences in details. It’s usually more than days, but can easily be weeks or months — it depends on how well you really know the patterns. If you really know t…

I’m a senior dev, having coded commercially for 20 years now, and I think you are correct. In my time, I have been an embedded C developer, a kernel developer, MFC C++, then J2EE, then Mobile C# .NET, then Python we dev, Python DS, Python Scientific, DevOps, WebDev These aren’t trivial projects, but entire systems, E.g. I solo built https://atomictessellator.com just to scratch my own itch learning quantum chemistry…

Were you able to mentor juniors in best practices and see the foot guns that could happen based on your experience?

BTW, I’m using the definition of senior developer as defined by large tech companies - the whole “scope”, “impact”, “dealing with ambiguity”, “leading initiatives” metrics not “I code really well”.

My experience on the enterprise dev side (1996-2020 and going back on that side now), is that titles mean very little outside of tech companies with leveling guidelines.

BTW, the last time I had only six years of professional experience was 2002.

The last time I only had six years of programming experience was 1992. By then I had done assembly language programming as hobby on four architectures (65C02, 68K, PPC and x86)

Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#154

Post by cageface »

edem wrote: post #40

I wonder why anyone thinks that learning a library that's written in a dead language is a good idea.

Dart has been evolving rapidly. It remains to be seen if Google will stay committed to it but you can hardly call it dead today.

https://medium.com/dartlang/announcing-dart-3-53f065a10635

Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#155

Post by bmitc »

candiddevmike wrote: post #16
PedroBatista wrote: post #9

Obviously I feel the pain of the OP but I think he blames the wrong thing. Flutter is a ( viable ) technology that’s being growing for the last few years. A very significant percentage of new mobile apps are programmed with it these days. It seems his problems have everything to do with the local job market and not the technology. With the added bonus that you can be a single man operation and release your own apps f…

Flutter is pretty old if you think about it and still has too many rough edges and not a lot of big name adoption. The project is too ambitious, and the features seem more like PoCs than something you can rely on in production, IMO.

This is what has prevented me from diving into Flutter for a personal project. Although it supports desktop and web, it is first and foremost a tool for building mobile applications. For desktop, too much of the API is built around the assumption that you are on a mobile device with a single window and a finger as the pointing device. Feature requests for desktop, such as proper support for mouse-based drag and drop and multiple windows, are either ignored or take forever to develop.

Any platform that tries to support web, mobile, and desktop all at once, of which there are many, are destined to this fate of being spread too broadly and thinly.

Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#156

Post by scarface_74 »

linuxftw wrote: post #143
scarface_74 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most open source solutions are meant to be building blocks for larger projects. It’s up to you to know what’s best for your organization based on prior experience. If you’re not in the C# ecosystem would you know how badly you are shooting yourself in the foot using Entity Framework when you should be using Dapper (a micro ORM invented and used by Stack Exchange)? On the other hand, would you know the limitations of…

I don't write crud apps, but if I did, I'm sure I could sort out which ORM is the right one for my usecase.

“I don’t have any experience that is relevant to most of the 2.7 million developers. But I’m sure about my opinions”

Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#157

Post by linuxftw »

scarface_74 wrote: post #156
linuxftw wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't write crud apps, but if I did, I'm sure I could sort out which ORM is the right one for my usecase.

“I don’t have any experience that is relevant to most of the 2.7 million developers. But I’m sure about my opinions”

Right. You have experience doing what everyone else does, aka, replaceable.

Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#158

Post by tetromino_ »

amelius wrote: post #117

So what would be the best mobile development setup for someone who: - prefers to work in a Unix-like environment (e.g. Linux); - prefers to code in Vim; - prefers to have a single unified codebase for different mobile platforms; - prefers to test applications on a Linux machine running an X server.

> prefers to test applications on a Linux machine running an X server

Apple won't allow you to do that. Any binary submitted to their app store must be built using Xcode running on MacOS on genuine Mac hardware. It's a tax they collect from their developer community; if you don't want to pay, you won't get to play in their walled garden.

Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#159

Post by sirsinsalot »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #113
scarface_74 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes because I know Java (hypothetically I haven’t touched Java since two years after it was introduced) I can become an efficient Android developer “in a few days”. Better yet, since I did Windows CE development for ruggedized devices using C# Compact framework back between 2007-2010, I should have no problem picking up iOS development “in a few days” and start being a productive member of a team right? Or better yet…

Thanks very much for posting this, totally agree. I get frustrated when I hear all these missives about how easy it is for any good developer to learn a new language "in a couple days". I think this paragraph was key: > Learning a language is easy. Modern development requires knowing the toolchain framework, idiosyncrasies, foot guns, best practices, etc. That said, I still nearly always hire for general skills and n…

I always read "learn" in this context as "be familiar enough with the basic language properties that I can pick the rest up on the job, get things done, and not be too dangerous, or annoying in code review"

and when I read it that way I agree. Some of the best devs I have hired had no prior experience in the stack.

I'm not hiring for Python or C#, I am hiring a software engineer and the skills I value are all transferable.

Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#160

Post by willio58 »

jstx1 wrote: post #125

The mistake isn't investing time into Flutter; it's being "the Flutter guy", only knowing Flutter and only searching for Flutter jobs.

Same could be said about “the react guy”, which I definitely have been in the past. Of course react has buy-in 10x what flutter ever had but still.
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