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Kotlin Multiplatform for Android and iOS Apps

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Re: Kotlin Multiplatform for Android and iOS Apps

#11

Post by cageface »

bobajeff wrote: post #9

I've mostly stayed away from mobile development because Android projects look too complicated to get started on even NDK projects. The value of learning those APIs to me isn't even close to what you get by learning Web APIs. So if I invested my time to learning it I don't feel Is get as much out of it. Maybe something like Kotlin/Compose Multiplatform can help. But, really if they made Android APIs (or React-native/F…

I used to favor the web for the same reasons but the churn in web technology is at least as bad in mobile. The knowledge I had three years ago is almost useless now. And on top of that you have to deal with a platform that is really a big pile of quick hacks that was never intended for building complex and performant applications.

Re: Kotlin Multiplatform for Android and iOS Apps

#13

Post by cageface »

Grimburger wrote: post #10
eatonphil wrote: post #2

I've been curious about Kotlin Multiplatform for cross platform desktop apps (as an alternative to Electron). If anyone here has used it for that, care to share your experience?

- Flutter is reliable and simple to build with - React Native is easy to find workers for but slow - Kotlin is somewhat in the middle of both but has better performance - Tauri is coming out of left field with webview2 apps but it's very early days for their mobile plans and completely unproven Kotlin does a good job with all the compromises you have to make with cross platform but it's quite application dependent?

I started building a Flutter app recently and so far I’ve been quite impressed. The ecosystem is surprisingly mature and dev velocity has been good even though I’m learning a new language and framework at the same time. On a purely technological level I’d take this over React Native any day and I have a lot of React experience.

I think Google has a winner on their hands here if they don’t give up on it.

Re: Kotlin Multiplatform for Android and iOS Apps

#14

Post by novok »

cageface wrote: post #11
bobajeff wrote: post #9

I've mostly stayed away from mobile development because Android projects look too complicated to get started on even NDK projects. The value of learning those APIs to me isn't even close to what you get by learning Web APIs. So if I invested my time to learning it I don't feel Is get as much out of it. Maybe something like Kotlin/Compose Multiplatform can help. But, really if they made Android APIs (or React-native/F…

I used to favor the web for the same reasons but the churn in web technology is at least as bad in mobile. The knowledge I had three years ago is almost useless now. And on top of that you have to deal with a platform that is really a big pile of quick hacks that was never intended for building complex and performant applications.

Ironically mobile has been one of the most stable api platforms to develop against in my entire career, especially in iOS. New libraries and languages are mostly iterative and make sense to support a new feature.

Re: Kotlin Multiplatform for Android and iOS Apps

#15

Post by novok »

cageface wrote: post #13
Grimburger wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Flutter is reliable and simple to build with - React Native is easy to find workers for but slow - Kotlin is somewhat in the middle of both but has better performance - Tauri is coming out of left field with webview2 apps but it's very early days for their mobile plans and completely unproven Kotlin does a good job with all the compromises you have to make with cross platform but it's quite application dependent?

I started building a Flutter app recently and so far I’ve been quite impressed. The ecosystem is surprisingly mature and dev velocity has been good even though I’m learning a new language and framework at the same time. On a purely technological level I’d take this over React Native any day and I have a lot of React experience. I think Google has a winner on their hands here if they don’t give up on it.

Big worry for me has been a history of ignoring ios bugs for years, causing things like long startup times

Re: Kotlin Multiplatform for Android and iOS Apps

#16

Post by lewisjoe »

I'm puzzled why Kotlin isn't getting enough attention on HN, at least as much as Rust or Zig.

Kotlin is indeed popular in it's specific domain (Android & Java). But the company is keen to position it as "write once run anywhere" space with a strong focus on multiplatform development.

1. The build system provides platform specific bindings for free (huge plus compared to the hassle of writing the core in C/C++ and then hand-writing platform specific bindings)

2. Keen focus on enabling single codebase for multiple platforms.

3. The company went so far, as to build a multi-platform UI Framework (Compose Multiplatform) that directly renders to Skia and runs on all mobile/desktop platforms. And even on browsers (with wasm)

I find it odd, that such interesting a language / compiler finds little attention beyond its domain.

Is there any reasons for this that I'm missing?

Re: Kotlin Multiplatform for Android and iOS Apps

#17

Post by bad_user »

clawoo wrote: post #5

I don't see what the difference is between using React Native vs Flutter vs Compose Multiplatform. You will still be basically putting all of your eggs in a corp's basket. What if Jetbrains decides overnight "you know what? this whole Compose Multiplatform is taking up too many of our resources, we're going to retire it at the end of this quarter"?

It depends on how popular the library gets before the plug gets pulled. If it's popular, it can survive because it's Open Source, and it actually has an advantage over actual proprietary platforms.

Re: Kotlin Multiplatform for Android and iOS Apps

#20

Post by cageface »

novok wrote: post #15
cageface wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started building a Flutter app recently and so far I’ve been quite impressed. The ecosystem is surprisingly mature and dev velocity has been good even though I’m learning a new language and framework at the same time. On a purely technological level I’d take this over React Native any day and I have a lot of React experience. I think Google has a winner on their hands here if they don’t give up on it.

Big worry for me has been a history of ignoring ios bugs for years, causing things like long startup times

It’s a legitimate concern but so far my experience on iOS has been quite good. They’ve put a lot of effort into polishing iOS performance recently.
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