Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is Kotlin Multiplatform Replacing Flutter?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 80 posts

Re: Is Kotlin Multiplatform Replacing Flutter?

#41

Post by ratg13 »

inscrutable wrote: post #12

One datapoint is that Google rewrote their Google Docs app in KMM (which doesn't include UI, that's Compose Multiplatform), replacing their legacy in-house framework. They intend to write more of their apps in it. They also recently offshored some Flutter roles which may be a sign of how central they view Flutter. In a few years it may be in the graveyard. https://touchlab.co/KMP-at-google https://www.reddit.com/r/Fl…

The roles that were moved were devops stuff, nothing to do with core flutter, and they did this to many groups.

Re: Is Kotlin Multiplatform Replacing Flutter?

#42

Post by netdur »

jamil7 wrote: post #34
zerr wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike RN, Flutter is desktop worthy.

Eh, I was recently contracted onto a native macOS team (Swift), the company had an adjacent desktop team who opted to use Flutter, they had a lot of problems and ended up dropping the project. I don't know the details but there was a lot of weird edge cases they ran into on desktop. They had a mobile app partially in Flutter (different team again) which seemed to be OK, however.

The problem with Flutter is that it's a UI framework that relies on a single main thread. If you put something heavy there, you'll get lag. In contrast, other languages like SwiftUI let you easily spawn threads. Flutter dismisses this as outdated and instead promotes an isolated model with completely separate memory... for reasons.

Re: Is Kotlin Multiplatform Replacing Flutter?

#43

Post by rapsey »

jamil7 wrote: post #40

The only cross-platform tooling I've really been interested in is Rust + uniFFI but it doesn't seem to be that widely used yet, I've only built some toy libraries in it so can't actually say how well it works.

A ton of companies use Rust shared code cross platform.

Re: Is Kotlin Multiplatform Replacing Flutter?

#44

Post by isodev »

dualogy wrote: post #2

Not sure... for some types of apps they might "compete" but for many not, I think: I view (after some toying with Flutter) the GPU UI renderers ala Flutter, QT/QML, gioUI, slint.dev etc as modern Flash-like options in a "can do anything graphically you could do with HTML+CSS+JS, which isn't the prime choice for some devs or some apps or those that don't want to have to end up with Ionic/Electron" manner — whereas KMM…

There is also a webview based approach, like https://v2.tauri.app/ which comes with all the upsides of creating a lightweight HTML+CSS+JS UI but instead of shipping copies of chromium, it runs using the system's webview browser engine.

Re: Is Kotlin Multiplatform Replacing Flutter?

#45

Post by frizlab »

bschwindHN wrote: post #36
wg0 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardly. Performance lags. Even after the new rendering engine. Try compiling and then running desk top samples (a mail client, a finance management tool) on macOs and check the amount of jank in animations. Text fields are whole another story. They feel alien in UX on every platform. I can live with that but performance is a deal breaker.

Yep, Flutter performance absolutely _sucks_ on older hardware, which they obviously aren't testing on.

On newer hardware too.

Re: Is Kotlin Multiplatform Replacing Flutter?

#46

Post by ratg13 »

kbcool wrote: post #9

Since when was Flutter the "go-to solution for cross-platform development"? Maybe for hobbyists but in the corporate space it's still React Native. The problem with Flutter, and this extends even further with KMP is that the scope of your skills is limited to making mobile apps whereas with React Native you are learning and using skills that can apply to a complete stack. KMP is even worse in this regard as they expe…

All you have to do is google Flutter vs React Native

The trend for Flutter is a straight line going up and React Native is going down in popularity.

The trend was obvious many years ago, and just recently Flutter is now surpassing RN in nearly every poll.

Re: Is Kotlin Multiplatform Replacing Flutter?

#47

Post by jamil7 »

rapsey wrote: post #43
jamil7 wrote: post #40

The only cross-platform tooling I've really been interested in is Rust + uniFFI but it doesn't seem to be that widely used yet, I've only built some toy libraries in it so can't actually say how well it works.

A ton of companies use Rust shared code cross platform.

Specifically on mobile?

Re: Is Kotlin Multiplatform Replacing Flutter?

#48

Post by matharmin »

My team publishes a cross-platform library/SDK with support for Flutter, React Native, Web and KMP.

Right now, we're seeing a lot of interest in Flutter for new cross-platform apps. I personally find it a really pleasant development experience.

We're also seeing a lot of interest in React Native. In our case possibly less than Flutter only because there is more competing libraries available for React Native.

We're also seeing interest in KMP, but much less than Flutter or React Native - I'd guess it's probably 5% or less of our users. It may have a good future, but it's not there yet in terms of current usage.

Re: Is Kotlin Multiplatform Replacing Flutter?

#49

Post by jamil7 »

netdur wrote: post #42
jamil7 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I was recently contracted onto a native macOS team (Swift), the company had an adjacent desktop team who opted to use Flutter, they had a lot of problems and ended up dropping the project. I don't know the details but there was a lot of weird edge cases they ran into on desktop. They had a mobile app partially in Flutter (different team again) which seemed to be OK, however.

The problem with Flutter is that it's a UI framework that relies on a single main thread. If you put something heavy there, you'll get lag. In contrast, other languages like SwiftUI let you easily spawn threads. Flutter dismisses this as outdated and instead promotes an isolated model with completely separate memory... for reasons.

OK good to know, yeah, we even have a whole new concurrency model in Swift which makes offloading things a lot safer and easier than it used to be.

Re: Is Kotlin Multiplatform Replacing Flutter?

#50

Post by akmarinov »

ratg13 wrote: post #46
kbcool wrote: post #9

Since when was Flutter the "go-to solution for cross-platform development"? Maybe for hobbyists but in the corporate space it's still React Native. The problem with Flutter, and this extends even further with KMP is that the scope of your skills is limited to making mobile apps whereas with React Native you are learning and using skills that can apply to a complete stack. KMP is even worse in this regard as they expe…

All you have to do is google Flutter vs React Native The trend for Flutter is a straight line going up and React Native is going down in popularity. The trend was obvious many years ago, and just recently Flutter is now surpassing RN in nearly every poll.

The trend for Flutter is 10 to 50 apps, the trend for React Native is in the thousands
Post reply on HN