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Flutter 3.47

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Re: Flutter 3.47

#71

Post by veeti »

Larrikin wrote: post #20
vmg12 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy, there are a few google teams that use flutter and the cost savings from not having to have dedicated ios and android teams is very easy to point at to justify the project's existence. I think Dart and Flutter are very overlooked. The language has completely changed since its release, its statically typed, has null safety, enums, and pattern matching, and is very simple and easy to read. It has fast compilation…

But they also fund JetBrains, Jetpack Compose, and KMP. It feels like the company threw their support behind Kotlin a long while ago on mobile, but internal struggles keep the others limping along. Compose UI tooling no longer requires viewing on device.

Android used to be its own kingdom separate from rest of Google. And maybe still is.

Re: Flutter 3.47

#72

Post by WA »

maxloh wrote: post #51
doodlesdev wrote: post #33

While I've used Flutter since Alpha, I've been away for a few years. A few things have shocked me in these release notes: how come Impeller still wasn't the default engine for all platforms? Also, why are they migrating to WASM if one of the core features of Dart is compiling to JavaScript? Finally, how come multi window support only get viable now, after four years having desktop support? Honestly, Flutter is an ext…

Flutter operates more like a 2D game engine. It renders its own views, which involves a lot of arithmetic operations, making WASM a more efficient option than JS.

WASM or JS doesn’t matter. The reason is Canvas instead of DOM. Flutter apps render to the canvas element, because this is the only option for the 2D game engine you mentioned.

Re: Flutter 3.47

#74

Post by gman83 »

doodlesdev wrote: post #33

While I've used Flutter since Alpha, I've been away for a few years. A few things have shocked me in these release notes: how come Impeller still wasn't the default engine for all platforms? Also, why are they migrating to WASM if one of the core features of Dart is compiling to JavaScript? Finally, how come multi window support only get viable now, after four years having desktop support? Honestly, Flutter is an ext…

We've been hearing that Flutter is going to be killed any day now for almost a decade. And yet here we are, it's a stable platform that's quietly chugging along with massive 3rd party buy in. Honestly, Google could abandon it at this point and it would have enough momentum to keep going just fine. Where is Compose Multiplatform? Does anyone actually use that, is it even stable yet?

Re: Flutter 3.47

#75

Post by keyle »

TheChaplain wrote: post #73

Are Flutter and React Native still viable choices today? I get the impression that more are going for native mobile, KMP or PWA.

We use flutter at work. When you need to target various platforms for the same code base it's extremely competent.

Re: Flutter 3.47

#76

Post by WA »

TheChaplain wrote: post #73

Are Flutter and React Native still viable choices today? I get the impression that more are going for native mobile, KMP or PWA.

Flutter: if you want a pixel perfect version of your app that looks similar on Android and iOS. Some quite popular apps use it and make a shit ton of money, for example Headspace. More here: https://flutterhunt.com/

React Native: totally viable, because core business logic is the same. If you want native UI elements and all the iOS Liquid Glass stuff, but don’t want to have to completely separate code based, React Native is a viable option if you don’t mind installing lots of third party packages for functionality you get out of the box in Flutter or true native apps.

Native mobile: I have one smaller app with quite a custom calendar view, written with Claude Code natively for Android and iOS. Coding agents help and you get maximum control. Mentally, it’s a bit cumbersome to direct you agent to do everything twice. While one platform can serve as a reference implementation for the other, it’s kinda annoying mentally "to do the same feature all over again and test and direct the agent". But it’s doable.

KMP: No experience, I just hate most things around Android.

PWA: That ship has sailed. Nobody knows about PWAs, most PWAs are bad. It’s a bummer really.

Capacitor: make an SPA (offline-first preferably), and use native code plugins via Capacitor. Still quite feasible, comparable to Flutter in the sense that you need to build a custom UI or use a fake version of Liquid Glass and Material. I use Ionic for that, but it’s a bit dated (still on Material v2). Heavily depends on your skills as a web dev to get good UX.

Re: Flutter 3.47

#77

Post by wwdrew »

TheChaplain wrote: post #73

Are Flutter and React Native still viable choices today? I get the impression that more are going for native mobile, KMP or PWA.

I’ve been a React Native developer for 8 years, I’ve written many apps with it professionally and personally. Until recently, I would have recommended it wholeheartedly.

This weekend I had an idea I set out to experiment with: if I have an existing React Native app, how much effort would it take an LLM to rewrite it into genuinely native apps. My idea being I no longer need to write cross-platform code and pay the intermediary framework costs, I’d get direct access to the underlying platform. Instead, I could just spec the features I need in the app and the LLM can build it.

It took me a year to build the original app to production quality by hand. My “twins”, as they’ve become known, were at 80% completion in three days of on-off work.

I’m pretty much convinced my experiment was a success. Which sorta terrifies me that I’ve specialised in a technology that can be, for all intents and purposes, be entirely erased.

The only caveat I can find is it is still a great technology for doing cross-platform mobile and web. Using something like Tamagui (as rough as that can be sometimes) allows genuine code sharing across all platforms.

Sucks most that I’m now actively looking for a new React Native role.

Re: Flutter 3.47

#78

Post by sgt »

WA wrote: post #76
TheChaplain wrote: post #73

Are Flutter and React Native still viable choices today? I get the impression that more are going for native mobile, KMP or PWA.

Flutter: if you want a pixel perfect version of your app that looks similar on Android and iOS. Some quite popular apps use it and make a shit ton of money, for example Headspace. More here: https://flutterhunt.com/ React Native: totally viable, because core business logic is the same. If you want native UI elements and all the iOS Liquid Glass stuff, but don’t want to have to completely separate code based, React Na…

Native was always the best. It was just time consuming, requiring a bigger team. Now with AI helping out, it's probably the best option by far. I still like Flutter a lot though because you can get stuff done fairly quickly and even apply Material design to the iOS apps or vice versa if you want to (if it's a business app where the design doesn't matter too much). Or if you e.g. target win32

Re: Flutter 3.47

#79

Post by mathverse »

cageface wrote: post #70
wiseowise wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s actually much easier to build a performant macOS app with flutter than with SwiftUI. Got any case studies?

Just my own apps. Getting good performance out of SwiftUI on Mac is quite difficult. Loads of footguns.

And yet I dont see any Flutter macos apps at all.

Re: Flutter 3.47

#80

Post by sgt »

sunsetSamurai wrote: post #48

how's Dart for back end development? is anybody using it to build APIs? the syntax doesn't look too bad

I've been using Dart and Flutter for years, but I've never ever met anyone who's seriously using Dart for backend. That would be a very niche thing and not popular with teams.
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