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

Flutter 3.47

flutter.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 231 posts

Re: Flutter 3.47

#81

Post by meerita »

I still prefer React Native with Expo over Flutter, mostly for practical reasons:

* Language and hiring: TypeScript has a much larger developer pool. Dart is a solid language, but finding experienced Flutter engineers is harder.

* Platform model: React Native maps much more naturally to native platform concepts. Flutter owns much more of the rendering stack, which is powerful, but also creates another abstraction layer between the app and the platform.

* Performance: Flutter can absolutely be fast, so I would not claim otherwise. My experience, however, is that RN has required less work to get interactions and animations that feel consistently native.

* Ecosystem: RN benefits from the broader React, TypeScript, JavaScript, and native ecosystems. Expo has also improved dramatically and now covers a large part of the usual mobile platform work.

* Platform-specific features: neither framework completely eliminates native code. Things like widgets, Live Activities, Dynamic Island, extensions, NFC, and other platform APIs eventually bring you back to Swift/Kotlin anyway.

* Migration to native: if the long-term destination is Swift and Kotlin, I find RN a better intermediate representation. Its component model and platform integration are closer to native concepts, which also makes the codebase easier for agents to translate incrementally into proper native applications.

That said, these are trade-offs, not claims that Flutter is bad. Flutter has improved a lot, and for teams that want a highly consistent cross-platform UI, its rendering model can be an advantage.

Re: Flutter 3.47

#82

Post by flexagoon »

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 have user Dart for small personal projects and it's a great language. Somewhat similar to Kotlin, but IMO a bit nicer. Unfortunately the ecosystem is not as developed outside of Flutter as with more popular languages, but it very much exists and pretty nice to use.

Re: Flutter 3.47

#83

Post by tonyhart7 »

999900000999 wrote: post #46
tonyhart7 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no one and absolutely no one pick flutter because they want do traditional web in the first place its a cross platform framework that you can share component between mobile and other platform and always has been

I’ve used flutter for a couple of toy web apps. One is just a personal tool , another is a small party game. Now I might vibe code such things using React, but 5 , 6 years ago Flutter got me what I wanted fast. Firebase integration is absurdly easy. You can make a crud app in about 30 minutes

Yes but its best work with SPA or WASM type of app like games for example

Re: Flutter 3.47

#84

Post by victorbjorklund »

sgt wrote: post #78
WA wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In most cases yes but if you don’t want native elements and you want your app to look exactly the same on android as on iOS then flutter is a better choice. Assuming you don’t have any performance limitiations.

Re: Flutter 3.47

#85

Post by foresterre »

wwdrew wrote: post #77
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 in…

Not saying that LLM development isn't fast, but doing a re-implementation of something you know in-and-out is almost always going to be faster, as you skip the probably most time intensive step of product research and requirement engineering.

Re: Flutter 3.47

#86

Post by billynomates »

amazingamazing wrote: post #40

I always find it strange that flutter isn’t built with golang or typescript. Why use a new language? When flutter came out both languages existed so curious about that. The main reason i can think of is generics not existing initially

Dart shipped in 2011, four years before Flutter started.

On the technical side, Flutter needed AOT compilation to native ARM for release builds and a JIT for development (that's what makes stateful hot reload possible). Dart does both from one codebase. TypeScript means shipping a JS VM, which is precisely the overhead Flutter was designed to avoid. (In contrast to RN). Dart's other big win is GC tuned for allocating and throwing away tons of short-lived objects which is what happens when you hot reload over and over.

Go has no JIT, so no hot reload, and no generics until 2022, Flutter has a big widget library so that would not have been possible.

And of course the Dart team was inside Google, and had just lost its original mission when Chrome declined to ship the Dart VM, and was willing to change the language to suit Flutter.

Re: Flutter 3.47

#87

Post by palata »

meerita wrote: post #81

I still prefer React Native with Expo over Flutter, mostly for practical reasons: * Language and hiring: TypeScript has a much larger developer pool. Dart is a solid language, but finding experienced Flutter engineers is harder. * Platform model: React Native maps much more naturally to native platform concepts. Flutter owns much more of the rendering stack, which is powerful, but also creates another abstraction lay…

Out of curiosity, do you have any experience with Kotlin Multiplatform and Compose Multiplatform? I would like to know how that compares.

Re: Flutter 3.47

#88

Post by wwdrew »

foresterre wrote: post #85
wwdrew wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 in…

Not saying that LLM development isn't fast, but doing a re-implementation of something you know in-and-out is almost always going to be faster, as you skip the probably most time intensive step of product research and requirement engineering.

Absolutely, but that doesn’t discount that it’s now feasible to spec a feature once and have it built for me on both apps. I’m doing the same process on a new project I’m working on and it’s built both apps simultaneously as I’d hoped.

Re: Flutter 3.47

#89

Post by palata »

skybrian wrote: post #35
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…

I suppose AI would help for porting your app if you need to? It's not like the old days.

Unless it is a trivial app, it would still require quite some effort to port (and test), which has a cost. What do you gain by using Flutter that compensates for that risk?

Re: Flutter 3.47

#90

Post by JimDabell »

synergy20 wrote: post #31

great for mobile apps, fine for desktops, basically unusable for browsers unless you do wasm, if web can be revamped/improved it can be the best option for cross platform GUI

> basically unusable for browsers unless you do wasm

Relying on WASM means that nobody on Apple platforms who has Lockdown Mode enabled for better security will be able to use it.

Post reply on HN