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Flutter 3.47

flutter.dev

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Re: Flutter 3.47

#111

Post by puelocesar »

Degorath wrote: post #93
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…

While all of the points you brought up are valid, I've hated every react native app I've ever had to work on. Not because of react native itself, but because they usually take random react developers to work on these apps and the structure they create is absolutely horrible to work with (compared to, for example, native apps). What was your experience on that aspect with Flutter?

I was forced to migrate from pure native development to React Native and Redux is one of the stupidest things I ever witnessed. Or at least the way the previous devs setup that thing, because it’s so easy to make costly mistakes with it.

I lost so many days of my life profiling and debugging to figure out why hundreds of components were re-rendering when a tiny thing changed somewhere completely unrelated

Re: Flutter 3.47

#112

Post by puelocesar »

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…

Be careful, I’ve been using AI to translate my Swift code to Kotlin and sometimes it makes some mistakes that are invisible to you, because the languages are so similar, but it will bite you in the ass eventually, because there are subtle changes between the platforms

Re: Flutter 3.47

#113

Post by gman83 »

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

Even with AI, maintaining feature parity between Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, and Mac is extremely complex. Flutter makes it so much easier. If I were doing native, I'd probably have to drop all desktop platforms.

Re: Flutter 3.47

#114

Post by mad_tortoise »

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 built apps with millions of users using flutter. Quicker, faster and easier for building cross-platform apps if you know what you are doing.

This is coming from a native framework evangelist for many years, and then just tried flutter early days (which was far more difficult than how easy it is today). Now I write almost all my projects in flutter/dart where I can, especially with AI the speed from idea to production is insane.

Re: Flutter 3.47

#115

Post by jcollins »

puelocesar wrote: post #112
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…

Be careful, I’ve been using AI to translate my Swift code to Kotlin and sometimes it makes some mistakes that are invisible to you, because the languages are so similar, but it will bite you in the ass eventually, because there are subtle changes between the platforms

Do you have an example? I don't doubt it, I just want to make sure I watch out for it.

One downside for sure is lack of deep knowledge on all these platforms can make it difficult to see issues.

Re: Flutter 3.47

#116

Post by oDot »

Does anyone know if the original promise of their simple layout model proved itself?

IIRC, the Flutter team mentioned how using just width/height constraints is enough to represent all relevant layouts. This sounds very nice, being so much simpler than Flexbox and miles ahead of CSS Grid ergonomics.

Did it live up to the promise or did they expand the model with Flex/Grid/etc?

Re: Flutter 3.47

#117

Post by gman83 »

kumarvvr wrote: post #13

The one thing I hate about flutter is the ui code having an ungodly amount of nested brackets.

I treat nesting as a feature: if the nesting starts getting deep, that's the code indicating to extract a child widget. It pushes me toward better composition and smaller, reusable components instead of giant monolithic views.

Re: Flutter 3.47

#118

Post by eviks »

> Linux and Windows now support popup windows, allowing you to build native context menus and utility palettes.

How does such a basic feature only get added so late?

Re: Flutter 3.47

#119

Post by gman83 »

oDot wrote: post #116

Does anyone know if the original promise of their simple layout model proved itself? IIRC, the Flutter team mentioned how using just width/height constraints is enough to represent all relevant layouts. This sounds very nice, being so much simpler than Flexbox and miles ahead of CSS Grid ergonomics. Did it live up to the promise or did they expand the model with Flex/Grid/etc?

The premise is a bit off. Flutter was never just width/height: the model is min/max box constraints. The core rule is: constraints go down, sizes come up, parent sets position.

Row and Column are just layout algorithms built on that same model, not separate engines added later. GridView uses the sliver system internally, but still doesn't require anything like CSS Grid's general layout model. The render API is open enough for custom layouts too, so packages like https://pub.dev/packages/boxy build directly on it

Re: Flutter 3.47

#120

Post by AbuAssar »

the "Text and selection" demo caught my attention, why flutter render the shortcuts bar itself and not delegate this to the underlaying os?
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