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Skip is now free and open source

skip.dev

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Re: Skip is now free and open source

#121

Post by roughike »

ashishb wrote: post #95

There have been several iterations to have a unified way to build Android and iOS apps. - using HTML - using JavaScript - using JS+React - using Dart - using Kotlin - using Swift This fundamentally does not work for anyone with more than 10M+ installs just like you can't write Mandarin and English in one script. This only works for devs who over time churn out as their app fails or becomes too big [1] 1 - https://ash…

> This fundamentally does not work for anyone with more than 10M+ installs just like you can't write Mandarin and English in one script.

Well, I did work on a Flutter app with a tiny team between 2018-2021 and we had 15M installs, were app of the day, got featured multiple times in the App Store, got Google’s design award, were a preloaded app on iPhones in Apple Stores in several countries, and were overall doing quite well.

It was a very focused app though, so the size of our codebase didn’t really grow with the number of installs.

Re: Skip is now free and open source

#122

Post by stevefan1999 »

tekne wrote: post #105
NamlchakKhandro wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> distribution and manufacturing costs are zero. ???? citation needed

Once the software is written, it is ~free to copy. People pay a lot of money to avoid the software getting copied... and it gets copied anyways.

The thing is that one software is easy to crack and copy, so it is cheap...but a lot of softwares to work together is not, so that's why we have SaaS and PaaS today.

Re: Skip is now free and open source

#123

Post by doodlesdev »

ashishb wrote: post #95

There have been several iterations to have a unified way to build Android and iOS apps. - using HTML - using JavaScript - using JS+React - using Dart - using Kotlin - using Swift This fundamentally does not work for anyone with more than 10M+ installs just like you can't write Mandarin and English in one script. This only works for devs who over time churn out as their app fails or becomes too big [1] 1 - https://ash…

   > This fundamentally does not work for anyone with more than 10M+ installs just like you can't write Mandarin and English in one script.
Provably false. My bank app (Nubank) is written in Flutter and it's one of the most used banks in Brazil (100mi+ clients who rely on the iPhone or Android app, since it's a digital bank with no web interface).

Re: Skip is now free and open source

#124

Post by ashishb »

roughike wrote: post #121
ashishb wrote: post #95

There have been several iterations to have a unified way to build Android and iOS apps. - using HTML - using JavaScript - using JS+React - using Dart - using Kotlin - using Swift This fundamentally does not work for anyone with more than 10M+ installs just like you can't write Mandarin and English in one script. This only works for devs who over time churn out as their app fails or becomes too big [1] 1 - https://ash…

> This fundamentally does not work for anyone with more than 10M+ installs just like you can't write Mandarin and English in one script. Well, I did work on a Flutter app with a tiny team between 2018-2021 and we had 15M installs, were app of the day, got featured multiple times in the App Store, got Google’s design award, were a preloaded app on iPhones in Apple Stores in several countries, and were overall doing qu…

In the short-term it can work.

Over time maintenance becomes hard

New iOS and Android features, sometimes backward-incompatible are introduced.

And now, you need your dependencies to implement them. Which might or might not happen. At best, this makes usage inferior. At worst, you can no longer publish an update in app stores.

Re: Skip is now free and open source

#125

Post by roughike »

ashishb wrote: post #124
roughike wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This fundamentally does not work for anyone with more than 10M+ installs just like you can't write Mandarin and English in one script. Well, I did work on a Flutter app with a tiny team between 2018-2021 and we had 15M installs, were app of the day, got featured multiple times in the App Store, got Google’s design award, were a preloaded app on iPhones in Apple Stores in several countries, and were overall doing qu…

In the short-term it can work. Over time maintenance becomes hard New iOS and Android features, sometimes backward-incompatible are introduced. And now, you need your dependencies to implement them. Which might or might not happen. At best, this makes usage inferior. At worst, you can no longer publish an update in app stores.

This app was started in 2017 and it is still running today and making (way more modest than back then) revenue. It’s just that I don’t work on it anymore.

Re: Skip is now free and open source

#126

Post by ashishb »

doodlesdev wrote: post #123
ashishb wrote: post #95

There have been several iterations to have a unified way to build Android and iOS apps. - using HTML - using JavaScript - using JS+React - using Dart - using Kotlin - using Swift This fundamentally does not work for anyone with more than 10M+ installs just like you can't write Mandarin and English in one script. This only works for devs who over time churn out as their app fails or becomes too big [1] 1 - https://ash…

> This fundamentally does not work for anyone with more than 10M+ installs just like you can't write Mandarin and English in one script. Provably false. My bank app (Nubank) is written in Flutter and it's one of the most used banks in Brazil (100mi+ clients who rely on the iPhone or Android app, since it's a digital bank with no web interface).

Good for you.

I meant as a general rule of thumb.

Re: Skip is now free and open source

#127

Post by doodlesdev »

well_ackshually wrote: post #49
agentifysh wrote: post #34

This is a welcome addition but why should Flutter devs use this ? Seems like it requires 32gb of ram! Also Flutter is already very mature and can produce not only near-native mobile apps (the difference is almost negligible) but can target desktop and even web applications. I do wonder how much of a boost skip offers vs Flutter's mobile apps. Will give skip a try when dram prices normalize.

Flutter is fine if you don't care about performance, accessibility, have no need to access native capabilities or non-fluttered widgets (ex: the Google map integration is awful) and overall just want to make an internal app. The cost of making an excellent flutter app is about the same you'd pay making fully native apps. Except that you're always paying for Skia's costs with Flutter. This recommends 32GB to run _ever…

Flutter doesn't use Skia anymore and you can absolutely bind to native libraries from Flutter with ease [0]. The current strategy (build hooks) is relatively new. You can also just write Kotlin or Swift for your application [1] using channel APIs. Finally, you can still have native pages in your app if needed for certain widgets [2] and still save time rewriting everything and all of your business logic for every single other page of the application that doesn't need those widgets. In fact, you can even mix native widgets and Flutter-rendered widgets in the same screen.

[0]: https://docs.flutter.dev/platform-integration/bind-native-co...

[1]: https://docs.flutter.dev/platform-integration/platform-chann...

[2]: https://docs.flutter.dev/add-to-app

Re: Skip is now free and open source

#128

Post by pstuart »

nodja wrote: post #116
anonymous908213 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The highest quality tools in the software development space tend to be FOSS > People build tools that they want to use, then share it with others because it's free to This maybe sounds true on the surface, but isn't really? Prior to VSCode, Visual Studio was the most-used editor by professional developers for a very long time, with Sublime Text and Jetbrains' IDEs being close behind, and the paid options are still…

I've been programming since ~1999 and anecdataly don't remember programmers having a culture of paying for their dev tools. On linux everything's free, and on windows I've used a plethora of freeware IDEs/compilers/etc. from turbo pascal, dev c++ (that's the name of it), later on eclipse took the stage in it's buggy mess and right before vscode there was atom. The only people that I know that used visual studio eithe…

Back in ye olden days, prior to teh interwebs, compilers were not free and it was an assumed price of entry to programming. Pirating has always been a thing, but I've paid for more than one compiler in my life and I wasn't exactly flush with cash.

Re: Skip is now free and open source

#129

Post by Aurornis »

nsm wrote: post #70

> The plain truth is that developers expect to get their tools free of charge. This is an accurate, but damning indictment of how some of the most highly paid workers on the planet won't pay for tools. Unlike nearly every other profession. Folks, if you can afford it, please pay for quality software, instead of relying on FAANG and VC money to keep the tools going!

> This is an accurate, but damning indictment of how some of the most highly paid workers on the planet won't pay for tools. Unlike nearly every other profession.

This is just plain false. The total software and SaaS tool spend at every company I’ve worked for in the past decade has been incredibly high.

Developers also commonly bring their own paid tools when it’s allowed: JetBrains is common. Many people have paid Git GUIs or merge tools.

I think the hard truth is that getting adoption on a new paid tool is really hard, especially when you’re not sure if it’s even going to be around in a couple years.

When there are open source alternatives it’s usually not about cost. We’d happily pay for something that was higher quality and helped us develop faster if it didn’t come with its own set of risks. The difference is that OSS is something we can pick up and carry along with the community even if the maintainers go a different direction. We don’t have to worry about sudden license price increases or unfavorable terms appearing at renewal time, which happens constantly now.

Re: Skip is now free and open source

#130

Post by johnfn »

nsm wrote: post #70

> The plain truth is that developers expect to get their tools free of charge. This is an accurate, but damning indictment of how some of the most highly paid workers on the planet won't pay for tools. Unlike nearly every other profession. Folks, if you can afford it, please pay for quality software, instead of relying on FAANG and VC money to keep the tools going!

> some of the most highly paid workers on the planet won't pay for tools

Aren't we in the middle of literally the entire industry adopting 200/mo AI subscriptions? It seems to me like engineers will absolutely pay for tools if they justify their value.

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