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Flutter 3.47

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Re: Flutter 3.47

#201

Post by sulam »

surajrmal wrote: post #178
pjmlp wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to have more fun on this matter, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX6nAvRWQg4&t=3418s

Companies at the size of Google naturally have different business units with different goals. Flutter solves something from some teams with other parts of the company that do not solve for them. That doesn't mean there are some sort of systemic problems. It just means that it operates more like a series of smaller companies in many ways, which is overall healthier for everyone. It's confusing that everyone always exp…

I mean yes, but also no. Companies the size of Google still have an overall strategy, and when one group’s strategy is to shit all over another part of the company, that usually doesn’t work out. Even worse, the scale Flutter is developed at is simply completely different than Android and Chrome. Flutter is really a symptom of just how strange Google is, as kind of a weird, anarcho-engineering collective where you can do anything as long as you can get a VP to support it.

Re: Flutter 3.47

#202

Post by iririririr »

flutter should 100% drop web target. if you disagree you never used flutter for real, or are lying to yourself while employed by google to work on flutter

Re: Flutter 3.47

#203

Post by hypendev »

brabel wrote: post #200
hypendev wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly its the core syntax, it's terribly noisy. Also parts of the implementation itself. While I cannot enumerate the taste, I can give you some examples. For example: - Class constructors cannot be in definition headers, i.e. class Something(Int a, Int b) - The whole final and const/static const mess - required is annoying and really "slapped on" - shorthand syntax is => instead of =, personal pet peeve - positiona…

I don’t want to sound harsh but that’s the least convincing list of language misfeatures I’ve ever seen. Almost every point is so minor I am surprised you didn’t mention having to type semicolons and similar incredibly inconsequential things.

They are minor, but that is why I called it ugly - not bad.

It's a matter of taste, and Dart's syntax style doesn't match mine. As much as I tried to enjoy it, after a while I just couldn't look at it anymore.

All of these accumulate and make it feel overly noisy for a lazy brain.

Re: Flutter 3.47

#204

Post by videogreg93 »

hypendev wrote: post #106
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…

As someone who used all these frameworks professionally for years, I highly agree. Although, I do not prefer Expo due to it's highly annoying build system and dependency hell, but React Native itself in that case. While I understand Google wants a horse in this race, Flutter doesn't feel like a horse to bet on. - Dart is a really _ugly_ language with lots of tiny annoyances. Its as if someone took worst parts of Java…

I created something similar to Hyphen at my previous job and while it was a big shift in mentality, implementing UI in the backend and having the apps consume that and render it with native components os really underrated.

Re: Flutter 3.47

#205

Post by sgt »

GeneralMaximus wrote: post #180
GeneralMaximus wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you not? I use Ableton, Figma, and Emacs regularly. I have a decade (or more) of muscle memory around these apps. If they suddenly decided to adopt the look, feel, and conventions of their underlying host platform, I’d be very upset. If I’m using Emacs, I don’t want to use Cmd+S to save my files on macOS and Ctrl+S on Windows. I’ve already memorized C-x C-s. I don’t want Ableton to adopt whatever new design…

(Adding this as a comment because I'm over my edit window.) I want to add a third category to the categories that make sense as native apps: apps that are built by the platform vendor (and potentially shipped with the platform). GNOME apps are built with GTK+, KDE apps are built with Qt, and macOS apps are built with SwiftUI/AppKit. This is how it should be. Microsoft is the only outlier here, shipping apps built wit…

Regarding Microsoft - that's a sad story indeed. The only reason they don't use Win32/GDI+ etc is because it's harder and you ideally want to do that in C++ to get the true powers available to you.

I've recently had to do some win32 stuff in a Flutter app and it's amazing what you can do, but it's pretty hard, even with an AI to help you.

So the "lazy" devs go to work using React Native and Electron rather for apps inside of Windows shipped by Microsoft. Crazy, but it's to meet deadlines.

Re: Flutter 3.47

#206

Post by gumby271 »

phoghed wrote: post #186
gumby271 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flutter is 9 years old at this point. I do hope they move it its own open source foundation since a ton of apps use it, having all that under Google's control isn't the best (looking at you too Android)

Yeah now it might be ok but when it came out I didn’t want to bet on it. Around the same time at my job tried to build a design system off Google’s web component MD implementation and that shit stalled and then got fully abandoned.

Oh totally agreed, I went through the same thought process 8 years ago at my last job and decided against Flutter too. I really wanted to, it was just too new as a Google product. I'm happy I get to use it now, it's solid.

Re: Flutter 3.47

#207

Post by spixy »

pjmlp wrote: post #141
hypendev wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who used all these frameworks professionally for years, I highly agree. Although, I do not prefer Expo due to it's highly annoying build system and dependency hell, but React Native itself in that case. While I understand Google wants a horse in this race, Flutter doesn't feel like a horse to bet on. - Dart is a really _ugly_ language with lots of tiny annoyances. Its as if someone took worst parts of Java…

Google has two horses in this race, because Android team doesn't acknowledge Flutter and rather go with KMM and Compose, alongside JetBrains.

Reminds me of Microsoft where Windows team doesn't acknowledge C#...

Re: Flutter 3.47

#208

Post by kaycey2022 »

faangguyindia wrote: post #194
kaycey2022 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest negative with Flutter is web. Because most of the UI is canvas-rendered, DOM based tooling like session replay, analytics, accessibility audits, and browser automation require specific instrumentation. That reduces third party choices you have unless you invest in your own tooling and who has time for that. I can't imagine the situation is much better in mobile.

What do you use on Android or iOS for this?

Like I said I dont have much mobile experience to make a claim. Native apps have their own view and accesibility hierarchy. But even there, React Native would be a better choice because its components become native platform views which would directly be located by 3rd party apps like Appium etc compared to flutter.

Re: Flutter 3.47

#209

Post by realusername »

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…

I have a different perspective because I would put all these points as a negative for React Native except hiring.

React Native is actually Native so you feel all the pain of the yearly redesign by Apple and Google and the millions of different device quirks to manage which will break your app.

You have the Javascript ecosystem which is notoriously janky and hard to maintain over time, even more so as nobody else cares about making it work for React Native, you are a third-tier platform.

Then the performance, Flutter is actually more performant than native for very cheap devices (I've tested it), that's why it's so popular in India.

The language is unified and doesn't feel as ducked tape as Javascript is.

Re: Flutter 3.47

#210

Post by mixmastamyk »

eviks wrote: post #124
AbuAssar wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

flutter started as a mobile framework, and mobiles didn't support multi windows back then

This doesn't help, desktop support was added 5 years ago, so that's longer than the age of flutter before that

Most of the team was laid off a few years ago.
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