31–40 of 107 posts
Fun fact: on pre-release Angular 2 versions, Dart was it's main language. My hypothesis is that, if they decided to continue using Dart, probably we would have more Dart developers and this could have lead to a faster Flutter adoption.
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I've been a React fanatic for several years, so my opinion is colored by that: 1. Great DX (developer experience) - a single language (Dart); no need for JSX, JavaScript, JSON, Flux/Redux and various other libraries. You can focus on the business logic rather than battling the ecosystem. 2. A single set of components (no iOS or Android specific navigator components etc.) 3. No longer need a JS engine to run - truly n…
Being agree with all 4 points I see two drawbacks: 1. Not using OEM widgets. Even the rendered widgets may look good, they can't beat the native widgets optimized for the particular platform. 2. The choice of Dart as the main language. I can understand both points though
Really the only downside is that it is a ton of work to make it match the look of the native widgets. They've done a good job though. I really doubt 99% of people could tell at all.
Dart is ok. Better than Java or Javascript at any rate!
> Alibaba praises Flutter for its consistency across platforms As a user, I don't. Sure, on Android Flutter looks OK, but on iOS it looks out-of-place.
There is an iOS theme (Cupertino), but I am not sure how complete it is.
I wrote a post to that effect here: https://harveynick.com/2018/05/21/an-ios-developers-opinions...
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I'm always concerned that accessibility is being left behind. Android and iOS both put great efforts into making their UI accessible, why do the work again? Chances are that the accessibility of those third-party components will be worse or maybe doesn't even work at all.
The problem is that the accessibility work already needs to be done on every platform (for now we have two really popular ones but nobody can be sure what the future brings). Also, if you could just recompile your app for a new platform and release (more or less), it would remove the biggest barrier to entry for possible new platforms: Adoption.
Now Flutter is making its own widgets that look and handle like the corresponding native widgets. So they need to implement accessibility all over again in the same way that is already present on the platforms. Google is thus redoing all the work they already did in Android.
A lesson from modern software development is that software is developed incrementally and because accessibility is never high on those priority lists, it will lack in quality at first and take multiple iterations to get up to the same level as the native accessibility of the OS, if it even gets there in the first place.
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I've been a React fanatic for several years, so my opinion is colored by that: 1. Great DX (developer experience) - a single language (Dart); no need for JSX, JavaScript, JSON, Flux/Redux and various other libraries. You can focus on the business logic rather than battling the ecosystem. 2. A single set of components (no iOS or Android specific navigator components etc.) 3. No longer need a JS engine to run - truly n…
How is it native if you're just replacing a JavaScript VM with a Dart VM? Or is the Dart somehow compiled to native code?
I’d say that’s one of the most attractive things about Dart to compensate for yet another language.
Isn't "beta" supposed to mean "not quite ready for production"?
If Google declares it out of beta, then people assume nothing will change, and if things do change they complain.
So the current wisdom is to have a 'production ready beta' which indicates an in-between period where things can change, but you're encouraged and expected to use it in production.
I'm still hesitant to put my hand on it for side project until it's more popular. Chicken and egg problem I guess.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been a React fanatic for several years, so my opinion is colored by that: 1. Great DX (developer experience) - a single language (Dart); no need for JSX, JavaScript, JSON, Flux/Redux and various other libraries. You can focus on the business logic rather than battling the ecosystem. 2. A single set of components (no iOS or Android specific navigator components etc.) 3. No longer need a JS engine to run - truly n…
Being agree with all 4 points I see two drawbacks: 1. Not using OEM widgets. Even the rendered widgets may look good, they can't beat the native widgets optimized for the particular platform. 2. The choice of Dart as the main language. I can understand both points though
However, my experience has been that most people want a heavily customized and styled UI that looks similar on both iOS and Android because a generic stock UI doesn’t have enough visual bling to attract users or establish a strong brand. And it looks like doing that kind of customization should be a lot easier with Flutter than it is with either native platform’s native APIs.
Isn't "beta" supposed to mean "not quite ready for production"?
Chicken and egg, right? If Google declares it not ready for production, then nobody uses it for production apps, so it never gets the kind of testing it needs to really be production ready. If Google declares it out of beta, then people assume nothing will change, and if things do change they complain. So the current wisdom is to have a 'production ready beta' which indicates an in-between period where things can cha…