I believe flutter will be the only thing that will be truly "write once, run everywhere" as it will be compatible with with mobile (iOS and Android), web, desktop (macOS, Linux, Windows).
Flutter on desktop, a real competitor to Electron
31–40 of 62 posts
Re: Flutter on desktop, a real competitor to Electron
#32The road block for adoption will be Dart. Why they didn't just choose Typescript or go with native javascript is beyond me. No one uses Dart. It was probably the poorest design decision they could make.
As someone who has recently learnt JS and is using it, I think reducing the JS usage as much as possible is a very good thing.
Re: Flutter on desktop, a real competitor to Electron
#33I'm wondering why people don't write cross platform applications with Qt.
Because qt UI is in all ways worse than what browsers can already do. All qt does for displaying web pages is it embeds chromium, same as electron does. Trying to tie c++ to that is shooting yourself in the foot if you can just use node, which electron does.
> All qt does for displaying web pages is it embeds chromium, same as electron does.
It doesn't:
> WebView is a component for displaying web content which is implemented using native APIs on the platforms where this is available, thus it does not necessarily require including a full web browser stack as part of the application. [0]
Re: Flutter on desktop, a real competitor to Electron
#34I'm wondering why people don't write cross platform applications with Qt.
Does Qt have the same features as Flutter? I'm thinking about an excellent IDE, hot reloading, ability to target mobile and desktop etc.
When you use Qt with Python it is close.
But otherwise Flutter offers a much better developer UX.
I am old and used a ton of GUI development tools. Flutter is the real deal. It is such a pleasure to develop.
Re: Flutter on desktop, a real competitor to Electron
#35I'm wondering why people don't write cross platform applications with Qt.
Because, unless you want to build your applications statically (which I've done), it requires a large client runtime installation?
Re: Flutter on desktop, a real competitor to Electron
#36The biggest question is will companies start migrating to Flutter from Electron. Plus who will decide to use this in a market dominated by Electron?
[raises hand] If it can avoid a >100 MB hello world, I’m on board. That makes it worth learning a language I would never have heard otherwise.
If that's a serious suggestion then...
* Dart/Flutter {iOS, Android} [0]
* (Scheme|Lua|C)/IUP {Linux, Windows, macOS} [1]
* (QML with JS)/QtQuick {Windows, Linux, macOS, UWP, Android, iOS...} [2]
* (C++|Rust|Go|Python...)/Qt {Windows, Linux, macOS, UWP, Android, iOS...} [3]
* (TCL|Ada|Haskell|Python...)/Tk {Windows, Linux, macOS} [4]
* (TCL)/Hecl {Windows, Linux, macOS, Android} [5]
* (Scheme|C|JS|Haskell...)/GTK+ {Windows, Linux, macOS, Android^} [6]
* (C++|Python|Ruby|...)/WxWidgets {Windows, Linux, macOS, {Anywhere GTK or Qt run...}} [7]
(^ May not be stable or officially supported)
... All the platforms listed are cross-platform.
Some look native, some don't, but no Electron app does anyway.
Most package to single binary, some need proper packaging.
All are very simple to get started.
Tk has the least features, but TCL is just a shell language, so getting started is ridiculously easy. However, Tk can do things like inject its frames into any running process's window.
QT and GTK+ are the most powerful, which can confuse newcomers. But they're still simple to do simple things with.
I've used all but Flutter in a professional environment (but evaluated it), sometimes as maintainer, sometimes building something new. They're all solid. Different drawbacks with all of them, but there's always tradeoffs in programming.
For a beginner, I'd probably recommend QtQuick or WxWidgets.
[1] http://webserver2.tecgraf.puc-rio.br/iup/
[2] http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtquick-index.html
[3] https://wiki.qt.io/Language_Bindings
Re: Flutter on desktop, a real competitor to Electron
#37I'm wondering why people don't write cross platform applications with Qt.
C++ is harder to use, so developers are more expensive to hire.
QT is either GPL which is viral i.e. you have to open source your software under the same license, or quite expensive. Even if you’re working on open source GPL software, free QT edition has less features, esp. on embedded.
Re: Flutter on desktop, a real competitor to Electron
#38I'm wondering why people don't write cross platform applications with Qt.
C++ is harder to use, so developers are more expensive to hire. QT is either GPL which is viral i.e. you have to open source your software under the same license, or quite expensive. Even if you’re working on open source GPL software, free QT edition has less features, esp. on embedded.
> QT is either GPL which is viral i.e. you have to open source your software under the same license,
it is not.
Re: Flutter on desktop, a real competitor to Electron
#39I'm wondering why people don't write cross platform applications with Qt.
Well, you still have a pretty large run-time with Qt. If you want something slim, you can use neither Electron nor Qt.
Re: Flutter on desktop, a real competitor to Electron
#40The road block for adoption will be Dart. Why they didn't just choose Typescript or go with native javascript is beyond me. No one uses Dart. It was probably the poorest design decision they could make.
>Why they didn't just choose Typescript or go with native javascript is beyond me.
It wouldn't be native compiled code (which this says it is), and it would have a poorer language experience plus all the baggage that comes with JS.
>No one uses Dart
You'd be surprised.