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Launch HN: FlutterFlow (YC W21) – Build Apps Visually

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Re: Launch HN: FlutterFlow (YC W21) – Build Apps Visually

#41

Post by faldore »

jmnicolas wrote: post #24
cweagans wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Highly recommend the appbrewery flutter bootcamp (it’s a video course). It’s $10 and will get you up and running quickly. I have no affiliation with them other than as a happy customer.

I took it last year, the woman has a mesmerizing voice! (and the course is great too :D) If you're an experienced software dev it's a bit basic. I like Flutter a lot, but I'm not a fan of Dart. It's a false friend, it makes you believe it's simple and mostly a copy of your favorite language, but once you start to dig a little deeper it feels like something bolted on, hacky, not designed. I come from the .net world wh…

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Re: Launch HN: FlutterFlow (YC W21) – Build Apps Visually

#42

Post by fredgrott »

xrd wrote: post #3

This looks super exciting. As an Android developer who has not yet built a Flutter app, I'm intrigued if this can be a stepping stone to ramping up on flutter. I looked over the video. It is nice to see a compressed video, but it was still hard to understand what to pay attention to inside a 20 minute video. It would be great if you added callouts to the important moments so people could easily jump to the important…

if you are coming from Android native dev, its not as deep of learning curve...

Think of it this way, where Android has every view as stateful or stateless, instead in Flutter it's broken up into Stateful widgets and stateless widgets.

The only increase in time is that in the data binding side as it's not prettied up with libraries that automate that side.

Re: Launch HN: FlutterFlow (YC W21) – Build Apps Visually

#44

Post by quadcore »

abelsm wrote: post #39
quadcore wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've taken a look at the generated code very quickly. You're using a lot of paddings in columns for example where I would use a SizedBox with no child in between the elements. Or even better, expandables. It makes for less nested elements, plus padding used like that feels like a translation of css to flutter. I rarely need padding but maybe its just me. Also you may have a good reason for doing so. Also I think the…

Thanks for the suggestions! Yes, there's definitely room for improvement with the generated code ... I think the padding -> SizedBox conversion at least in some cases (only when main-axis padding is added) can be automated. We can experiment with code improvement features such as that and see how it works. Expanded + Percentages for widths are possible already

At the risk of seeming a little bit nitpicky here, thing is: the end user shouldnt even use padding in this case. What Im saying is that when I look at a tool like that, what I will look for is how well you embrace the paradigm of the framework. Cause its greater than html5 imo - for the use cases were talking about. It should lead to fewer editor UI, fewer buttons, fewer basic options. Padding in this case should probably be only cross axial (or whatever) and then it becomes rarely used and then leads to better editor UI. Fewer hardcoded values as well - remember its "super cross platform". Should be hard to enter values.

Im only saying this to inspire you - not sure what the solution should ultimately be.

:D

Re: Launch HN: FlutterFlow (YC W21) – Build Apps Visually

#45

Post by vanillax »

quadcore wrote: post #38
vanillax wrote: post #30

I've been trying to use this product for a personal app I'm making. its really good until its not. There needs to be better controls for mock data in listviews, I don't want to hook up to API in the tool, I have my own data, but I need the listview to aleast pretend theres data there. Also the lack of positioned widgets in conjunction with stack views makes it hard to transfer the flutterflow experience to the actual…

What happens if I want anchor a view to the bottom of the screen in a stack? You can use Align for that.

I didnt see a way to do this if the column is starting TOP to BOTTOM. I specifically want to set the second item in the stack ( ie the one on top ) to be anchored to bottom of the physical screen. I didnt see a way to do this with flutter flow's drag and drop.

Re: Launch HN: FlutterFlow (YC W21) – Build Apps Visually

#46

Post by vanillax »

asgreaves wrote: post #36
vanillax wrote: post #30

I've been trying to use this product for a personal app I'm making. its really good until its not. There needs to be better controls for mock data in listviews, I don't want to hook up to API in the tool, I have my own data, but I need the listview to aleast pretend theres data there. Also the lack of positioned widgets in conjunction with stack views makes it hard to transfer the flutterflow experience to the actual…

Hey! Thanks so much for the feedback. You're right that there's currently no way to simulate the mock data view without actually adding a Firestore query or API call. That's a useful suggestion. For the positioned issue, you can set the alignment of items in a Stack (same as the Align widget in Flutter). In our experience this tends to cover the vast majority of cases, however you're right that we don't currently sup…

Mock Data or even some way to wrap say a container and list it as the data model view. Then you can say repeat this 5-10 times... That way I can copy the code over directly to VScode and not have to remove the temporary duplicated "fake" widgets. This is the type of feedback I want to give because its almost a perfect tool, but then when I have to strip out all this duplicated code, the tool almost isnt saving me time. I dont feel like I can use it without having to go out of my way to make the tool work. I think this tool has alot of potential. I really hate how flutter native tooling has no UI preview.

Re: Launch HN: FlutterFlow (YC W21) – Build Apps Visually

#47

Post by vanillax »

It would be great if this tool also had better theming options. Perhaps more pre-configured themes that auto apply. I feel like you could take all these pallets and just make them auto-selectable themes. https://material.io/design/color/the-color-system.html#color...

Re: Launch HN: FlutterFlow (YC W21) – Build Apps Visually

#48

Post by ignoramous »

dkobia wrote: post #43

Absolutely fantastic. I’m a big Flutter fan and I figured it was just a matter of time before someone conjured this up. Well done lads.

How do you find flutter's resource use (CPU/RAM) and general UI performance compared to native equivalents?

There have been charged arguments on HN over the past few months over it.

Ex: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26335062

Re: Launch HN: FlutterFlow (YC W21) – Build Apps Visually

#49

Post by abelsm »

swyx wrote: post #40

congrats Alex and Abel! was wowed when I first checked you guys out coming out of YC, and have been absolutely nothing but impressed by your product momentum and marketing capability throughout 2021. Really excited for you and going to try building along to see whats new!

thank you!

Re: Launch HN: FlutterFlow (YC W21) – Build Apps Visually

#50

Post by swyx »

xrd wrote: post #3

This looks super exciting. As an Android developer who has not yet built a Flutter app, I'm intrigued if this can be a stepping stone to ramping up on flutter. I looked over the video. It is nice to see a compressed video, but it was still hard to understand what to pay attention to inside a 20 minute video. It would be great if you added callouts to the important moments so people could easily jump to the important…

@abelsm i also tried out your sample app https://app.flutterflow.io/run/ByqwG33rw80qyN39ooNq and think i found a small bug - when i go to customize my name before joining, and hit Continue, nothing happens.
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