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Ready for Production Apps: Flutter Beta 3

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Re: Ready for Production Apps: Flutter Beta 3

#71

Post by bsaul »

stemuk wrote: post #63
bsaul wrote: post #45

Apple really need to react if they want swift to get any traction. IOS hasn’t had any major UI update since iOS7 , and android is a mess anyway, so using a cross platform now makes more sense than ever. The icing on the cake would be to have a path for reusing dart business layer between flutter and angular. That’s a really promising stack.

You might be interested in this talk [1] from Dart Conf that highlights code sharing between Flutter and Angular Dart. The general take-away is that code sharing is possible, it requires however a strict separation of UI related and business logic code. [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PLHln7wHgPE

That was my intuition, thanks. I'll definitely investigate. I'm also thinking a full stack dart platform, since dart also hs a very interesting server side story.

Re: Ready for Production Apps: Flutter Beta 3

#72

Post by zengid »

mikece wrote: post #51

There are several aspects of Flutter that are compelling. The two which I find the most interesting are speed of development and the platform independence when designing the app. Speed of development: I've seen Flutter development referred to as a "double hot reloading" dev paradigm: UI and app logic. Hot-reloading the UI on design changes isn't new (React Native, NativeScript, and even Xamarin can do this) but the t…

> This is a massive difference from Xamarin where cross-platform apps end up using the platform-native widgets which is known to result in non-trivial amounts of "if (Platform_Android) {...} else if (Platform_iOS) {...}"

Is your Xamarin experience using Xamarin.Forms? It sounds like Forms allows for more cross-platform gui code reuse. I'm doing a lot of investigation into Xamarin because I'm learning C# this summer for an internship and I love the language.

Re: Ready for Production Apps: Flutter Beta 3

#73

Post by geokon »

hawski wrote: post #50

How good is FFI in Dart? I mean how fast and easy is it? I see that it can call C and C++ libraries, but that's nowadays a basic requirement for any FFI. I'm looking maybe for an opinion and maybe some kind of numbers to back up it's performance. As far as I understand it on Android it's compiled to a CPU native binary and has to use NDK and JNI to do anything. If that's a fact it's funny that on Google's own platfor…

I mean, if you're gunna use C++ libraries, is there a reason not to just make the whole app in C++ (like with Qt/QML)? Seems adding a new language/toolchain to the mix is a recipe for headaches.

That's a genuine question :) I don't do any app development so maybe I'm missing something - is Qt not sufficient? It seems to run on everything as-is

Re: Ready for Production Apps: Flutter Beta 3

#74

Post by pjmlp »

cutler wrote: post #47
alfonsodev wrote: post #20

This all sounds very cool until you need something in your app that is not provided as third party module yet, or numerous third party plugins that you are using start being unmaintained or buggy or they don't support your use case. Then you'll need to write your own plugin in native language, but you have been writing in Flutter and you don't know enough about the native platform. My opinion, if you don't know nativ…

Learn Swift+iOS & Kotlin/Java+Android then Dart/Flutter. How many lifetimes is that to become deeply proficient?

I do consulting across Java, Android, .NET, C++ and Web stacks.

I am a Language X expert that knows every little detail, surely no.

Am I proficient enough to keep costumers happy with the results and willing to keep assignments for new stuff coming my way? You bet.

Re: Ready for Production Apps: Flutter Beta 3

#75

Post by mwcampbell »

ajconway wrote: post #55

On iOS it's not possible to seamlessly integrate any custom UI drawing with OS animations (keyboard, rotation). This means that certain types of apps will never feel right on the platform, which should significantly limit usability of the framework outside of Android and desktop.

Interesting. Can you expand on which types of apps wouldn't feel right on iOS if developed in Flutter?

Re: Ready for Production Apps: Flutter Beta 3

#76

Post by [deleted] »

bsaul wrote: post #70
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha. This is hilarious. Most high-profile / successful iOS apps (other than games) are native. And judging from what I’m seeing in the ecosystem, I’d guess that most teams out there have switched to Swift or will do so soon. There’s very little enthusiasm or innovation in the Objective-C ecosystem at this point. The lack of a major UI update in the last few years is a feature, not a bug. It doesn’t seem to have held b…

I don't think you got my comment right. I was advocating for apple to expand swift to other platforms ( android, pc desktop, web, server, whatever), in order to compete with techs like flutter. The reason cross platform tools weren't a good fit before and are now is both because hardware is now powerful enough, and because platforms have now reach a stable point.

[deleted]

Re: Ready for Production Apps: Flutter Beta 3

#77

Post by mwcampbell »

hawski wrote: post #50

How good is FFI in Dart? I mean how fast and easy is it? I see that it can call C and C++ libraries, but that's nowadays a basic requirement for any FFI. I'm looking maybe for an opinion and maybe some kind of numbers to back up it's performance. As far as I understand it on Android it's compiled to a CPU native binary and has to use NDK and JNI to do anything. If that's a fact it's funny that on Google's own platfor…

I share your dream. I seriously considered Elements for a project a couple of years ago, but rejected it, because I didn't want to get into a situation where Apple introduced a new platform (e.g. tvOS) or a new technical requirement (e.g. 64-bit or bitcode) and I would be stuck because I was dependent on a third-party, closed-source compiler to produce native code.

Re: Ready for Production Apps: Flutter Beta 3

#78

Post by mwcampbell »

yorwba wrote: post #67
mwcampbell wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: > In other words, in today’s market, a branded, custom UI is king. Does a custom UI per app not make it more difficult for people to learn each new app? Didn't the platform developers write their human interface guidelines for a reason? Or was that level of consistency only necessary in the early days of Mac and Windows, when the temptation was to port a DOS app straight over rather than redesigning…

Platforms also like their branded, custom UIs. When you build an app that uses the platforms widgets, you reinforce the platform's brand. When you use the same look everywhere, on the web and for apps on each platform, you reinforce your own brand. If platform developers cared so much about consistency, they wouldn't change their UI design just to freshen up their image or because design trends have changed. Maybe lo…

For mobile platforms, is there such a thing as timeless, classic UI design that won't look dated next year, but doesn't require every app developer to create their own brand?

Re: Ready for Production Apps: Flutter Beta 3

#79

Post by riku_iki »

nevi-me wrote: post #27

I like the direction that Flutter has taken, cross-platform without the baggage of being a web platform. If you know JS and Java, Dart is very easy to learn. About a few hours' worth of tinkering and you'll be good. I had an Android app [0] that I was trying to build with Kotlin in the evenings/weekends. I switched to Flutter, and was able to get something out of the door in less than the time I spent on Kotlin/Java.…

> cross-platform without the baggage of being a web platform.

Simple ability to run in the browser, even not perfectly, would still add a lot of value though..

Re: Ready for Production Apps: Flutter Beta 3

#80

Post by hawski »

geokon wrote: post #73
hawski wrote: post #50

How good is FFI in Dart? I mean how fast and easy is it? I see that it can call C and C++ libraries, but that's nowadays a basic requirement for any FFI. I'm looking maybe for an opinion and maybe some kind of numbers to back up it's performance. As far as I understand it on Android it's compiled to a CPU native binary and has to use NDK and JNI to do anything. If that's a fact it's funny that on Google's own platfor…

I mean, if you're gunna use C++ libraries, is there a reason not to just make the whole app in C++ (like with Qt/QML)? Seems adding a new language/toolchain to the mix is a recipe for headaches. That's a genuine question :) I don't do any app development so maybe I'm missing something - is Qt not sufficient? It seems to run on everything as-is

I didn't say anything about C++ libraries, at least in case of my dream thing.

The problem with Qt is that it draws its own widgets. It is close on some platforms like with Gtk+ theme, but most people report how it does not look native on their platform. Also on Android it has to use JNI and NDK so it's not native to Android as DEX/Java is. On Windows I believe that CLR or at least COM (you can do it even C, but that requires effort) is a native platform.

Qt is from a time when C was kinda native for everyone. It's a different world now for better or worse.

Of course Qt has some advantage over one of many other widget toolkits drawing their own widgets. It hooks to native accessibility APIs for example. Other than that: dlangui, Lambda Native or even SDL2 can be seen as contenders.

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