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Flutter desktop shells

github.com

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Re: Flutter desktop shells

#81

Post by wellpast »

stephenhuey wrote: post #78
wellpast wrote: post #74

Every so often for the past several years I'll go evaluate options for cross-platform desktop app development and I always come back with an enormous handful of options and all of which fall short on some measure. I would really think that this "problem" would have a great solution by now. But I think most of the developer attention is on web for obvious reasons (more ease, more conducive to mistakes/novices/etc). Ho…

Have you tried Rubymotion? It currently deploys to iOS, Android and OSX, but Amir, the new leader, is quite passionate about expanding and just deployed a popular Rubymotion app on the Nintendo Switch, so stay tuned for more platforms!

This is exactly what I'm talking about. There are SOOOO many options and all of them fall short. This one falls short in the extreme. I.e, no Windows support & it seems mobile-focused not desktop-focused.

Not trying to be harsh and I bet this project has cool plans.

But what worries me is that there are 100s of options in this space and _all_ of them are short.

Why can't the passionate community rally behind one effort, and fully solve this problem?

A solution doesn't seem to need to be programming language-specific, either, so that doesn't seem to be a good reason to keep 'forking' this problem.

Re: Flutter desktop shells

#82

Post by Scarbutt »

wellpast wrote: post #74

Every so often for the past several years I'll go evaluate options for cross-platform desktop app development and I always come back with an enormous handful of options and all of which fall short on some measure. I would really think that this "problem" would have a great solution by now. But I think most of the developer attention is on web for obvious reasons (more ease, more conducive to mistakes/novices/etc). Ho…

I hate using services and having my data all on some remote service w/ little options for privacy and safety/backup, etc.

How would non-tech users handle backups?

Re: Flutter desktop shells

#83

Post by neves »

Weird. Till other day the Web was the platform to rule them all. Who would do desktop apps in 2019? If you need a web page, and hybrid app is still best option.

Re: Flutter desktop shells

#84

Post by markdog12 »

danite wrote: post #61
yc-kraln wrote: post #3

I really want to like Flutter, but I someone really don't want to spend the time to learn Dart. I can't really quantify it--some mix of yet-another Proprietary Google Technology, yet another ecosystem, yet another X. I'm tired I just want to build stuff that solves problems.

To me Dart is pretty disappointing. Modern languages like Swift and Rust have shown the power of incorporating functional features like sum types and pattern matching. Dart just feels like the same sort of OO language we've been getting since Java became popular. Edit: Also the continued existence of null in new programming languages is a baffling choice to me.

I don't blame you for being underwhelmed. The original goal was an easy to learn language. But since Dart 2.0 was completed, they are working on adding many other language features, including NNBD (Non-null by default).

https://github.com/dart-lang/language/issues

Re: Flutter desktop shells

#85

Post by kllrnohj »

gardaani wrote: post #46

They are still using OpenGL on Mac. Apple has deprecated OpenGL. I'd definitely wait until the Flutter team has replaced the OpenGL dependency with Apple's Metal. (I really hope they will do it.)

You can poke through this bug https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/18208 and the referenced skia bugs. There's a Metal backend in the works already, but if you really for some reason refuse to use OpenGL even though it works fine Skia's Vulkan backend works fine and MoltenVK exists now.

But deprecated just means "start moving off of this please" not "it's already broken"

Re: Flutter desktop shells

#86

Post by nova22033 »

tadzik_ wrote: post #13
nova22033 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yet-another Proprietary Google Technology Dart is open source: https://github.com/dart-lang It took me two minutes to find that using googles real proprietary technology..their search.

Sure it is, but I can see why OP looks down on it – just like their web rendering engine, it may be open source, but it's Google holding all the cards and ultimately making all the decisions. It may be opensource now while it's useful for them, but it may end up just like Android over the years: more and more closed bit by bit.

Have people stopped developing Android apps?

Re: Flutter desktop shells

#87

Post by ngrilly »

asutekku wrote: post #38
jonny_eh wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Google any worse than some "benevolent dictator for life" like other open-source languages?

Google has abandoned so many projects people (developers) don’t have that much of a faith in them anymore.

A lot of open sources are abandoned in general. Google has a good track record regarding the maintenance of their open source projects. Google has abandoned some proprietary products (Google Reader, Google +, etc.), but it says nothing about their open source strategy.

Re: Flutter desktop shells

#88

Post by mythz »

Very excited, this is the fast & productive non-electron native Desktop Apps UI I've been waiting for.

Most people use Electron because most native GUI's suck as they're antiquated APIs are unproductive with slow dev/iteration times. Flutter lets you build beautiful Material Apps using a refreshingly modern Reactive UI with built-in hot reloading.

Dart is like a cleaner Typed version of JavaScript, a bit more static and restrictive in someways but still really easy to pick up and learn if you have any 'C-like' language experience.

Re: Flutter desktop shells

#89

Post by H1Supreme »

wootie512 wrote: post #37

I have been a full time Android dev for past 5 years, and have really grown to dislike the work. UI development takes up so much of my time. And usually the fix ends up being some small attribute that only has an effect when combining X and Y UI parts. Had the chance to do some Flutter work, and really enjoyed it. Could knock out the UI and later modify it with ease. Spent most of my time focusing on app logic, and n…

Are you using the ConstraintLayout? Previously, I would have agreed with you. But, I've found the ConstraintLayout to be pretty fantastic when developing UI's.
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