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Flutter is an amazing project. It feels like an futuristic version of the Android SDK. Everything is a widget and it has a catalog of amazing widgets. These con

Flutter is an amazing project. It feels like an futuristic version of the Android SDK. Everything is a widget and it has a catalog of amazing widgets. These conform to the Material Design guidelines. It makes it very hassle-free to make a functionally great and beautiful app. You write your Flutter app using Dart. The Dart code is compiled to native code. The more I work with Dart the more I like it. The IntelliJ Flutter plugin makes for a tight and great integration. Right now the weak point of Flutter is that there aren't many plugins for utilizing platform specific features. This always the fault line with these cross-platform frameworks. These will come I'm sure of. It's relatively easy to write a plugin which is a great plus. I've done native development on both Android and iOS. Tried Cordova-based development. Lastly React Native. Out of all these I like Flutter the most. You will make a beautiful app with much less work compared to native development and other alternatives. The performance is also fantastic. Flutter uses its own high-performance rendering engine to draw widgets. Almost the entirety of Flutter is written in Dart; also the lower parts. This is important for development because nothing is closed off. With everything being written in Dart it gives you a high degree of control. My early work so far using Flutter; https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.me.tvligenu https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.me.tvligen... (Danish television listings) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dk.kjeldsen.etherexplorer https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dk.kjeldsen.et... (Ethereum blockchain explorer)

pjmlp 9y ago
> Flutter is an amazing project. It feels like an futuristic version of the Android SDK. This is how I would like to have seen ChromeOS being implemented, a fresh revisit of the Smalltalk experience but using Dart instead. Instead they created a browser window manager.
- gman83 9y ago
  Fuchsia is using Flutter for applications.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Yes, but we still don't know what will actually happen to Fuchsia. Hopefully it will be something like that, a nice micro-kernel OS, using a mix of C++/Rust and Dart. But given how Google projects go, it might just be canceled or pivot into something else, e.g. Brillo vs Android Things.
    - gman83 9y ago
      True, but given the reports that Andromeda (their ChromeOS/Android mashup OS) was shelved in favor of Fuchsia, it's more likely they'll stick with this.
      - invalidname 9y ago
        I would argue that it's more likely that they'll kill that too. Evidence you stated suggested they already killed one OS
    - malkia 9y ago
      The source code is out there updated heavily through the week - http://fuchsia.googlesource.com http://fuchsia.googlesource.com I see that C++, some C, go, rust, python, yes dart and possibly other languages are being used. First I was thinking this is crazy, but then I'm reminded of how much each modern Operating System is more or less "C" based, where any non-C language has to make bindings, ffi connections, etc. to get to the low-level. Instead, use something like mojo (called fidl), which is like protobuf, but only for IPC - e.g. much more lightweight (but doesn't support endianess handling), and use it for communication between the systems. Make fidl generate bindings for each languages, and wire everything together with it. (mojo to my knowledge is what the chrome browser uses to communicate with it's isolated instances).
- pgeorgi 9y ago
  At least that "browser window manager" came with lots of useful tools to solve problems with the computer, based on a wide ecosystem. "Smalltalk Revisited" doesn't solve any problems per-se, and would be firmly stuck in the chicken and egg corner that produced way too many stillborn projects in IT. So, Chrome OS implementing Dart might have been interesting, but on the other hand, as soon as there was talk about adding Dart to the web platform, there were all those rants about "Google is monopolizing the web!!!!11". I guess it's hard to please everyone. (disclosure: I'm on the Chrome OS firmware team. Although while "Chrome", there's definitely no Javascript or Flutter involved. My team's code needs to run in the absence of arbitrary amounts of RAM [edit-to-add: which means I have no stake in the game of which language has a hipster-compatible garbage collector])
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    So let me tell you that I don't see any value spending money on ChromeOS as it is, and there is hardly any computer store in Europe selling Chromebooks. When they try to sell them, it is a single model on a corner of the shop with increasing discounts until someone finally takes it away, or they return the unit back. So from European point of view those "lots of useful tools to solve problems with the computer, based on a wide ecosystem." are nowhere to be seen. > My team's code needs to run in the absence of arbitrary amounts of RAM Chrome's memory usage on the process system monitor shows a different reality about that code.
    - baobrain 9y ago
      > there is hardly any computer store in Europe selling Chromebooks. Very different reality in the US. My local best buy and Target have at least 4 high end chrome books each for sale. > Chrome's memory usage on the process system monitor shows a different reality about that code. ?? I'm a bit confused by this, his team writes chrome os firmware code, nothing to do with the browser.
    - pgeorgi 9y ago
      > there is hardly any computer store in Europe selling Chromebooks That's a sad reality of Google products that aren't free ("monetized through ads" if you prefer) web services: Unless you're in the US, they might as well not exist. It's just impossible to sign up for them legitimately (ie. without using a VPN, US credit card and a forwarding mail address in the US.) Personally I think that a plethora of the "paid" Google products (including Chromebooks!) could do pretty well in Europe if given the chance, but for reasons good or bad they never get the chance to prove themselves in the market in the first place. > When they try to sell them, it is a single model on a corner of the shop with increasing discounts Nevertheless, _when_ they are available, they're doing a bit better than you describe it: https://geizhals.de/?phist=1461289 https://geizhals.de/?phist=1461289 https://geizhals.de/?phist=1483242 https://geizhals.de/?phist=1483242 https://geizhals.de/?phist=1564920 https://geizhals.de/?phist=1564920 https://geizhals.de/?phist=1378869 https://geizhals.de/?phist=1378869 https://geizhals.de/?phist=1439976 https://geizhals.de/?phist=1439976 are a sample of devices for the German market (limited the search to the set of devices with a DE keyboard to avoid imported models, whose prices fluctuate wildly and aren't what people typically consider regular market availability), both low-end and high-end, and the development of those price indexes looks pretty normal for notebooks. > Chrome's memory usage on the process system monitor shows a different reality about that code. "Chrome OS firmware team". My team's code doesn't ever show up on the process system monitor.
weavie 9y ago
Given it is still in Alpha, how stable have you found it to be?
- tobiaswk 9y ago
  The stuff I've built with Flutter has been very stable and I haven't encountered any big bugs or show-stoppers. However the API itself is subjected to changes so there's that.

pjmlp 9y ago

> Flutter is an amazing project. It feels like an futuristic version of the Android SDK. This is how I would like to have seen ChromeOS being implemented, a fresh revisit of the Smalltalk experience but using Dart instead. Instead they created a browser window manager.

gman83 9y ago
Fuchsia is using Flutter for applications.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Yes, but we still don't know what will actually happen to Fuchsia. Hopefully it will be something like that, a nice micro-kernel OS, using a mix of C++/Rust and Dart. But given how Google projects go, it might just be canceled or pivot into something else, e.g. Brillo vs Android Things.
  - gman83 9y ago
    True, but given the reports that Andromeda (their ChromeOS/Android mashup OS) was shelved in favor of Fuchsia, it's more likely they'll stick with this.
    - invalidname 9y ago
      I would argue that it's more likely that they'll kill that too. Evidence you stated suggested they already killed one OS
  - malkia 9y ago
    The source code is out there updated heavily through the week - http://fuchsia.googlesource.com http://fuchsia.googlesource.com I see that C++, some C, go, rust, python, yes dart and possibly other languages are being used. First I was thinking this is crazy, but then I'm reminded of how much each modern Operating System is more or less "C" based, where any non-C language has to make bindings, ffi connections, etc. to get to the low-level. Instead, use something like mojo (called fidl), which is like protobuf, but only for IPC - e.g. much more lightweight (but doesn't support endianess handling), and use it for communication between the systems. Make fidl generate bindings for each languages, and wire everything together with it. (mojo to my knowledge is what the chrome browser uses to communicate with it's isolated instances).
pgeorgi 9y ago
At least that "browser window manager" came with lots of useful tools to solve problems with the computer, based on a wide ecosystem. "Smalltalk Revisited" doesn't solve any problems per-se, and would be firmly stuck in the chicken and egg corner that produced way too many stillborn projects in IT. So, Chrome OS implementing Dart might have been interesting, but on the other hand, as soon as there was talk about adding Dart to the web platform, there were all those rants about "Google is monopolizing the web!!!!11". I guess it's hard to please everyone. (disclosure: I'm on the Chrome OS firmware team. Although while "Chrome", there's definitely no Javascript or Flutter involved. My team's code needs to run in the absence of arbitrary amounts of RAM [edit-to-add: which means I have no stake in the game of which language has a hipster-compatible garbage collector])
- pjmlp 9y ago
  So let me tell you that I don't see any value spending money on ChromeOS as it is, and there is hardly any computer store in Europe selling Chromebooks. When they try to sell them, it is a single model on a corner of the shop with increasing discounts until someone finally takes it away, or they return the unit back. So from European point of view those "lots of useful tools to solve problems with the computer, based on a wide ecosystem." are nowhere to be seen. > My team's code needs to run in the absence of arbitrary amounts of RAM Chrome's memory usage on the process system monitor shows a different reality about that code.
  - baobrain 9y ago
    > there is hardly any computer store in Europe selling Chromebooks. Very different reality in the US. My local best buy and Target have at least 4 high end chrome books each for sale. > Chrome's memory usage on the process system monitor shows a different reality about that code. ?? I'm a bit confused by this, his team writes chrome os firmware code, nothing to do with the browser.
  - pgeorgi 9y ago
    > there is hardly any computer store in Europe selling Chromebooks That's a sad reality of Google products that aren't free ("monetized through ads" if you prefer) web services: Unless you're in the US, they might as well not exist. It's just impossible to sign up for them legitimately (ie. without using a VPN, US credit card and a forwarding mail address in the US.) Personally I think that a plethora of the "paid" Google products (including Chromebooks!) could do pretty well in Europe if given the chance, but for reasons good or bad they never get the chance to prove themselves in the market in the first place. > When they try to sell them, it is a single model on a corner of the shop with increasing discounts Nevertheless, _when_ they are available, they're doing a bit better than you describe it: https://geizhals.de/?phist=1461289 https://geizhals.de/?phist=1461289 https://geizhals.de/?phist=1483242 https://geizhals.de/?phist=1483242 https://geizhals.de/?phist=1564920 https://geizhals.de/?phist=1564920 https://geizhals.de/?phist=1378869 https://geizhals.de/?phist=1378869 https://geizhals.de/?phist=1439976 https://geizhals.de/?phist=1439976 are a sample of devices for the German market (limited the search to the set of devices with a DE keyboard to avoid imported models, whose prices fluctuate wildly and aren't what people typically consider regular market availability), both low-end and high-end, and the development of those price indexes looks pretty normal for notebooks. > Chrome's memory usage on the process system monitor shows a different reality about that code. "Chrome OS firmware team". My team's code doesn't ever show up on the process system monitor.

weavie 9y ago

Given it is still in Alpha, how stable have you found it to be?

tobiaswk 9y ago
The stuff I've built with Flutter has been very stable and I haven't encountered any big bugs or show-stoppers. However the API itself is subjected to changes so there's that.