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Announcing Flutter beta 1: Build beautiful native apps

373 points by nicpottier 9y ago

childintime 9y ago
Hey Google! Your Android IDE (full of feature taxes) is pulling this down! Did you forget Dart doesn't need a compiler, so there is no immediate use for an IDE? Please remove it from your setup and we'll talk!
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- d2p 9y ago
  If you want something lighter for Flutter, you can use VS Code with the Dart Code extension: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Dart-Code.dart-code https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Dart-Cod... (Disclaimer: I'm the author of the Dart Code plugin)
reacharavindh 9y ago
Unable to read the page on my phone. iOS 10 / Safari / Private mode.
- reacharavindh 9y ago
  I don't understand the downvotes. Is it not relevant to the HN community that a "Google Devloper blog" post about a new cross platform system isn't working on a mobile web browser?
- rrdharan 9y ago
  Works fine for me in iOS 11 / Safari / Private mode.
zitterbewegung 9y ago
So they ported dart to be used on mobile with a mobile app toolkit? It looks like the system is similar to react native but it uses dart instead of javascript and also compiles to native code. I wish you could use javascript because I really don't want to learn dart. I also don't really trust Google supporting yet another framework very long either. I wish they had a sample mobile app instead of just a video on the main page.
- sv123 9y ago
  Here is the sample app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.flutter.gallery&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.flutter.gal...
  - lobster_johnson 9y ago
    Is there an iOS version? I don't see one in the App Store.
    - wmleler 9y ago
      Apple doesn't accept demo apps in their store. But it is easy to fire up the Gallery app on an iOS phone from Flutter. There are plenty of iOS Flutter apps in the App Store. For example, the Hamilton app or. The fact that you can't tell if an app was written in Flutter just by looking at it (or even playing with it) is a Feature.
- thom_nic 9y ago
  > I really don't want to learn dart Literally half of programmers: "Ugh why can't everything be Javascript" Other half of programmers: "Ugh Javascript is the worst language in existence" /s Given that javascript (esp on mobile) has a hard time reaching native performance, they presumably chose Dart because its design makes it immensely easier to target native iOS and Android without drastically augmenting JS to the point where it's no longer JS. If there's a non-JS language that's easy to learn for a JS programmer, Dart (and I guess, TS) are it.
  - optimusclimb 9y ago
    The dichotomy you described is really just, "People who learned enough Javascript to make money from it", and, people who are actually interested in programming and understand the fundamentals, who know more than one programming language.
  - zitterbewegung 9y ago
    Sorry I didn't articulate my issue with Dart. The issue was not that I don't want to learn something that isn't javascript. The issue is that I don't want to learn a programming language who's only backer is Google. If dart had adoption outside of Google then I would have more incentive to learn it. So far it only looks like its used for internal google projects.
brainyz 9y ago
Does it have any advantages over React Native?
- lenkite 9y ago
  AOT compiled to native code that uses the native instruction set - no interpreter/vm involved. Uses custom rendering engine based on Skia. Can write UX just once for all platforms if you don't mind fixing the widget set. Custom widgets work on all supported platforms. Can in theory be ported to Desktops also, assuming someone writes flutter engine bindings for Win/MacOS/Linux. If this occurs, then you will truly have a modern, cross-XP, write-once-run-anywhere, compile-to-pure-binary, reactive UX framework
  - cwyers 9y ago
    What "theory" keeps React Native from being ported to desktops?
    - lenkite 9y ago
      React Native is already ported to desktops but you need to write N times for N platforms. In flutter, you can write just once after choosing a widget set, assuming you don't mind the same widgets everywhere.
      - cwyers 9y ago
        So it's like Xamarin -- there's UI for iOS, UI for Windows, UI for Android, but you can also use "Xamarin Forms" and have a similar appearance everywhere. But there's nothing stopping there from being a "React Forms" or whatever that does the same thing, is there?
        pknopf 9y ago
        > being a "React Forms" or whatever that does the same thing, is there? Nothing stopping it, nope. I'm surprised there isn't something currently. That said, it isn't so bad using different render functions for different platforms. The state management and event handling should be 100% consistent. Besides, going all in on a single render engine limits you to creating special "holes" to utilize controls native to the platform. Im not sure if flutter supports this, but I doubt it.
nicpottier 9y ago
This seems like a clever move by Google to build a "write once, run anywhere" framework so that they can get some amount of apps running on their new mobile OS spike Fuschia. All they need to do is make Flutter compelling enough for Android developers to adopt it.
- tangue 9y ago
  It’s very clever. Except for Dart. It has an image problem among developpers. I don’t know why but everyone I know seems to hate Dart (the only things worse than coding in Dart for my friends would be something like « writing amp pages in php using Atom »), so unless they can change that or support something like Typescript I’m not sure they’ll attract a lot of developpers.
  - jrs95 9y ago
    I'd never use Dart otherwise, but just to get a decent cross platform development toolkit I'd do it in a heartbeat.
    - markdog12 9y ago
      > I'd never use Dart otherwise Why not? I write Dart as part of my day job and it's a very nice language. It always does what you expect, gets out of your way. All my mistakes are my own bone-headed mistakes, not due to the language. That's a great trait in a language.
      - jrs95 9y ago
        Well, for one, I prefer React to Angular, so just in terms of how I'd prefer to write my applications JS seems like a better fit. In general I tend to try and stick to things with large and successful communities when I don't have a particularly compelling reason to do otherwise. However, if I were building a mobile app in Flutter, I probably would stick to Dart for any web client stuff that went along with it, just for consistency and possibly code sharing.
  - 9y ago
cwyers 9y ago
This feels like the Tennessee Valley Authority but for Dart. Just send people out there digging ditches in Dart to keep Dart's makers employed.
- merdreubu 9y ago
  >to keep Dart's makers employed I find it hard to believe that the people who built Strongtalk, Java's HotSpot, Chrome's V8 and (lastly) Dart, would have trouble finding employment.
- ctvo 9y ago
  I laughed. Dart's low adoption but continued support by Google is programming's biggest mystery.
  - Harimwakairi 9y ago
    It's also a clear counterexample to the idea that Google always abandons projects.
    - moocowtruck 9y ago
      its coming don't worry
  - coldtea 9y ago
    Actually Dart's low adoption is an even bigger mystery in itself.
    - moocowtruck 9y ago
      how is it a mystery? it seems quite clear the a language made to appeal to people who don't like taking risks in their programming languages would not want to learn yet another syntax for another language with the same semantics... What I find a mystery is how google doesn't get that
  - hbhakhra 9y ago
cletus 9y ago
So this is the problem with any cross-platform GUI toolkit: you have to make one of two choices: 1. Implement the lowest common denominator between all your supported platforms so you miss out on key features on each platform; or 2. Bypass native widgets so you end up with your own versions of everything where nothing quite behaves the same as native widgets do (ie Java Swing) and/or you incur a huge performance cost (ie Electron). This is a touch hyperbolic but only a touch. But consider this: Android uses garbage collection. iOS uses ref-counting. On a mobile platform, IMHO ref-counting is clearly superior and is a competitive avantage for iOS. GC leads to unpredictable behaviour, unpredictable resource usage and the inevitable stop-the-world GC pauses (at least I haven't seen a GC system yet that doesn't suffer from STW GC pauses to some degree). On a server, this is less clearcut. The locking for ref counting itself can become hot but this just isn't really the case on an app on a phone. It boggles my mind that years later (ARC came in in iOS 5), iOS still has this competitive advantage and not only does Android still not have it, nor does the Android-wannabe Fuchsia. But back to Flutter, it uses Dart. I honestly don't see the point of Dart. Maybe it's just me but I don't want optional typing, or rather optional type hinting. I want static typing. The romance with dynamic typing over the last decade I think is on a downward trajectory with the rise of the likes of Go (really a better Python) and Rust.
- Harimwakairi 9y ago
  > But back to Flutter, it uses Dart. I honestly don't see the point of Dart. Hackernoon's got a recent article covering this exact topic: https://hackernoon.com/why-flutter-uses-dart-dd635a054ebf https://hackernoon.com/why-flutter-uses-dart-dd635a054ebf
- bombita 9y ago
  > But back to Flutter, it uses Dart. I honestly don't see the point of Dart. Maybe it's just me but I don't want optional typing, or rather optional type hinting. I want static typing. The romance with dynamic typing over the last decade I think is on a downward trajectory with the rise of the likes of Go (really a better Python) and Rust. FYI Dart2 is no longer optionally typed.
  - 9y ago
TeeWEE 9y ago
This is the future of mobile development, and of googles new operating system Fuchsia, that will be replacing Chrome and Android on the long term. The architecture of Flutter is superior to that of non-reactive based frameworks like Cocoa and Android widgets. Try flutter, try the apps, and you will know why. Note: This is all guess work.
sago 9y ago
Sorry to do the picky thing and criticise a completely unrelated feature, but I wonder if we have, or are about to, reach peak "happy mandolin and animation" marketing videos. That is starting to feel old to me, early 2010s. As for the actual content: they really buried the fact that it's based on Dart. Saying that only that it "also works on dart 2" It's almost as if they don't think that's a feature.
- linkmotif 9y ago
  I keep hoping but year after year these videos are still here.
  - mixmastamyk 9y ago
    What alternative for a friendly intro would you suggest?
    - linkmotif 9y ago
      I wouldn’t... I think people must like them?
- wastedhours 9y ago
  Seems old, but it actually tends to convey the point more succinctly than a real-worlder. Plus, often it's because the iconography is also being developed for the rest of the asset suite, so it's faster/easier to do that with some fancy animation, than it is to do a different format. I'd love to see more developer-talking heads (and something I want to film more of on the freelance side), but it's more expensive than the happy-mandolin-and-animation approach. Again, on the actual content, I found that too. It seems as though Google are really trying to hide Dart, I'm not sure what the play is.
- subpixel 9y ago
  I'll take mandolin anyday. What we are hearing here is ukelele. Awful, horrendous ukelele.
polskibus 9y ago
Can this work with typescript somehow?
- weego 9y ago
  No it's Dart, you'd have to transpile which would turn it into a bit of a clownshow unfortunately
  - polskibus 9y ago
    How about typedart? j/k. I really wish there was a way to pass type information into JS VM so that code could be optimized better.
lenkite 9y ago
AOT compiled to native code that uses the native instruction set - no interpreter/vm involved. Uses custom rendering engine based on Skia. Can write UX just once for all platforms if you don't mind fixing the widget set. Custom widgets work on all supported platforms. Can in theory be ported to Desktops also, assuming someone writes flutter engine bindings for Win/MacOS/Linux. If this occurs, then you will truly have a modern, cross-XP, write-once-run-anywhere, compile-to-pure-binary, reactive UX framework Not a JS framework (tm)
- TeeWEE 9y ago
  Exactly this, its a better technical design for UI systems. And it works cross platform. And it has native compilation. And it has hot code reload. This is big.
- m_fayer 9y ago
  So, so, so very close. But unfortunately, Dart.
  - danvayn 9y ago
    Why do people hate Dart?
    - pknopf 9y ago
      My sore-point is the lack of community and enthusiasm for it. The available resources and libraries are limited.
      - mswift42 9y ago
        Is that reason enough to hate Dart ?
        pknopf 9y ago
        No, not the language itself. But community involvement is important.
hencoappel 9y ago
This is good news. Hopefully it will gain more traction once it becomes stable.
tiuPapa 9y ago
Why flutter? what problem does it solve better than the existing solutions? Also, why dart? Why not Go or Kotlin? Edit: Hmm, since I am getting downvoted, can someone please say what am I doing wrong here? Thanks. :D
- wmleler 9y ago
  There's an article that answers your question -- https://hackernoon.com/whats-revolutionary-about-flutter-946915b09514 https://hackernoon.com/whats-revolutionary-about-flutter-946...
  - tiuPapa 9y ago
    That was a good article, thanks.
deeg 9y ago
How does Flutter fit in with PWAs? From a high level they both seem to do the same thing: cross-platform mobile application platforms.
- ElijahLynn 9y ago
  Was wondering the same thing. Seems like a stop-gap solution for now until PWAs really hit their stride in a couple of years. PWAs are still missing a few features on some of the platforms, but hey Safari just now finally announced Service Worker support.
  - solarkraft 9y ago
    While PWAs make decent use of the lowest common denominator (browser), it comes at a gigantic complexity cost impacting both development ease and performance. Flutter is trying to get modern concepts delivered without towing along antiquated/unneeded technology. I'd personally be very happy with "compatibility" support of Flutter for the web, which seems to be quite easy (and performant) with wasm+opengl.
- jrs95 9y ago
  I'd imagine it's mostly a performance thing. It also seems like Google is aiming to use this to help get more apps on Fuchsia as well. It may end up becoming the preferred method of making new apps on Android.
  - deeg 9y ago
    That would seem to indicate that--at least from Google's view--PWAs are a dead-end solution. I guess I can stop going through the PWA tutorials.
    - solarkraft 9y ago
      To me it indicates that they still differentiate between web and native - which I find reasonable, at least in performance terms. PWAs will likely further rise in popularity and be very practical for good cross-platform support and ease of delivery - Flutter won't change that in the short term. In the long term, maybe it will.
ibdf 9y ago
I thought dart was dead... like buried way down dead. Has dart improved? Are they eventually going to kill Android only dev?
sandGorgon 9y ago
I really wish that this was in Kotlin - a truly beautiful language which only won because of the community and not because of a large commercial enterprise. Kotlin Native is already doing great. If Flutter was in Kotlin, I'm willing to bet that it's adoption would be 100x of what it is right now. In addition, it gives devs a safe migration path from android to fuchsia.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Fuchsia is developed in Dart. Where is Kotlin Native doing great? Right now I wouldn't consider it for anything serious. EDIT: Regarding Fuchsia, I only mean user space apps. The other layers are a mix of Rust, Go and C++ (C leftovers seem to be being migrated to C++).
  - softawre 9y ago
    We are using kotlin heavily in a large software company where Java/Clojure is common. Great language, get to use the JVM. What's not to love?
    - warent 9y ago
      Considering I've always avoided the JVM like the plague...
  - bsimpson 9y ago
    > Fuchsia is developed in Dart. I don't believe that's strictly true. Different parts of Fuchsia use different technologies. Flutter is (as far as I remember) the only UI framework for Fuchsia right now, so UI on Fuchsia is written in it (which uses Dart).
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      I mean the userspace apps. If Google plays an Android/Android Things on Fuchsia there won't be much use of C++ for app developers.
  - 9y ago
myth_drannon 9y ago
So what about Kotlin? I thought Google supported it as a first class citizen for Android development. And now that it looks like Kotlin is more popular than React-Native for mobile development, they add Dart2/Flutter.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Dart/Flutter was already presented at Google IO 2017, and is how Fuchsia userspace apps are developed. As for yet another framework. Welcome to Google. Android NDK alone has already been through 6 build systems, 3 public and 3 used at Google. EDIT: 3 external were ndk-build, gradle experimental, cmake with gradle stable. The 3 internal, looking at AOSP and other projects, ndk-build, blaze and Soong.
  - moocowtruck 9y ago
    out of curiosity have any idea why so many build systems? just flinging spaghetti at the wall until one is ideal? I mean I understand its good to rewrite software every so often but 6 in the timeframe of android ndk?
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      Some of them are internal mind you, things like Soong are only on the AOSP source code. https://android.googlesource.com/platform/build/soong/ https://android.googlesource.com/platform/build/soong/ As for why, I guess reasons.
seanalltogether 9y ago
You will never convince me that laying out UI elements in code is better then building out an object graph in something like xml. UI views are just containers inside containers inside containers, and following complex nesting chains through code declarations is a nightmare.
- mercurial 9y ago
  Works fine in React.
  - seanalltogether 9y ago
    That's because HTML as a framework doesn't have a proper inheritable component model. It's all runtime hacks on top of a document model that is composed of divs, spans, and inputs. IOS, Android and any sane application environment have a fully extensible layout and component model to define at compile time.
    - GeneralTspoon 9y ago
      Android and iOS don't really have this to the same level actually. Say for example on Android I wanted to include a layout but change the text color of all the items in that layout - I can't just do <include text_color="purple">. But I can do pretty much exactly that with React. This is because you can't use variables within layouts like that on Android. Sure, I could build a custom view and add a custom attribute and use that - but this is one of the areas where native isn't as nice as React Native (there are plenty of pain points with RN though).
      - pjmlp 9y ago
        You could do that with themes.
- azinman2 9y ago
  Until you have multiple people editing the same file across multiple branches...
alfonsodev 9y ago
how do you access native frameworks like AVFundation? is there any example?
- Harimwakairi 9y ago
  How-to: https://flutter.io/platform-channels/ https://flutter.io/platform-channels/ Tons of real world examples: https://github.com/flutter/plugins https://github.com/flutter/plugins
mishurov 9y ago
>High-velocity >Hamilton
cageface 9y ago
The responses to this article are pretty discouraging to be honest. Cross platform mobile development is a pain in the ass. React Native is a step in the right direction but, as anyone that has actually used it knows, it still has some very rough edges. Here's a completely new platform with a forward thinking, reactive UI model and fast but flexible language that offers a much less painful environment for us to live in day to day and all people can do is crap on it because it isn't JavaScript and they have to learn a new, very slightly unfamiliar language. You can learn a lot about why programming is such a shit show by reading the comments on this one.
- jrs95 9y ago
  > You can learn a lot about why programming is such a shit show by reading the comments on this one. Dunning-Kruger is real. For more information on what the hell happened in this thread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect Edit: Just to be clear, I'm referring to the same comments you are, not your comment. I'm amazed at how many people can just immediately dismiss this because it uses Dart while not even knowing much of anything about Dart. I also can't respond to anything more yet beyond editing because I've been rate limited (for being an asshole, it was well deserved).
  - ucaetano 9y ago
    > Dunning-Kruger is real. Is calling the Dunning-Kruger effect an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect? Not implying anything, just curious indeed. PS: And thanks for mentioning it!
    - jrs95 9y ago
      Yes, it absolutely can be, which is pretty amusing. Since I've gotten downvotes, apparently people think I may be one of those cases. But hey, at least I'm only arrogantly dismissing people's arrogant dismissal of Flutter ;)
- Royalaid 9y ago
losvedir 9y ago
My biggest hangup with a little project I wrote in React Native was using device storage. I didn't want my app to interact with APIs (which RN seems good at), and just wanted a little local DB. The whole `create-reactive-native-app` flow was pretty good up until I needed to have a local DB at which point I'd need to eject it and use various libraries in each of the ecosystems (or realm, I think). What's the story with Flutter in that regard? Is there a nice cross-platform local DB interface that it provides? That would be a killer feature for me, if so.
- boundlessdreamz 9y ago
  Looks like it has sqlite support - https://pub.dartlang.org/packages/sqflite https://pub.dartlang.org/packages/sqflite
- dikaiosune 9y ago
  I'm not sure when you last tried it, but CRNA apps (insofar as they run in the expo client) have sqlite support these days: https://docs.expo.io/versions/latest/sdk/sqlite.html https://docs.expo.io/versions/latest/sdk/sqlite.html (expo employee) edit: I should also say that I'm pretty excited about flutter, think it has a lot of great qualities and hope that it gets some solid adoption. Someone needs to solve these issues with building mobile apps.
skhro87 9y ago
I recently rewrote a small app in flutter that was originally react native. Initially I was sceptical, mainly about learning dart. But it wasn't hard to pick up. I found the development experience much smoother than react native, things just worked, whereas in react native there were many many small bugs and issues with the many packages required. Flutter IDE support is good with the intellij plugin [1]. Performance, I didn't do any benchmarks, but a simple list with thousands of items feels much smoother on flutter than react native. There are packages for redux as well in flutter, so state management is taken care of [2]. The only downside I experienced with flutter is that Json handling is clumsy, apparently because flutter doesn't support reflection, which would be necessary to have comfortable Json-decoding like with Javas gson or go's json package [3]. Another thing to consider is that react native will render on one thread, and handle the application logic on another thread, but that means the application logic is still restricted to a single javascript thread, which can lead to bottlenecks eventually. From what I understand (haven't tested), dart can work multithreaded, having an advantages there. End of the day, I would chose flutter over react native. Mainly because of Javascript and all the pain that comes with it. [1] https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/9212-flutter https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/9212-flutter [2] https://pub.dartlang.org/packages/flutter_redux https://pub.dartlang.org/packages/flutter_redux [3] https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/1150 https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/1150
- karmakaze 9y ago
  This is exactly one of the things I was curious to know about Flutter vs alternatives. Having already been burned by Dart 1 and its promise of web components, I'm more cautious for a cure-all. If the development workflow is good, trying it on a smaller Android project seems feasible. What I find attractive there is that you can sidestep the legacy Android APIs which was created for much more constrained hardware than we run today. Might even be worth just doing that and keeping iOS development the same. If iOS 12 widgets all look different, that would age Flutter apps.
- nimrody 9y ago
  How is the integration of Flutter apps with the rest of the Android system/apps? Given that Flutter does not use the platform native widgets -- do Flutter apps look or behave different? How difficult it is to use a Java library from Dart?
bbreier 9y ago
I really want to give my thanks to the Flutter team. Flutter allowed us to finally (and fairly quickly!) build a music production application on Android with feature parity to our iPhone offering. We're just three devs working on this in our spare time and I think without something like Flutter we'd never have been able to complete this. We haven't hit release yet, but we're pretty confident we'll have our Android version out on the Play Store within about six weeks. https://tizemusic.com/ https://tizemusic.com/
- kodeninja 9y ago
  @bbreier this looks very interesting! Can you talk a bit more about how your overall _dev_ experience was, working on Flutter? How many times did you have to go _native_, where you had to create platform channels for features Flutter didn't already expose? How much code sharing, if any, were you able to achieve? Were there any corner cases you ran into? Thanks, and good luck with the app!
  - fareesh 9y ago
    Also very interested to hear the answer to this question
- eudora 9y ago
  It looks like there's custom UI going on there, how did you all find that on Flutter?
deforciant 9y ago
As a backend developer I find flutter great. Recently created an app that uses Go compiled with gomobile as a backend for flutter UI. Widgets are great, Dart lang is easy to learn and understand :)
akritrime 9y ago
I just discovered flutter today and made this post[0]. Good to see a beta release, pitching the alpha version of something to use in production is kinda difficult. [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16472139 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16472139
mixmastamyk 9y ago
This reminds me of my experiences with Kivy and Cordova, etc. The achilles heel of these projects are always vendor and community support if you want to build anything more than toys. Do they have the endurance to go the distance?
bitL 9y ago
Why should I use this instead of: - React Native - Vue.js + Cordova - Scala + JavaFX - Kotlin Native - (whatever I missed here) ? I am in a mood to learn another language and framework; how would you persuade me to pick this one instead of alternatives?
- Apocryphon 9y ago
  You missed Xamarin, which seems to be popular enough to have its API documentation prominently ranked in search engine results, suggesting there seems to be .NET programmers doing mobile development.
- monyr75 9y ago
  Pretty well covered here: https://hackernoon.com/whats-revolutionary-about-flutter-946915b09514 https://hackernoon.com/whats-revolutionary-about-flutter-946...
  - peternicky 9y ago
    Can you provide a summary of the convincing arguments from that article, in 1 or two sentences? I plan to read it myself, but I think the parent comment is relevant.
    - niutech 9y ago
      From the article: - The advantages of reactive views, with no JavaScript bridge - Fast, smooth, and predictable; code compiles AOT to native (ARM) code - The developer has full control over the widgets and layout - Comes with beautiful, customizable widgets - Great developer tools, with amazing hot reload - More performant, more compatibility, more fun
- niutech 9y ago
  I would add NativeScript and Weex to the list. However, the Flutter advantage might be its performance.
hysan 9y ago
So I took a good look at the docs and as a React Native developer, I do have some questions: - Is there code linting support in Visual Studio Code? I find that having a style guide, even if loosely enforced, helps a lot in learning how to structure code for long term maintainability. - The state of packages, in particular those that expose native SDKs, looks just like the early stages of native modules on RN. I know this is a beta, but what is the time frame for when all of these SDKs to mature? Or is this all on the community, in which case, I wouldn't be very convinced to use Flutter considering how long it took for good native modules to stabilize on React Native. - Why aren't the licensing requirement bits mentioned on the actual doc pages for Drawer and Material Components in Flutter? It's in the FAQ, but if they are required, putting them in the docs would be better: https://flutter.io/faq/#how-can-i-determine-the-licenses-my-flutter-application-needs-to-show https://flutter.io/faq/#how-can-i-determine-the-licenses-my-... - Is there a roadmap that is more detailed than the milestones (https://github.com/flutter/flutter/milestones https://github.com/flutter/flutter/milestones)? With React Native, I know that support isn't going to suddenly dry up because it's an integral part of Facebook's current tech stack. So even if they don't focus on what I prioritize, at least I know it's being improved. With Google and their support reputation, I'm much more concerned about spending time to pick up Flutter & Dart only to have support taper off.
- Harimwakairi 9y ago
  I can answer a few of these. For Visual Studio Code support, the community has produced an extension: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Dart-Code.dart-code https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Dart-Cod... Regarding packages, they're a combined effort between the Flutter team and external contributors. There are a bunch in https://github.com/flutter/plugins https://github.com/flutter/plugins, for example, with commits from both inside and outside Google.
  - hysan 9y ago
    The extension I saw in the docs, but I didn't see code linting as one of the features. Is there code linting included? Thanks for the plugins link. Any idea what Google's stance is on supporting or expanding support of platform plugins? There's no issues for plugins so I can't tell how stable those packages are. So even if it's a combined effort, I feel weary repeating what the early stages of React Native felt like.
piotrkubisa 9y ago
I am really glad Flutter came out as beta and finally ReactNative got a good competitor, so maybe it will encourage both sides to improve itself and polish various (annoying) edges.
gkya 9y ago
Mobile development is hard to get in. Maybe it's that I'm an outsider, but yet, on the second most popular platform it costs you an Apple computer and $100 for the IDE (IIRC), and on the other one the development experience is godawful (tools are slooow and janky, hard to integrate with your usual tooling, the program structure is incredibly complex, lots of XML, and then there's Java). Having looked around a bit, it seems to me that it should be easier to start with Flutter, the filesystem layout, the project configuration, the language, they seem managable, and I've seen some youtube videos where a guy only used VS Code and the Flutter command line. If I can just get going with Emacs and the Flutter's command line tool, that'd be awesome. Mobile app or game development seems to be a nice way to earn some money developing software solo, just from your laptop. And not having to deal with JavaScript is a nice way to spend more time for oneself. So definitely going to re-try this (tried it before but my impression was that I needed Android Studio, and that's a show stopper).
philippz 9y ago
Does it work with AngularJS1?
bschwindHN 9y ago
I need to write a mobile app for iOS and Android which uses Bluetooth Low Energy and talks to an MQTT server. Would Flutter be a good choice to make a prototype for such an app?
dropspace 9y ago
I made a small project with Flutter and found it intuitive and simple. Far more so than react native, and the end result is far nicer.
TheMagicHorsey 9y ago
I hope Google puts some effort towards building an easy way for developers to access maps through flutter. Right now the story doesn't seem very good. Another place that seems lacking is photo/camera access. Maps and Camera access are really table stakes for any cross-platform framework at this point. Many app concepts need location/maps and media access.
AhmadIbrahim 9y ago
Does flutter support RTL languages?

373 points by nicpottier 9y ago

Hey Google! Your Android IDE (full of feature taxes) is pulling this down! Did you forget Dart doesn't need a compiler, so there is no immediate use for an IDE? Please remove it from your setup and we'll talk!

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
d2p 9y ago
If you want something lighter for Flutter, you can use VS Code with the Dart Code extension: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Dart-Code.dart-code https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Dart-Cod... (Disclaimer: I'm the author of the Dart Code plugin)

reacharavindh 9y ago

Unable to read the page on my phone. iOS 10 / Safari / Private mode.

reacharavindh 9y ago
I don't understand the downvotes. Is it not relevant to the HN community that a "Google Devloper blog" post about a new cross platform system isn't working on a mobile web browser?
rrdharan 9y ago
Works fine for me in iOS 11 / Safari / Private mode.

zitterbewegung 9y ago

So they ported dart to be used on mobile with a mobile app toolkit? It looks like the system is similar to react native but it uses dart instead of javascript and also compiles to native code. I wish you could use javascript because I really don't want to learn dart. I also don't really trust Google supporting yet another framework very long either. I wish they had a sample mobile app instead of just a video on the main page.

sv123 9y ago
Here is the sample app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.flutter.gallery&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.flutter.gal...
- lobster_johnson 9y ago
  Is there an iOS version? I don't see one in the App Store.
  - wmleler 9y ago
    Apple doesn't accept demo apps in their store. But it is easy to fire up the Gallery app on an iOS phone from Flutter. There are plenty of iOS Flutter apps in the App Store. For example, the Hamilton app or. The fact that you can't tell if an app was written in Flutter just by looking at it (or even playing with it) is a Feature.
thom_nic 9y ago
> I really don't want to learn dart Literally half of programmers: "Ugh why can't everything be Javascript" Other half of programmers: "Ugh Javascript is the worst language in existence" /s Given that javascript (esp on mobile) has a hard time reaching native performance, they presumably chose Dart because its design makes it immensely easier to target native iOS and Android without drastically augmenting JS to the point where it's no longer JS. If there's a non-JS language that's easy to learn for a JS programmer, Dart (and I guess, TS) are it.
- optimusclimb 9y ago
  The dichotomy you described is really just, "People who learned enough Javascript to make money from it", and, people who are actually interested in programming and understand the fundamentals, who know more than one programming language.
- zitterbewegung 9y ago
  Sorry I didn't articulate my issue with Dart. The issue was not that I don't want to learn something that isn't javascript. The issue is that I don't want to learn a programming language who's only backer is Google. If dart had adoption outside of Google then I would have more incentive to learn it. So far it only looks like its used for internal google projects.

brainyz 9y ago

Does it have any advantages over React Native?

lenkite 9y ago
AOT compiled to native code that uses the native instruction set - no interpreter/vm involved. Uses custom rendering engine based on Skia. Can write UX just once for all platforms if you don't mind fixing the widget set. Custom widgets work on all supported platforms. Can in theory be ported to Desktops also, assuming someone writes flutter engine bindings for Win/MacOS/Linux. If this occurs, then you will truly have a modern, cross-XP, write-once-run-anywhere, compile-to-pure-binary, reactive UX framework
- cwyers 9y ago
  What "theory" keeps React Native from being ported to desktops?
  - lenkite 9y ago
    React Native is already ported to desktops but you need to write N times for N platforms. In flutter, you can write just once after choosing a widget set, assuming you don't mind the same widgets everywhere.
    - cwyers 9y ago
      So it's like Xamarin -- there's UI for iOS, UI for Windows, UI for Android, but you can also use "Xamarin Forms" and have a similar appearance everywhere. But there's nothing stopping there from being a "React Forms" or whatever that does the same thing, is there?
      - pknopf 9y ago
        > being a "React Forms" or whatever that does the same thing, is there? Nothing stopping it, nope. I'm surprised there isn't something currently. That said, it isn't so bad using different render functions for different platforms. The state management and event handling should be 100% consistent. Besides, going all in on a single render engine limits you to creating special "holes" to utilize controls native to the platform. Im not sure if flutter supports this, but I doubt it.

nicpottier 9y ago

This seems like a clever move by Google to build a "write once, run anywhere" framework so that they can get some amount of apps running on their new mobile OS spike Fuschia. All they need to do is make Flutter compelling enough for Android developers to adopt it.

tangue 9y ago
It’s very clever. Except for Dart. It has an image problem among developpers. I don’t know why but everyone I know seems to hate Dart (the only things worse than coding in Dart for my friends would be something like « writing amp pages in php using Atom »), so unless they can change that or support something like Typescript I’m not sure they’ll attract a lot of developpers.
- jrs95 9y ago
  I'd never use Dart otherwise, but just to get a decent cross platform development toolkit I'd do it in a heartbeat.
  - markdog12 9y ago
    > I'd never use Dart otherwise Why not? I write Dart as part of my day job and it's a very nice language. It always does what you expect, gets out of your way. All my mistakes are my own bone-headed mistakes, not due to the language. That's a great trait in a language.
    - jrs95 9y ago
      Well, for one, I prefer React to Angular, so just in terms of how I'd prefer to write my applications JS seems like a better fit. In general I tend to try and stick to things with large and successful communities when I don't have a particularly compelling reason to do otherwise. However, if I were building a mobile app in Flutter, I probably would stick to Dart for any web client stuff that went along with it, just for consistency and possibly code sharing.
- 9y ago

cwyers 9y ago

This feels like the Tennessee Valley Authority but for Dart. Just send people out there digging ditches in Dart to keep Dart's makers employed.

merdreubu 9y ago
>to keep Dart's makers employed I find it hard to believe that the people who built Strongtalk, Java's HotSpot, Chrome's V8 and (lastly) Dart, would have trouble finding employment.
ctvo 9y ago
I laughed. Dart's low adoption but continued support by Google is programming's biggest mystery.
- Harimwakairi 9y ago
  It's also a clear counterexample to the idea that Google always abandons projects.
  - moocowtruck 9y ago
    its coming don't worry
- coldtea 9y ago
  Actually Dart's low adoption is an even bigger mystery in itself.
  - moocowtruck 9y ago
    how is it a mystery? it seems quite clear the a language made to appeal to people who don't like taking risks in their programming languages would not want to learn yet another syntax for another language with the same semantics... What I find a mystery is how google doesn't get that
- hbhakhra 9y ago

cletus 9y ago

So this is the problem with any cross-platform GUI toolkit: you have to make one of two choices: 1. Implement the lowest common denominator between all your supported platforms so you miss out on key features on each platform; or 2. Bypass native widgets so you end up with your own versions of everything where nothing quite behaves the same as native widgets do (ie Java Swing) and/or you incur a huge performance cost (ie Electron). This is a touch hyperbolic but only a touch. But consider this: Android uses garbage collection. iOS uses ref-counting. On a mobile platform, IMHO ref-counting is clearly superior and is a competitive avantage for iOS. GC leads to unpredictable behaviour, unpredictable resource usage and the inevitable stop-the-world GC pauses (at least I haven't seen a GC system yet that doesn't suffer from STW GC pauses to some degree). On a server, this is less clearcut. The locking for ref counting itself can become hot but this just isn't really the case on an app on a phone. It boggles my mind that years later (ARC came in in iOS 5), iOS still has this competitive advantage and not only does Android still not have it, nor does the Android-wannabe Fuchsia. But back to Flutter, it uses Dart. I honestly don't see the point of Dart. Maybe it's just me but I don't want optional typing, or rather optional type hinting. I want static typing. The romance with dynamic typing over the last decade I think is on a downward trajectory with the rise of the likes of Go (really a better Python) and Rust.

Harimwakairi 9y ago
> But back to Flutter, it uses Dart. I honestly don't see the point of Dart. Hackernoon's got a recent article covering this exact topic: https://hackernoon.com/why-flutter-uses-dart-dd635a054ebf https://hackernoon.com/why-flutter-uses-dart-dd635a054ebf
bombita 9y ago
> But back to Flutter, it uses Dart. I honestly don't see the point of Dart. Maybe it's just me but I don't want optional typing, or rather optional type hinting. I want static typing. The romance with dynamic typing over the last decade I think is on a downward trajectory with the rise of the likes of Go (really a better Python) and Rust. FYI Dart2 is no longer optionally typed.
- 9y ago

TeeWEE 9y ago

This is the future of mobile development, and of googles new operating system Fuchsia, that will be replacing Chrome and Android on the long term. The architecture of Flutter is superior to that of non-reactive based frameworks like Cocoa and Android widgets. Try flutter, try the apps, and you will know why. Note: This is all guess work.

sago 9y ago

Sorry to do the picky thing and criticise a completely unrelated feature, but I wonder if we have, or are about to, reach peak "happy mandolin and animation" marketing videos. That is starting to feel old to me, early 2010s. As for the actual content: they really buried the fact that it's based on Dart. Saying that only that it "also works on dart 2" It's almost as if they don't think that's a feature.

linkmotif 9y ago
I keep hoping but year after year these videos are still here.
- mixmastamyk 9y ago
  What alternative for a friendly intro would you suggest?
  - linkmotif 9y ago
    I wouldn’t... I think people must like them?
wastedhours 9y ago
Seems old, but it actually tends to convey the point more succinctly than a real-worlder. Plus, often it's because the iconography is also being developed for the rest of the asset suite, so it's faster/easier to do that with some fancy animation, than it is to do a different format. I'd love to see more developer-talking heads (and something I want to film more of on the freelance side), but it's more expensive than the happy-mandolin-and-animation approach. Again, on the actual content, I found that too. It seems as though Google are really trying to hide Dart, I'm not sure what the play is.
subpixel 9y ago
I'll take mandolin anyday. What we are hearing here is ukelele. Awful, horrendous ukelele.

polskibus 9y ago

Can this work with typescript somehow?

weego 9y ago
No it's Dart, you'd have to transpile which would turn it into a bit of a clownshow unfortunately
- polskibus 9y ago
  How about typedart? j/k. I really wish there was a way to pass type information into JS VM so that code could be optimized better.

lenkite 9y ago

AOT compiled to native code that uses the native instruction set - no interpreter/vm involved. Uses custom rendering engine based on Skia. Can write UX just once for all platforms if you don't mind fixing the widget set. Custom widgets work on all supported platforms. Can in theory be ported to Desktops also, assuming someone writes flutter engine bindings for Win/MacOS/Linux. If this occurs, then you will truly have a modern, cross-XP, write-once-run-anywhere, compile-to-pure-binary, reactive UX framework Not a JS framework (tm)

TeeWEE 9y ago
Exactly this, its a better technical design for UI systems. And it works cross platform. And it has native compilation. And it has hot code reload. This is big.
m_fayer 9y ago
So, so, so very close. But unfortunately, Dart.
- danvayn 9y ago
  Why do people hate Dart?
  - pknopf 9y ago
    My sore-point is the lack of community and enthusiasm for it. The available resources and libraries are limited.
    - mswift42 9y ago
      Is that reason enough to hate Dart ?
      - pknopf 9y ago
        No, not the language itself. But community involvement is important.

hencoappel 9y ago

This is good news. Hopefully it will gain more traction once it becomes stable.

tiuPapa 9y ago

Why flutter? what problem does it solve better than the existing solutions? Also, why dart? Why not Go or Kotlin? Edit: Hmm, since I am getting downvoted, can someone please say what am I doing wrong here? Thanks. :D

wmleler 9y ago
There's an article that answers your question -- https://hackernoon.com/whats-revolutionary-about-flutter-946915b09514 https://hackernoon.com/whats-revolutionary-about-flutter-946...
- tiuPapa 9y ago
  That was a good article, thanks.

deeg 9y ago

How does Flutter fit in with PWAs? From a high level they both seem to do the same thing: cross-platform mobile application platforms.

ElijahLynn 9y ago
Was wondering the same thing. Seems like a stop-gap solution for now until PWAs really hit their stride in a couple of years. PWAs are still missing a few features on some of the platforms, but hey Safari just now finally announced Service Worker support.
- solarkraft 9y ago
  While PWAs make decent use of the lowest common denominator (browser), it comes at a gigantic complexity cost impacting both development ease and performance. Flutter is trying to get modern concepts delivered without towing along antiquated/unneeded technology. I'd personally be very happy with "compatibility" support of Flutter for the web, which seems to be quite easy (and performant) with wasm+opengl.
jrs95 9y ago
I'd imagine it's mostly a performance thing. It also seems like Google is aiming to use this to help get more apps on Fuchsia as well. It may end up becoming the preferred method of making new apps on Android.
- deeg 9y ago
  That would seem to indicate that--at least from Google's view--PWAs are a dead-end solution. I guess I can stop going through the PWA tutorials.
  - solarkraft 9y ago
    To me it indicates that they still differentiate between web and native - which I find reasonable, at least in performance terms. PWAs will likely further rise in popularity and be very practical for good cross-platform support and ease of delivery - Flutter won't change that in the short term. In the long term, maybe it will.

ibdf 9y ago

I thought dart was dead... like buried way down dead. Has dart improved? Are they eventually going to kill Android only dev?

sandGorgon 9y ago

I really wish that this was in Kotlin - a truly beautiful language which only won because of the community and not because of a large commercial enterprise. Kotlin Native is already doing great. If Flutter was in Kotlin, I'm willing to bet that it's adoption would be 100x of what it is right now. In addition, it gives devs a safe migration path from android to fuchsia.

pjmlp 9y ago
Fuchsia is developed in Dart. Where is Kotlin Native doing great? Right now I wouldn't consider it for anything serious. EDIT: Regarding Fuchsia, I only mean user space apps. The other layers are a mix of Rust, Go and C++ (C leftovers seem to be being migrated to C++).
- softawre 9y ago
  We are using kotlin heavily in a large software company where Java/Clojure is common. Great language, get to use the JVM. What's not to love?
  - warent 9y ago
    Considering I've always avoided the JVM like the plague...
- bsimpson 9y ago
  > Fuchsia is developed in Dart. I don't believe that's strictly true. Different parts of Fuchsia use different technologies. Flutter is (as far as I remember) the only UI framework for Fuchsia right now, so UI on Fuchsia is written in it (which uses Dart).
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    I mean the userspace apps. If Google plays an Android/Android Things on Fuchsia there won't be much use of C++ for app developers.
- 9y ago

myth_drannon 9y ago

So what about Kotlin? I thought Google supported it as a first class citizen for Android development. And now that it looks like Kotlin is more popular than React-Native for mobile development, they add Dart2/Flutter.

pjmlp 9y ago
Dart/Flutter was already presented at Google IO 2017, and is how Fuchsia userspace apps are developed. As for yet another framework. Welcome to Google. Android NDK alone has already been through 6 build systems, 3 public and 3 used at Google. EDIT: 3 external were ndk-build, gradle experimental, cmake with gradle stable. The 3 internal, looking at AOSP and other projects, ndk-build, blaze and Soong.
- moocowtruck 9y ago
  out of curiosity have any idea why so many build systems? just flinging spaghetti at the wall until one is ideal? I mean I understand its good to rewrite software every so often but 6 in the timeframe of android ndk?
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Some of them are internal mind you, things like Soong are only on the AOSP source code. https://android.googlesource.com/platform/build/soong/ https://android.googlesource.com/platform/build/soong/ As for why, I guess reasons.

seanalltogether 9y ago

You will never convince me that laying out UI elements in code is better then building out an object graph in something like xml. UI views are just containers inside containers inside containers, and following complex nesting chains through code declarations is a nightmare.

mercurial 9y ago
Works fine in React.
- seanalltogether 9y ago
  That's because HTML as a framework doesn't have a proper inheritable component model. It's all runtime hacks on top of a document model that is composed of divs, spans, and inputs. IOS, Android and any sane application environment have a fully extensible layout and component model to define at compile time.
  - GeneralTspoon 9y ago
    Android and iOS don't really have this to the same level actually. Say for example on Android I wanted to include a layout but change the text color of all the items in that layout - I can't just do <include text_color="purple">. But I can do pretty much exactly that with React. This is because you can't use variables within layouts like that on Android. Sure, I could build a custom view and add a custom attribute and use that - but this is one of the areas where native isn't as nice as React Native (there are plenty of pain points with RN though).
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      You could do that with themes.
azinman2 9y ago
Until you have multiple people editing the same file across multiple branches...

alfonsodev 9y ago

how do you access native frameworks like AVFundation? is there any example?

Harimwakairi 9y ago
How-to: https://flutter.io/platform-channels/ https://flutter.io/platform-channels/ Tons of real world examples: https://github.com/flutter/plugins https://github.com/flutter/plugins

mishurov 9y ago

>High-velocity >Hamilton

cageface 9y ago

The responses to this article are pretty discouraging to be honest. Cross platform mobile development is a pain in the ass. React Native is a step in the right direction but, as anyone that has actually used it knows, it still has some very rough edges. Here's a completely new platform with a forward thinking, reactive UI model and fast but flexible language that offers a much less painful environment for us to live in day to day and all people can do is crap on it because it isn't JavaScript and they have to learn a new, very slightly unfamiliar language. You can learn a lot about why programming is such a shit show by reading the comments on this one.

jrs95 9y ago
> You can learn a lot about why programming is such a shit show by reading the comments on this one. Dunning-Kruger is real. For more information on what the hell happened in this thread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect Edit: Just to be clear, I'm referring to the same comments you are, not your comment. I'm amazed at how many people can just immediately dismiss this because it uses Dart while not even knowing much of anything about Dart. I also can't respond to anything more yet beyond editing because I've been rate limited (for being an asshole, it was well deserved).
- ucaetano 9y ago
  > Dunning-Kruger is real. Is calling the Dunning-Kruger effect an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect? Not implying anything, just curious indeed. PS: And thanks for mentioning it!
  - jrs95 9y ago
    Yes, it absolutely can be, which is pretty amusing. Since I've gotten downvotes, apparently people think I may be one of those cases. But hey, at least I'm only arrogantly dismissing people's arrogant dismissal of Flutter ;)
Royalaid 9y ago

losvedir 9y ago

My biggest hangup with a little project I wrote in React Native was using device storage. I didn't want my app to interact with APIs (which RN seems good at), and just wanted a little local DB. The whole `create-reactive-native-app` flow was pretty good up until I needed to have a local DB at which point I'd need to eject it and use various libraries in each of the ecosystems (or realm, I think). What's the story with Flutter in that regard? Is there a nice cross-platform local DB interface that it provides? That would be a killer feature for me, if so.

boundlessdreamz 9y ago
Looks like it has sqlite support - https://pub.dartlang.org/packages/sqflite https://pub.dartlang.org/packages/sqflite
dikaiosune 9y ago
I'm not sure when you last tried it, but CRNA apps (insofar as they run in the expo client) have sqlite support these days: https://docs.expo.io/versions/latest/sdk/sqlite.html https://docs.expo.io/versions/latest/sdk/sqlite.html (expo employee) edit: I should also say that I'm pretty excited about flutter, think it has a lot of great qualities and hope that it gets some solid adoption. Someone needs to solve these issues with building mobile apps.

skhro87 9y ago

I recently rewrote a small app in flutter that was originally react native. Initially I was sceptical, mainly about learning dart. But it wasn't hard to pick up. I found the development experience much smoother than react native, things just worked, whereas in react native there were many many small bugs and issues with the many packages required. Flutter IDE support is good with the intellij plugin [1]. Performance, I didn't do any benchmarks, but a simple list with thousands of items feels much smoother on flutter than react native. There are packages for redux as well in flutter, so state management is taken care of [2]. The only downside I experienced with flutter is that Json handling is clumsy, apparently because flutter doesn't support reflection, which would be necessary to have comfortable Json-decoding like with Javas gson or go's json package [3]. Another thing to consider is that react native will render on one thread, and handle the application logic on another thread, but that means the application logic is still restricted to a single javascript thread, which can lead to bottlenecks eventually. From what I understand (haven't tested), dart can work multithreaded, having an advantages there. End of the day, I would chose flutter over react native. Mainly because of Javascript and all the pain that comes with it. [1] https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/9212-flutter https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/9212-flutter [2] https://pub.dartlang.org/packages/flutter_redux https://pub.dartlang.org/packages/flutter_redux [3] https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/1150 https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/1150

karmakaze 9y ago
This is exactly one of the things I was curious to know about Flutter vs alternatives. Having already been burned by Dart 1 and its promise of web components, I'm more cautious for a cure-all. If the development workflow is good, trying it on a smaller Android project seems feasible. What I find attractive there is that you can sidestep the legacy Android APIs which was created for much more constrained hardware than we run today. Might even be worth just doing that and keeping iOS development the same. If iOS 12 widgets all look different, that would age Flutter apps.
nimrody 9y ago
How is the integration of Flutter apps with the rest of the Android system/apps? Given that Flutter does not use the platform native widgets -- do Flutter apps look or behave different? How difficult it is to use a Java library from Dart?

bbreier 9y ago

I really want to give my thanks to the Flutter team. Flutter allowed us to finally (and fairly quickly!) build a music production application on Android with feature parity to our iPhone offering. We're just three devs working on this in our spare time and I think without something like Flutter we'd never have been able to complete this. We haven't hit release yet, but we're pretty confident we'll have our Android version out on the Play Store within about six weeks. https://tizemusic.com/ https://tizemusic.com/

kodeninja 9y ago
@bbreier this looks very interesting! Can you talk a bit more about how your overall _dev_ experience was, working on Flutter? How many times did you have to go _native_, where you had to create platform channels for features Flutter didn't already expose? How much code sharing, if any, were you able to achieve? Were there any corner cases you ran into? Thanks, and good luck with the app!
- fareesh 9y ago
  Also very interested to hear the answer to this question
eudora 9y ago
It looks like there's custom UI going on there, how did you all find that on Flutter?

deforciant 9y ago

As a backend developer I find flutter great. Recently created an app that uses Go compiled with gomobile as a backend for flutter UI. Widgets are great, Dart lang is easy to learn and understand :)

akritrime 9y ago

I just discovered flutter today and made this post[0]. Good to see a beta release, pitching the alpha version of something to use in production is kinda difficult. [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16472139 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16472139

mixmastamyk 9y ago

This reminds me of my experiences with Kivy and Cordova, etc. The achilles heel of these projects are always vendor and community support if you want to build anything more than toys. Do they have the endurance to go the distance?

bitL 9y ago

Why should I use this instead of: - React Native - Vue.js + Cordova - Scala + JavaFX - Kotlin Native - (whatever I missed here) ? I am in a mood to learn another language and framework; how would you persuade me to pick this one instead of alternatives?

Apocryphon 9y ago
You missed Xamarin, which seems to be popular enough to have its API documentation prominently ranked in search engine results, suggesting there seems to be .NET programmers doing mobile development.
monyr75 9y ago
Pretty well covered here: https://hackernoon.com/whats-revolutionary-about-flutter-946915b09514 https://hackernoon.com/whats-revolutionary-about-flutter-946...
- peternicky 9y ago
  Can you provide a summary of the convincing arguments from that article, in 1 or two sentences? I plan to read it myself, but I think the parent comment is relevant.
  - niutech 9y ago
    From the article: - The advantages of reactive views, with no JavaScript bridge - Fast, smooth, and predictable; code compiles AOT to native (ARM) code - The developer has full control over the widgets and layout - Comes with beautiful, customizable widgets - Great developer tools, with amazing hot reload - More performant, more compatibility, more fun
niutech 9y ago
I would add NativeScript and Weex to the list. However, the Flutter advantage might be its performance.

hysan 9y ago

So I took a good look at the docs and as a React Native developer, I do have some questions: - Is there code linting support in Visual Studio Code? I find that having a style guide, even if loosely enforced, helps a lot in learning how to structure code for long term maintainability. - The state of packages, in particular those that expose native SDKs, looks just like the early stages of native modules on RN. I know this is a beta, but what is the time frame for when all of these SDKs to mature? Or is this all on the community, in which case, I wouldn't be very convinced to use Flutter considering how long it took for good native modules to stabilize on React Native. - Why aren't the licensing requirement bits mentioned on the actual doc pages for Drawer and Material Components in Flutter? It's in the FAQ, but if they are required, putting them in the docs would be better: https://flutter.io/faq/#how-can-i-determine-the-licenses-my-flutter-application-needs-to-show https://flutter.io/faq/#how-can-i-determine-the-licenses-my-... - Is there a roadmap that is more detailed than the milestones (https://github.com/flutter/flutter/milestones https://github.com/flutter/flutter/milestones)? With React Native, I know that support isn't going to suddenly dry up because it's an integral part of Facebook's current tech stack. So even if they don't focus on what I prioritize, at least I know it's being improved. With Google and their support reputation, I'm much more concerned about spending time to pick up Flutter & Dart only to have support taper off.

Harimwakairi 9y ago
I can answer a few of these. For Visual Studio Code support, the community has produced an extension: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Dart-Code.dart-code https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Dart-Cod... Regarding packages, they're a combined effort between the Flutter team and external contributors. There are a bunch in https://github.com/flutter/plugins https://github.com/flutter/plugins, for example, with commits from both inside and outside Google.
- hysan 9y ago
  The extension I saw in the docs, but I didn't see code linting as one of the features. Is there code linting included? Thanks for the plugins link. Any idea what Google's stance is on supporting or expanding support of platform plugins? There's no issues for plugins so I can't tell how stable those packages are. So even if it's a combined effort, I feel weary repeating what the early stages of React Native felt like.

piotrkubisa 9y ago

I am really glad Flutter came out as beta and finally ReactNative got a good competitor, so maybe it will encourage both sides to improve itself and polish various (annoying) edges.

gkya 9y ago

Mobile development is hard to get in. Maybe it's that I'm an outsider, but yet, on the second most popular platform it costs you an Apple computer and $100 for the IDE (IIRC), and on the other one the development experience is godawful (tools are slooow and janky, hard to integrate with your usual tooling, the program structure is incredibly complex, lots of XML, and then there's Java). Having looked around a bit, it seems to me that it should be easier to start with Flutter, the filesystem layout, the project configuration, the language, they seem managable, and I've seen some youtube videos where a guy only used VS Code and the Flutter command line. If I can just get going with Emacs and the Flutter's command line tool, that'd be awesome. Mobile app or game development seems to be a nice way to earn some money developing software solo, just from your laptop. And not having to deal with JavaScript is a nice way to spend more time for oneself. So definitely going to re-try this (tried it before but my impression was that I needed Android Studio, and that's a show stopper).

philippz 9y ago

Does it work with AngularJS1?

bschwindHN 9y ago

I need to write a mobile app for iOS and Android which uses Bluetooth Low Energy and talks to an MQTT server. Would Flutter be a good choice to make a prototype for such an app?

dropspace 9y ago

I made a small project with Flutter and found it intuitive and simple. Far more so than react native, and the end result is far nicer.

TheMagicHorsey 9y ago

I hope Google puts some effort towards building an easy way for developers to access maps through flutter. Right now the story doesn't seem very good. Another place that seems lacking is photo/camera access. Maps and Camera access are really table stakes for any cross-platform framework at this point. Many app concepts need location/maps and media access.

AhmadIbrahim 9y ago

Does flutter support RTL languages?