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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

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
Seeing the age of this comment when I came to the thread and it being at the top I kinda brushed it off and scrolled on to the rest of the comments. It literally looks like astroturffing against dart as a language. I think this awesome that, even though dart is seeing low adoption, Google is pushing forward and building flutter. The framework and language look like they have a lot of good technical reasons of existing, chief amongst which is native AOT compilation. Best of luck to the team!
- porker 9y ago
  The reaction here makes me look very positively on Dartlang. At least it hasn't got the fanboy "sun shines out of my new programming language" problem.
  - beckler 9y ago
    The irony is that Dart was co-created by Lars Bak, who is also known for creating Chrome's V8 engine.
    - discreteevent 9y ago
      Indeed if anyone ever earned the right to make a new language - they did. They were the first to make js really fast and they pulled every trick in the book (from their extensive VM writing experience). But they were ultimately blocked by things like the ability of js objects to change shape. I sympathise with their frustration and from an engineering point of view they did the right thing. They solved the root cause of the problem which was the language.
      - pasabagi 9y ago
        As somebody who has no dog in the game, I hope this takes off. Javascript and the world of frameworks frankly looks horrible from an outsider's perspective.
      - mandeepj 9y ago
        > js objects to change shape Could you please share more details?
greenhouse_gas 9y ago
I can't speak for everyone, but my problem with flutter isn't the framework - it's the language. Or, more accurately, the fact that it's not a JVM-based language. When Android came out, it was able to piggyback on millions of existing Java packages (such as Apache commons). When Kotlin came out, it was able to piggyback on millions of existing Java packages and Android packages (and even better, existing Java code can seamlessly forward work with Kotlin). Now, Google is using its muscle to drag everyone to its language which has pretty much no existing adoption. Oh. And many remember Dart being optional-typed (like Typescript).
- porker 9y ago
  Lack of libraries is a valid reason for preferring another language. But, when Go came out, there were no libraries. And it didn't get so much bad press.
  - greenhouse_gas 9y ago
    >But, when Go came out, there were no libraries. And it didn't get so much bad press. 1. Go had a lot going for it when it came out (single, static, exe, memory safety). 2. Go's stdlib came with a lot out of the box. To the extent that you can write some fairly complicated code without touching a single library. 3. There was cgo.
- allover 9y ago
  > Oh. And many remember Dart being optional-typed (like Typescript). So? Some could argue it's a very productive approach.
  - hota_mazi 9y ago
    Even the Dart team themselves stopped arguing it's a productive approach. Dart is going all strongly typed, after seven years of feet dragging. Dynamically typed languages are a thing of the past.
    - 9y ago
jbob2000 9y ago
You just need to look one or two pages in to see why DART, and therefore Flutter is a waste of time. Here is how we make an HTTP request in react-native: fetch('https://facebook.github.io/react-native/movies.json'); And here is how we do it in Flutter: import 'dart:io'; var url = 'https://httpbin.org/ip'; var httpClient = new HttpClient(); await httpClient.getUrl(Uri.parse(url)); Why does the HTTP package need to be imported? Every single mobile app worth its salt makes HTTP requests, I shouldn't have to think about importing it, this is just more yak-shaving. And parsing a url to an URI? Fuck off fake-Java, just let me tell you the damn location of my resource, I don't care about the leaky abstraction of URIs. Sure, I could write a wrapper and create myself a helper method. So could 100,000 other developers. Why not just include first-class functionality out of the box? The further I go into Dart, the more I realize it's just a slimmer java. I don't want slimmer java, I want better javascript. (And don't go asking your most experienced, most technical developers what "Better" means. Go and ask the thousands of shitty developers who barely have a handle on it, my coworkers still have trouble with "this" for godsakes).
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- saagarjha 9y ago
  Not every mobile app needs to perform HTTP requests; many games don't, for example. JavaScript is a language for web development, so it makes sense that HTTP requests come "for free"; Dart is a general purpose language and so importing this for programs that don't need isn't a great idea.
  - jbob2000 9y ago
    Your counter argument doesn't make sense in the context of Flutter; it's not a tool you would use for mobile game development. The world is an interconnected place these days. I am tempted to say that there are fewer apps that don't need HTTP than apps that do. Find me a top 10 app that doesn't make HTTP requests. Interconnectivity is where it's at right now, it's the internet.
phkahler 9y ago
I came here to ask the question: Do I need to use Dart? And it looks like the answer is yes. That means Flutter is not a GUI toolkit as advertise "Flutter is Google's new mobile UI framework". Nope, Flutter is the gui component of a new language. As mobile devices get bigger - big phones, tablets, pixel thingies or whatever - it'd be nice to port existing software to them. But that means we need a GUI toolkit, not a new language. For example, whatever Google's new Fuchsia OS is going to run on, they use flutter. Is every app for the OS supposed to be written in Dart? If so screw that. It's been tried with Java (Android), Objective C (Apple), Swift (Apple), Javascript (Web), Visual Basic (not really, but MS). And while it's not always the only choice on a platform, each of these was the preferred language. People have to stop telling programmers what language to use. If you want to make yet another GUI toolkit then go right ahead, solve the issues that other toolkits had, but remember NOT being language agnostic has been an issue with many of them.
- wstrange 9y ago
  There is nothing that prevents Fuchsia from running other languages. AFAIK, they already support Rust.
- saagarjha 9y ago
  It's hard to make a GUI toolkit that doesn't cater to a specific language. All languages have paradigms that they follow, and toolkits that are language agnostic just end up feeling out-of-place on all languages rather than all but one.
ergo14 9y ago
Well if it would be React Flutter Native, HN would be happy. Thats the recurring theme here, add react to foo for instant upvotes.
niutech 9y ago
Have you tried Weex or NativeScript? They are simpler than React Native, leveraging Vue.js.

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

Seeing the age of this comment when I came to the thread and it being at the top I kinda brushed it off and scrolled on to the rest of the comments. It literally looks like astroturffing against dart as a language. I think this awesome that, even though dart is seeing low adoption, Google is pushing forward and building flutter. The framework and language look like they have a lot of good technical reasons of existing, chief amongst which is native AOT compilation. Best of luck to the team!

porker 9y ago
The reaction here makes me look very positively on Dartlang. At least it hasn't got the fanboy "sun shines out of my new programming language" problem.
- beckler 9y ago
  The irony is that Dart was co-created by Lars Bak, who is also known for creating Chrome's V8 engine.
  - discreteevent 9y ago
    Indeed if anyone ever earned the right to make a new language - they did. They were the first to make js really fast and they pulled every trick in the book (from their extensive VM writing experience). But they were ultimately blocked by things like the ability of js objects to change shape. I sympathise with their frustration and from an engineering point of view they did the right thing. They solved the root cause of the problem which was the language.
    - pasabagi 9y ago
      As somebody who has no dog in the game, I hope this takes off. Javascript and the world of frameworks frankly looks horrible from an outsider's perspective.
    - mandeepj 9y ago
      > js objects to change shape Could you please share more details?

greenhouse_gas 9y ago

I can't speak for everyone, but my problem with flutter isn't the framework - it's the language. Or, more accurately, the fact that it's not a JVM-based language. When Android came out, it was able to piggyback on millions of existing Java packages (such as Apache commons). When Kotlin came out, it was able to piggyback on millions of existing Java packages and Android packages (and even better, existing Java code can seamlessly forward work with Kotlin). Now, Google is using its muscle to drag everyone to its language which has pretty much no existing adoption. Oh. And many remember Dart being optional-typed (like Typescript).

porker 9y ago
Lack of libraries is a valid reason for preferring another language. But, when Go came out, there were no libraries. And it didn't get so much bad press.
- greenhouse_gas 9y ago
  >But, when Go came out, there were no libraries. And it didn't get so much bad press. 1. Go had a lot going for it when it came out (single, static, exe, memory safety). 2. Go's stdlib came with a lot out of the box. To the extent that you can write some fairly complicated code without touching a single library. 3. There was cgo.
allover 9y ago
> Oh. And many remember Dart being optional-typed (like Typescript). So? Some could argue it's a very productive approach.
- hota_mazi 9y ago
  Even the Dart team themselves stopped arguing it's a productive approach. Dart is going all strongly typed, after seven years of feet dragging. Dynamically typed languages are a thing of the past.
  - 9y ago

jbob2000 9y ago

You just need to look one or two pages in to see why DART, and therefore Flutter is a waste of time. Here is how we make an HTTP request in react-native: fetch('https://facebook.github.io/react-native/movies.json'); And here is how we do it in Flutter: import 'dart:io'; var url = 'https://httpbin.org/ip'; var httpClient = new HttpClient(); await httpClient.getUrl(Uri.parse(url)); Why does the HTTP package need to be imported? Every single mobile app worth its salt makes HTTP requests, I shouldn't have to think about importing it, this is just more yak-shaving. And parsing a url to an URI? Fuck off fake-Java, just let me tell you the damn location of my resource, I don't care about the leaky abstraction of URIs. Sure, I could write a wrapper and create myself a helper method. So could 100,000 other developers. Why not just include first-class functionality out of the box? The further I go into Dart, the more I realize it's just a slimmer java. I don't want slimmer java, I want better javascript. (And don't go asking your most experienced, most technical developers what "Better" means. Go and ask the thousands of shitty developers who barely have a handle on it, my coworkers still have trouble with "this" for godsakes).

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
saagarjha 9y ago
Not every mobile app needs to perform HTTP requests; many games don't, for example. JavaScript is a language for web development, so it makes sense that HTTP requests come "for free"; Dart is a general purpose language and so importing this for programs that don't need isn't a great idea.
- jbob2000 9y ago
  Your counter argument doesn't make sense in the context of Flutter; it's not a tool you would use for mobile game development. The world is an interconnected place these days. I am tempted to say that there are fewer apps that don't need HTTP than apps that do. Find me a top 10 app that doesn't make HTTP requests. Interconnectivity is where it's at right now, it's the internet.

phkahler 9y ago

I came here to ask the question: Do I need to use Dart? And it looks like the answer is yes. That means Flutter is not a GUI toolkit as advertise "Flutter is Google's new mobile UI framework". Nope, Flutter is the gui component of a new language. As mobile devices get bigger - big phones, tablets, pixel thingies or whatever - it'd be nice to port existing software to them. But that means we need a GUI toolkit, not a new language. For example, whatever Google's new Fuchsia OS is going to run on, they use flutter. Is every app for the OS supposed to be written in Dart? If so screw that. It's been tried with Java (Android), Objective C (Apple), Swift (Apple), Javascript (Web), Visual Basic (not really, but MS). And while it's not always the only choice on a platform, each of these was the preferred language. People have to stop telling programmers what language to use. If you want to make yet another GUI toolkit then go right ahead, solve the issues that other toolkits had, but remember NOT being language agnostic has been an issue with many of them.

wstrange 9y ago
There is nothing that prevents Fuchsia from running other languages. AFAIK, they already support Rust.
saagarjha 9y ago
It's hard to make a GUI toolkit that doesn't cater to a specific language. All languages have paradigms that they follow, and toolkits that are language agnostic just end up feeling out-of-place on all languages rather than all but one.

ergo14 9y ago

Well if it would be React Flutter Native, HN would be happy. Thats the recurring theme here, add react to foo for instant upvotes.

niutech 9y ago

Have you tried Weex or NativeScript? They are simpler than React Native, leveraging Vue.js.