6 ms·

Flutter is a lot like Electron, but faster. Also, arguably easier to use. They don't have to support all of the backward compability garbage that HTML/js has.

by krzat 9y ago

LeoNatan25 9y ago
qt, gtk and Xamarin / Mono are also "like" Electron but faster and easier to use. Why is the Google fad somehow more important or impressive than those already proven technologies?
- krzat 9y ago
  Popularity of Electron proves that they are not easier. Even Microsoft wrote VS Code in it. I don't care much about Google but they did pretty good job with Flutter: 1. No special designer needed, you do everything in code. That means everyone can use their preferred editor. 2. Hot reload - you change something and it changes in the running app. 3. Headless testing - No need to own iOS/Android device to test iOS/Android UI. 4. Nice tooling - autocompletion, formatting, etc. Everything done via command line, with optional support for IDE. 5. Extensible - very easy to write your own widgets. There is nothing special about provided components. 6. Platform agnostic - "native look" of Qt/GTK is a lie, they still look off. To me it just triggers uncanny valley vibe. Not to mention that they implement native look from 5 years ago or more. And completely useless on mobiles. Flutter looks the same on every platform unless specified otherwise. Way less platform specific bugs.
  - LeoNatan25 9y ago
    Electron is popular because web "developers" can't be arsed to learn anything other than JS. It's as simple as that. They live in the lie they tell themselves that JS development is easy, when it really isn't, tooling is disastrous, IDE is nonexistent, apps look bad, etc. They are just happy they manage to run something "desktop". All those things you mentioned are true of Xamarin. qt uses actual native controls, so not sure what is a "lie" about it; if something is not behaving correctly, it's a bug, and you open an issue. GTK does look bad and out of place, I agree with that, bug so does Electron. If it's between GTK and Electron, I'll take a proper GTK application. Looks the same = looks bad on all platforms.
    - kjksf 9y ago
      You should use Flutter for a bit before you strongly opine how it's no different than Xamarin or whatever. Flutter is different. There's nothing even close to it when it comes to writing mobile apps. Flutter takes the best ideas about UI toolkits, layouts and has the benefit of really good engineers (most are Chrome/WebKit veterans) working for a really long time to make a really good implementation of those ideas. Hot reload of code is just one feature that is absolutely unique to Flutter, at least when comparing to alternatives viable today (I'm sure are smalltalk implementation that also allowed that but no-one is using them today). It's still a beta product so skepticism is warranted but I can see the writing on the wall. 2 years from now it'll be crushing other technologies the way React/Vue is crushing in web space because Flutter is just So Much Better.
      - LeoNatan25 9y ago
        What is it about "hot reload" that is so appealing to people? Running an app takes less than a second on Xcode. And .NET had "modify, recompile and continue" in 2005 at the latest. I fail to see the revolution here. Your nonchalant mention of "Xamarin or whatever" means to me you have little experience with that. You say that Flutter takes the best ideas of UI toolkits, but then say it's mostly web engine developers. So which one is it? Let me guess, they are using Flex as layout? So hardly the "best ideas". Edit: Yes, flex [0] On the other hand, I don't need to use it to predict how bad quality apps will turn out to be. Just like Electron and React Native apps are bad, so will Flutter apps be, for the simple facts no native controls are used. (React "Native" is not native at all.) Even the best implementation (which Electron and React Native do not have) would still mean bad apps simply because they are not using native widgets. You seem to only care about developer experience—which I disagree as well. I only care about user experience. User experience is king and developer experience is complimentary. [0] https://github.com/flutter/flutter/blob/master/packages/flutter/lib/src/rendering/flex.dart https://github.com/flutter/flutter/blob/master/packages/flut...
        tracker1 9y ago
        And if you're working in a section that takes 10-15 seconds to get to and multiple steps? Each time you rebuild, without hot-reload you've killed your focus.

Flutter is a lot like Electron, but faster. Also, arguably easier to use. They don't have to support all of the backward compability garbage that HTML/js has.

by krzat 9y ago

Flutter is a lot like Electron, but faster. Also, arguably easier to use. They don't have to support all of the backward compability garbage that HTML/js has.

LeoNatan25 9y ago

qt, gtk and Xamarin / Mono are also "like" Electron but faster and easier to use. Why is the Google fad somehow more important or impressive than those already proven technologies?

krzat 9y ago
Popularity of Electron proves that they are not easier. Even Microsoft wrote VS Code in it. I don't care much about Google but they did pretty good job with Flutter: 1. No special designer needed, you do everything in code. That means everyone can use their preferred editor. 2. Hot reload - you change something and it changes in the running app. 3. Headless testing - No need to own iOS/Android device to test iOS/Android UI. 4. Nice tooling - autocompletion, formatting, etc. Everything done via command line, with optional support for IDE. 5. Extensible - very easy to write your own widgets. There is nothing special about provided components. 6. Platform agnostic - "native look" of Qt/GTK is a lie, they still look off. To me it just triggers uncanny valley vibe. Not to mention that they implement native look from 5 years ago or more. And completely useless on mobiles. Flutter looks the same on every platform unless specified otherwise. Way less platform specific bugs.
- LeoNatan25 9y ago
  Electron is popular because web "developers" can't be arsed to learn anything other than JS. It's as simple as that. They live in the lie they tell themselves that JS development is easy, when it really isn't, tooling is disastrous, IDE is nonexistent, apps look bad, etc. They are just happy they manage to run something "desktop". All those things you mentioned are true of Xamarin. qt uses actual native controls, so not sure what is a "lie" about it; if something is not behaving correctly, it's a bug, and you open an issue. GTK does look bad and out of place, I agree with that, bug so does Electron. If it's between GTK and Electron, I'll take a proper GTK application. Looks the same = looks bad on all platforms.
  - kjksf 9y ago
    You should use Flutter for a bit before you strongly opine how it's no different than Xamarin or whatever. Flutter is different. There's nothing even close to it when it comes to writing mobile apps. Flutter takes the best ideas about UI toolkits, layouts and has the benefit of really good engineers (most are Chrome/WebKit veterans) working for a really long time to make a really good implementation of those ideas. Hot reload of code is just one feature that is absolutely unique to Flutter, at least when comparing to alternatives viable today (I'm sure are smalltalk implementation that also allowed that but no-one is using them today). It's still a beta product so skepticism is warranted but I can see the writing on the wall. 2 years from now it'll be crushing other technologies the way React/Vue is crushing in web space because Flutter is just So Much Better.
    - LeoNatan25 9y ago
      What is it about "hot reload" that is so appealing to people? Running an app takes less than a second on Xcode. And .NET had "modify, recompile and continue" in 2005 at the latest. I fail to see the revolution here. Your nonchalant mention of "Xamarin or whatever" means to me you have little experience with that. You say that Flutter takes the best ideas of UI toolkits, but then say it's mostly web engine developers. So which one is it? Let me guess, they are using Flex as layout? So hardly the "best ideas". Edit: Yes, flex [0] On the other hand, I don't need to use it to predict how bad quality apps will turn out to be. Just like Electron and React Native apps are bad, so will Flutter apps be, for the simple facts no native controls are used. (React "Native" is not native at all.) Even the best implementation (which Electron and React Native do not have) would still mean bad apps simply because they are not using native widgets. You seem to only care about developer experience—which I disagree as well. I only care about user experience. User experience is king and developer experience is complimentary. [0] https://github.com/flutter/flutter/blob/master/packages/flutter/lib/src/rendering/flex.dart https://github.com/flutter/flutter/blob/master/packages/flut...
      - tracker1 9y ago
        And if you're working in a section that takes 10-15 seconds to get to and multiple steps? Each time you rebuild, without hot-reload you've killed your focus.