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Android and iOS, yes, but also THE official toolkit for making apps for Fuchsia, the project which will replace Android in a few years. Expect Google to highlig

Android and iOS, yes, but also THE official toolkit for making apps for Fuchsia, the project which will replace Android in a few years. Expect Google to highlight all of the companies who have started shipping Flutter apps and to highlight why developers would want to drop traditional Java/Kotlin development and move to Flutter because not only will your apps work today on Android, but they will run tomorrow on Fuchsia.

dan-0 8y ago
I really thought Flutter was going to just fade away, but it really seems to be picking up speed, in no small part due to Fuchsia as you mentioned. Looking at the line up for Google I/O, hearing the rumors as we're about to head into it, and with the newest beta release, I'm starting to think Flutter is past the point of being abandoned any time soon. The real question for me is when will it be stable enough so that I can put it into production without worrying about major API changes breaking everything on the best update.
- rhodysurf 8y ago
  I was super against Flutter when it was announced. I wrote my apps in objc and java and recently swift/kotlin. I had some downtime recently and tried out flutter for a simple crud app and I gotta say... it makes mobile dev wayyyy more fun. There’s a bunch of stuff missing (maps, etc) and dart isn’t my favorite language (I like kotlin and swift way more) but it’s sooo much easier to prototype up and build cool apps in flutter than native. There’s just so much freedom and you can hot reload to instantly see what you change. IDK that I would make a production app on it today, but it definitely has stuck in my mind.
Apocryphon 8y ago
What I really want to know is how it compares with React Native. I suppose one differentiator is Dart, which might draw in non-web devs who don't want to write JavaScript, or C# (as with Xamarin). The list of React Native apps is quite impressive, however: https://facebook.github.io/react-native/showcase.html https://facebook.github.io/react-native/showcase.html
- timsneath 8y ago
  Disclaimer: I'm a product manager for Flutter at Google, so I'm paid to say nice things about Flutter :) Probably the two most obvious architectural differences are that a) Flutter paints every pixel on the screen, whereas React Native uses the stock iOS and Android components; and b) Flutter uses Dart which can be compiled ahead-of-time to native ARM machine code, whereas React Native code is written in JavaScript. We think the combination of the hardware-accelerated graphics engine, native-compiled code and customizable UI widgets is a powerful one, as exemplified by demos like this one: https://www.2dimensions.com/b/225-flutter-showcase https://www.2dimensions.com/b/225-flutter-showcase My favorite feature of this demo is that the translucent slider control is overlaid on the animated graphics beneath: this is often difficult to do with other frameworks because they don't have the same level of control over what is painted, or can't do it with the required performance. Your results may vary, but this demo runs smoothly on my budget last-generation Nokia 6 phone, which I bought for about $200. Hope this helps a little?
  - jacksmith21006 8y ago
    Is there plans for Flutter on desktop? How about support on ChromeOS maybe using the new GNU/Linux support using the KVM?
    - wener 8y ago
      Check this https://github.com/google/flutter-desktop-embedding https://github.com/google/flutter-desktop-embedding
      - akmittal 8y ago
        This could be really big, good middle ground between Electron and native desktop.
        jacksmith21006 8y ago
        So far pretty impressive results on iOS. I wonder if the strategy by Google is get development to Flutter for cross platform, Android and iOS and then launch Fuchsia. Google now has a branch for ART on Fuchsia which suggests they will support Android apps on Fuchsia. Also how they did GNU/Linux on ChromeOS would work with switching to Fuchsia. They are using a completely separate Linux kernel. I am old and lived through many cross platform attempts that just never worked well. The four that worked well have been the Alpha/Vax. But died because of marketing reasons not technical. Android is pretty amazing how well it works across platform. Then ChromeOS is the same. The last has been the Web and Chrome. If someone can make it work it would be Google. I will be curious if Apple tries to kill it somehow.

dan-0 8y ago

I really thought Flutter was going to just fade away, but it really seems to be picking up speed, in no small part due to Fuchsia as you mentioned. Looking at the line up for Google I/O, hearing the rumors as we're about to head into it, and with the newest beta release, I'm starting to think Flutter is past the point of being abandoned any time soon. The real question for me is when will it be stable enough so that I can put it into production without worrying about major API changes breaking everything on the best update.

rhodysurf 8y ago
I was super against Flutter when it was announced. I wrote my apps in objc and java and recently swift/kotlin. I had some downtime recently and tried out flutter for a simple crud app and I gotta say... it makes mobile dev wayyyy more fun. There’s a bunch of stuff missing (maps, etc) and dart isn’t my favorite language (I like kotlin and swift way more) but it’s sooo much easier to prototype up and build cool apps in flutter than native. There’s just so much freedom and you can hot reload to instantly see what you change. IDK that I would make a production app on it today, but it definitely has stuck in my mind.

Apocryphon 8y ago

What I really want to know is how it compares with React Native. I suppose one differentiator is Dart, which might draw in non-web devs who don't want to write JavaScript, or C# (as with Xamarin). The list of React Native apps is quite impressive, however: https://facebook.github.io/react-native/showcase.html https://facebook.github.io/react-native/showcase.html

timsneath 8y ago
Disclaimer: I'm a product manager for Flutter at Google, so I'm paid to say nice things about Flutter :) Probably the two most obvious architectural differences are that a) Flutter paints every pixel on the screen, whereas React Native uses the stock iOS and Android components; and b) Flutter uses Dart which can be compiled ahead-of-time to native ARM machine code, whereas React Native code is written in JavaScript. We think the combination of the hardware-accelerated graphics engine, native-compiled code and customizable UI widgets is a powerful one, as exemplified by demos like this one: https://www.2dimensions.com/b/225-flutter-showcase https://www.2dimensions.com/b/225-flutter-showcase My favorite feature of this demo is that the translucent slider control is overlaid on the animated graphics beneath: this is often difficult to do with other frameworks because they don't have the same level of control over what is painted, or can't do it with the required performance. Your results may vary, but this demo runs smoothly on my budget last-generation Nokia 6 phone, which I bought for about $200. Hope this helps a little?
- jacksmith21006 8y ago
  Is there plans for Flutter on desktop? How about support on ChromeOS maybe using the new GNU/Linux support using the KVM?
  - wener 8y ago
    Check this https://github.com/google/flutter-desktop-embedding https://github.com/google/flutter-desktop-embedding
    - akmittal 8y ago
      This could be really big, good middle ground between Electron and native desktop.
      - jacksmith21006 8y ago
        So far pretty impressive results on iOS. I wonder if the strategy by Google is get development to Flutter for cross platform, Android and iOS and then launch Fuchsia. Google now has a branch for ART on Fuchsia which suggests they will support Android apps on Fuchsia. Also how they did GNU/Linux on ChromeOS would work with switching to Fuchsia. They are using a completely separate Linux kernel. I am old and lived through many cross platform attempts that just never worked well. The four that worked well have been the Alpha/Vax. But died because of marketing reasons not technical. Android is pretty amazing how well it works across platform. Then ChromeOS is the same. The last has been the Web and Chrome. If someone can make it work it would be Google. I will be curious if Apple tries to kill it somehow.