6 ms·

A month of Flutter: a look back

107 points by abraham 8y ago

sawyerjhood 8y ago
I was really surprised at how dev.to drove traffic. I've never used the site before, does anyone have any experience with it / any good communities to get started with?
- d0100 8y ago
  I made an account recently. The content is pretty basic and quality posts are few and far in between. If you are looking for a growing community, it looks like a good place to post, since competition isn't that hard.
- abraham 8y ago
  There are a lot of people there that are relatively new to development so you'll find a large % of the content targeted at that market. That being said, the community is very welcoming and also has it's share of experienced developers looking for advanced topics.
Touche 8y ago
The rise of Flutter makes a lot of sense when you think about how mobile has evolved over the last 5 years. The days of Instapaper and the like where you could build a really good app and sell it, are long since past. Nowadays I'm not sure it's really possible to make money as an app startup. Your best bet is probably releasing a game and being the one-in-a-million that goes viral. Other than that, apps are the purview of existing big companies, and those mostly are concerned with lowering costs (since margins on mobile are so thin). With that being the case, something like Flutter that gives you a fairly good cross-platform experience are going to thrive. It's sort of like Java in the enterprise. It doesn't matter if it's pleasant to use. There's a clearpath towards success, it's safe for cheaper developers to use and not screw things up to bad. It will never be the hot thing but it doesn't need to be; that's not its target demographic.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Flutter is trying to be Dart's killer app, while playing political wars with the ChromeOS (PWA) and Android teams. Meanwhile Fuschia is showing signs to adopt a plugable UI support via the Scenic graphics composition engine.
- tree_of_item 8y ago
  I think one flaw in your analysis is that Flutter is not analogous to "Java in the enterprise": it's already very pleasant to use compared with modern web frameworks.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Java 11 is pretty sweet, and the JEPs roadmap is enticing. Meanwhile Dart has adopted all the features I dislike in Java, like @Override instead of proper keyword, virtual methods by default, no value types and so forth.
    - the_trapper 8y ago
      Maybe by Android ZuchiniBread we'll be able to use Java 11 on Android. One of the major pain points of Android development is that the vast majority of the API is designed around limitations of Java 6. Yes, I know that you can use most of Java 8 for Android now, and Kotlin is pretty good. However, it took far too long for Google to deliver that to developers.
      - pjmlp 8y ago
        Google has played a J++ on Java developers, with Google wanabee employees always arguing for such action. However, Java 9 support is already ongoing on AOSP, so we might still get some good news by Google IO 2019. In any case, even if Kotlin turns out to be the future of Android, it is much more worthwhile language than Dart, in features, backends and CV value.
- matchbok 8y ago
  App Store revenue would seem to disagree with you on this.
pjmlp 8y ago
For those betting on Fuchsia to help Flutter's adoption, work has started to create an UI compositor that is framework agnostic and there is a prototype of a Rust based UI. https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/garnet/+/master/docs/ui/scenic.md https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/garnet/+/master/docs/ui/sce... https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/garnet/+/0a214f5721d723a7d0757531d157f76bb54b9f95/public/rust/fuchsia-ui https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/garnet/+/0a214f5721d723a7d0... And Android is being ported to Fuchsia, similarly to what happened to ChromeOS and Brillo. https://android-review.googlesource.com/q/fuchsia https://android-review.googlesource.com/q/fuchsia
- rufugee 8y ago
  So you're saying you don't believe Fuchsia will lead to increased flutter use because there will be other options?
  - k__ 8y ago
    If someone uses Fuchsia it will help. I mean React-Native works with Android, Windows, iOS, WebVR, PDF, TVOS and whatnot, just because it also works with some other obscure platform it doesn't guarantee a high adoption.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Yes. I expect just like it happened with Brillo and its C++ Frameworks, reborn as Android Things, Google will replace Flutter by something with more mainstream market acceptance, and the UI agnostic composition engine is paving the way for that decision.
- Matthias247 8y ago
  How does this relate to e.g. compositors based on wayland? Is it that other compositors mostly see rectangles, whereas Scenic also sees scenegraph nodes within the client rectangles?

107 points by abraham 8y ago

I was really surprised at how dev.to drove traffic. I've never used the site before, does anyone have any experience with it / any good communities to get started with?

d0100 8y ago
I made an account recently. The content is pretty basic and quality posts are few and far in between. If you are looking for a growing community, it looks like a good place to post, since competition isn't that hard.
abraham 8y ago
There are a lot of people there that are relatively new to development so you'll find a large % of the content targeted at that market. That being said, the community is very welcoming and also has it's share of experienced developers looking for advanced topics.

Touche 8y ago

The rise of Flutter makes a lot of sense when you think about how mobile has evolved over the last 5 years. The days of Instapaper and the like where you could build a really good app and sell it, are long since past. Nowadays I'm not sure it's really possible to make money as an app startup. Your best bet is probably releasing a game and being the one-in-a-million that goes viral. Other than that, apps are the purview of existing big companies, and those mostly are concerned with lowering costs (since margins on mobile are so thin). With that being the case, something like Flutter that gives you a fairly good cross-platform experience are going to thrive. It's sort of like Java in the enterprise. It doesn't matter if it's pleasant to use. There's a clearpath towards success, it's safe for cheaper developers to use and not screw things up to bad. It will never be the hot thing but it doesn't need to be; that's not its target demographic.

pjmlp 8y ago
Flutter is trying to be Dart's killer app, while playing political wars with the ChromeOS (PWA) and Android teams. Meanwhile Fuschia is showing signs to adopt a plugable UI support via the Scenic graphics composition engine.
tree_of_item 8y ago
I think one flaw in your analysis is that Flutter is not analogous to "Java in the enterprise": it's already very pleasant to use compared with modern web frameworks.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Java 11 is pretty sweet, and the JEPs roadmap is enticing. Meanwhile Dart has adopted all the features I dislike in Java, like @Override instead of proper keyword, virtual methods by default, no value types and so forth.
  - the_trapper 8y ago
    Maybe by Android ZuchiniBread we'll be able to use Java 11 on Android. One of the major pain points of Android development is that the vast majority of the API is designed around limitations of Java 6. Yes, I know that you can use most of Java 8 for Android now, and Kotlin is pretty good. However, it took far too long for Google to deliver that to developers.
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      Google has played a J++ on Java developers, with Google wanabee employees always arguing for such action. However, Java 9 support is already ongoing on AOSP, so we might still get some good news by Google IO 2019. In any case, even if Kotlin turns out to be the future of Android, it is much more worthwhile language than Dart, in features, backends and CV value.
matchbok 8y ago
App Store revenue would seem to disagree with you on this.

pjmlp 8y ago

For those betting on Fuchsia to help Flutter's adoption, work has started to create an UI compositor that is framework agnostic and there is a prototype of a Rust based UI. https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/garnet/+/master/docs/ui/scenic.md https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/garnet/+/master/docs/ui/sce... https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/garnet/+/0a214f5721d723a7d0757531d157f76bb54b9f95/public/rust/fuchsia-ui https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/garnet/+/0a214f5721d723a7d0... And Android is being ported to Fuchsia, similarly to what happened to ChromeOS and Brillo. https://android-review.googlesource.com/q/fuchsia https://android-review.googlesource.com/q/fuchsia

rufugee 8y ago
So you're saying you don't believe Fuchsia will lead to increased flutter use because there will be other options?
- k__ 8y ago
  If someone uses Fuchsia it will help. I mean React-Native works with Android, Windows, iOS, WebVR, PDF, TVOS and whatnot, just because it also works with some other obscure platform it doesn't guarantee a high adoption.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Yes. I expect just like it happened with Brillo and its C++ Frameworks, reborn as Android Things, Google will replace Flutter by something with more mainstream market acceptance, and the UI agnostic composition engine is paving the way for that decision.
Matthias247 8y ago
How does this relate to e.g. compositors based on wayland? Is it that other compositors mostly see rectangles, whereas Scenic also sees scenegraph nodes within the client rectangles?