7 ms·

To me this looks very similar to what Google is doing with Flutter.

pjmlp 7y ago
Jetpack Composer you mean. I bet by next IO, Flutter will get replaced by it, specially after the #KotlinEverywhere announcement and Kotlin/Native effort for iOS.
- mythz 7y ago
  No he means Flutter which has been around a lot longer, it's immediately what I've thought of being inspired by as well: https://flutter.dev/docs/development/tools/hot-reload https://flutter.dev/docs/development/tools/hot-reload
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    I know pretty much what he/she meant, was just making a point that I don't believe in Flutter's long term success. Trying to sell Dart a 2nd time was a mistake.
    - mythz 7y ago
      Flutter's not a PR campaign for Dart, they're a separate project that chose Dart based on its technical capabilities [1]. Given Flutter enables the nicest native x-plat dev experience today I'd say it has a very bright future, which they've also recently announced Flutter for Desktop and Embedded devices. Jetpack compose is years away from the same kind of x-plat support that Flutter's providing for Mobile, Web, Desktop and Embedded [2]. [1] https://flutter.dev/docs/resources/faq#why-did-flutter-choose-to-use-dart https://flutter.dev/docs/resources/faq#why-did-flutter-choos... [2] https://developers.googleblog.com/2019/05/Flutter-io19.html https://developers.googleblog.com/2019/05/Flutter-io19.html
      - pjmlp 7y ago
        That after-the-fact reasoning link that gets posted every time someone questions Dart is well known, no need to give it to me. Only someone that never used Common Lisp, Smalltak, Delphi, C++ Builder and other 4GLs in the 90's, can be impressed by Dart's "technical capabilities". Flutter is a way to rescue Dart, plain and simple. Yes, Jetpack Compose might be doing its baby steps, but I am betting most developers are more keen in having Kotlin than Dart on their CV, specially after Dart v 1.0's demise. And Android team surely has more political power, given ChromeOS and Fuchsia adoption of ART.
        mythz 7y ago
        > no need to give it to me. Think highly of yourself much? But I'll be continuing to provide links as I see it's relevant and informative, my comments are not just for your benefit, readers can make their own mind whose opinions are more informed - "no need" to tell others how to comment. > Only someone that never used Common Lisp, Smalltak, Delphi, C++ Builder and other 4GLs in the 90's, can be impressed by Dart's "technical capabilities". Am I meant to be impressed by this list of languages? I'm not. Are the number of languages meant to give your inexperienced opinion on Flutter's development environment some credence or is this washy strawman meant to downplay anyone else's opinion who wasn't a developer in the 90's when these languages were more relevant? What matters is what's relevant now and Flutter lets you build modern x-plat Mobile, Web, Desktop and Embedded Apps with productive Live Hot Reload environment that's both fast at development and runtime which can be run in a JIT VM, as AOT compiled or transpiled to tree-shaken JS. Which of these above languages provides a more productive and "technically impressive" environment to develop iOS/Android, Web and Embedded Apps than Dart/Flutter? > Flutter is a way to rescue Dart, plain and simple. Adding "plain and simple" to an baseless opinion doesn't re-enforce it, including links that backs up this wild speculation will. What information have you used to be able present this opinion as fact so staunchly? Do you really believe Google invented and funded the Flutter project out of thin air to give Dart a popularity boost? > And Android team surely has more political power, given ChromeOS and Fuchsia adoption of ART. How can Android have more political power for Fuchsia than Dart which is what most of its UI is written in? You can also develop Flutter Apps on Chrome OS so that's no different. Chrome OS is still primarily a Web OS, allowing running Android Apps doesn't make it an OS for running Android Apps and devs aren't going to be lining up to develop Chrome OS Apps using Android. Flutter's strength's is that you can develop x-plat App's that looks, behaves and runs natively on all its supported platforms - feel free to wait until Kotlin reaches the same maturity on iOS before declaring it a Flutter killer. Kotlin still suffers from Android's complicated and fragile tooling and from what I've seen with JetPack compose it's highly coupled to Android - it's going to take a long time before they'll let you build iOS/Android Apps from a single code base.
- burky 7y ago
  Flutter is cross platform. I looked for it but didn't see where jetpack has this capability. Please post me a link if I’m wrong, I would follow this project if it does support cross platform development.
  - arusahni 7y ago
    Jetpack Compose was announced at IO: https://blog.karumi.com/android-jetpack-compose-review/ https://blog.karumi.com/android-jetpack-compose-review/
- HillaryBriss 7y ago
  It looks like Jetpack Compose is not really done yet. It's pre-alpha and the Jetpack Compose doc page says don't use it for production. https://developer.android.com/jetpack/compose/ https://developer.android.com/jetpack/compose/ I may be missing something, but SwiftUI seems to be pretty much ready to go today.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    You are missing the fact that Android team doesn't want to have anything to do with Dart, and started a Kotlin everywhere initiative, including iOS via Kotlin/Native.
  - rhodysurf 7y ago
    Except it’s not ready to go because it’s not backwards compatible it seems.
  - myko 7y ago
    Ready to go today if you're only supporting iOS 13+ Which for most companies is 2+ years away
    - HillaryBriss 7y ago
      I stand corrected. thanks.
    - HillaryBriss 7y ago
      To add a bit more detail: the required level for other Apple OSs are macOS 15+, tvOS 13+ and watchOS 6+.
itp 7y ago
Indeed, but (unsurprisingly) Apple-only.
saagarjha 7y ago
But native, of course.
- tootie 7y ago
  And proprietary.
mmargerum 7y ago
Flutter doesn't use native controls . It draws everything. Just pointing out that difference.
- pier25 7y ago
  Native controls aren't drawn too?
  - HillaryBriss 7y ago
    yes, they're drawn too. but, i think what the above comment is pointing out is that Flutter itself does the drawing, instead of delegating the drawing to iOS or Android native widgets.
    - mmargerum 7y ago
      More than just drawing. They have to reimplement all of the behaviors of the built in controls. I'm sure google is up to the task, but my experience has been there's always things missing and and lag behind native .
      - kartickv 7y ago
        > there's always things missing and and lag behind native Flutter specifically or cross-platform UI frameworks in general? I don't mind it being different, but does the app feel unpolished?
    - pier25 7y ago
      Actually no, Flutter doesn’t do the drawing. It’s done by Skia, much like Cocoa native controls are drawn by Quartz. There isn’t much of a difference between Flutter controls and native controls, other than being a reimplementation in some cases.
      - mpweiher 7y ago
        > other than being a reimplementation in some cases. Hmm...that's pretty much the entire difference between native and non-native controls.
dep_b 7y ago
It does, in a good way. I really liked Flutter's UI approach.
jswizzy 7y ago
Jetpack Compose is more like it

Jetpack Composer you mean. I bet by next IO, Flutter will get replaced by it, specially after the #KotlinEverywhere announcement and Kotlin/Native effort for iOS.

mythz 7y ago
No he means Flutter which has been around a lot longer, it's immediately what I've thought of being inspired by as well: https://flutter.dev/docs/development/tools/hot-reload https://flutter.dev/docs/development/tools/hot-reload
- pjmlp 7y ago
  I know pretty much what he/she meant, was just making a point that I don't believe in Flutter's long term success. Trying to sell Dart a 2nd time was a mistake.
  - mythz 7y ago
    Flutter's not a PR campaign for Dart, they're a separate project that chose Dart based on its technical capabilities [1]. Given Flutter enables the nicest native x-plat dev experience today I'd say it has a very bright future, which they've also recently announced Flutter for Desktop and Embedded devices. Jetpack compose is years away from the same kind of x-plat support that Flutter's providing for Mobile, Web, Desktop and Embedded [2]. [1] https://flutter.dev/docs/resources/faq#why-did-flutter-choose-to-use-dart https://flutter.dev/docs/resources/faq#why-did-flutter-choos... [2] https://developers.googleblog.com/2019/05/Flutter-io19.html https://developers.googleblog.com/2019/05/Flutter-io19.html
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      That after-the-fact reasoning link that gets posted every time someone questions Dart is well known, no need to give it to me. Only someone that never used Common Lisp, Smalltak, Delphi, C++ Builder and other 4GLs in the 90's, can be impressed by Dart's "technical capabilities". Flutter is a way to rescue Dart, plain and simple. Yes, Jetpack Compose might be doing its baby steps, but I am betting most developers are more keen in having Kotlin than Dart on their CV, specially after Dart v 1.0's demise. And Android team surely has more political power, given ChromeOS and Fuchsia adoption of ART.
      - mythz 7y ago
        > no need to give it to me. Think highly of yourself much? But I'll be continuing to provide links as I see it's relevant and informative, my comments are not just for your benefit, readers can make their own mind whose opinions are more informed - "no need" to tell others how to comment. > Only someone that never used Common Lisp, Smalltak, Delphi, C++ Builder and other 4GLs in the 90's, can be impressed by Dart's "technical capabilities". Am I meant to be impressed by this list of languages? I'm not. Are the number of languages meant to give your inexperienced opinion on Flutter's development environment some credence or is this washy strawman meant to downplay anyone else's opinion who wasn't a developer in the 90's when these languages were more relevant? What matters is what's relevant now and Flutter lets you build modern x-plat Mobile, Web, Desktop and Embedded Apps with productive Live Hot Reload environment that's both fast at development and runtime which can be run in a JIT VM, as AOT compiled or transpiled to tree-shaken JS. Which of these above languages provides a more productive and "technically impressive" environment to develop iOS/Android, Web and Embedded Apps than Dart/Flutter? > Flutter is a way to rescue Dart, plain and simple. Adding "plain and simple" to an baseless opinion doesn't re-enforce it, including links that backs up this wild speculation will. What information have you used to be able present this opinion as fact so staunchly? Do you really believe Google invented and funded the Flutter project out of thin air to give Dart a popularity boost? > And Android team surely has more political power, given ChromeOS and Fuchsia adoption of ART. How can Android have more political power for Fuchsia than Dart which is what most of its UI is written in? You can also develop Flutter Apps on Chrome OS so that's no different. Chrome OS is still primarily a Web OS, allowing running Android Apps doesn't make it an OS for running Android Apps and devs aren't going to be lining up to develop Chrome OS Apps using Android. Flutter's strength's is that you can develop x-plat App's that looks, behaves and runs natively on all its supported platforms - feel free to wait until Kotlin reaches the same maturity on iOS before declaring it a Flutter killer. Kotlin still suffers from Android's complicated and fragile tooling and from what I've seen with JetPack compose it's highly coupled to Android - it's going to take a long time before they'll let you build iOS/Android Apps from a single code base.
burky 7y ago
Flutter is cross platform. I looked for it but didn't see where jetpack has this capability. Please post me a link if I’m wrong, I would follow this project if it does support cross platform development.
- arusahni 7y ago
  Jetpack Compose was announced at IO: https://blog.karumi.com/android-jetpack-compose-review/ https://blog.karumi.com/android-jetpack-compose-review/
HillaryBriss 7y ago
It looks like Jetpack Compose is not really done yet. It's pre-alpha and the Jetpack Compose doc page says don't use it for production. https://developer.android.com/jetpack/compose/ https://developer.android.com/jetpack/compose/ I may be missing something, but SwiftUI seems to be pretty much ready to go today.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  You are missing the fact that Android team doesn't want to have anything to do with Dart, and started a Kotlin everywhere initiative, including iOS via Kotlin/Native.
- rhodysurf 7y ago
  Except it’s not ready to go because it’s not backwards compatible it seems.
- myko 7y ago
  Ready to go today if you're only supporting iOS 13+ Which for most companies is 2+ years away
  - HillaryBriss 7y ago
    I stand corrected. thanks.
  - HillaryBriss 7y ago
    To add a bit more detail: the required level for other Apple OSs are macOS 15+, tvOS 13+ and watchOS 6+.

itp 7y ago

Indeed, but (unsurprisingly) Apple-only.

saagarjha 7y ago

But native, of course.

tootie 7y ago
And proprietary.

mmargerum 7y ago

Flutter doesn't use native controls . It draws everything. Just pointing out that difference.

pier25 7y ago
Native controls aren't drawn too?
- HillaryBriss 7y ago
  yes, they're drawn too. but, i think what the above comment is pointing out is that Flutter itself does the drawing, instead of delegating the drawing to iOS or Android native widgets.
  - mmargerum 7y ago
    More than just drawing. They have to reimplement all of the behaviors of the built in controls. I'm sure google is up to the task, but my experience has been there's always things missing and and lag behind native .
    - kartickv 7y ago
      > there's always things missing and and lag behind native Flutter specifically or cross-platform UI frameworks in general? I don't mind it being different, but does the app feel unpolished?
  - pier25 7y ago
    Actually no, Flutter doesn’t do the drawing. It’s done by Skia, much like Cocoa native controls are drawn by Quartz. There isn’t much of a difference between Flutter controls and native controls, other than being a reimplementation in some cases.
    - mpweiher 7y ago
      > other than being a reimplementation in some cases. Hmm...that's pretty much the entire difference between native and non-native controls.

dep_b 7y ago

It does, in a good way. I really liked Flutter's UI approach.

jswizzy 7y ago

Jetpack Compose is more like it