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In this context of disparaging the state of Android development, I must plead: take a hard look at Flutter/Dart. There are quite a few wins with it, including a

In this context of disparaging the state of Android development, I must plead: take a hard look at Flutter/Dart. There are quite a few wins with it, including a pleasant developer experience. Declarative, composable, JIT compilation in dev, AOT compilation in production. The list goes on.

craftinator 7y ago
+1 for Flutter. Fast iteration, few gotchyas, decent documentation, a growing community, very fine control, but forgiving to those learning the framework.
nl 7y ago
I wish they'd dump Dart and replace it with basically anything else (Typescript? Swift? Kotlin?). I'm not going to learn a new language which isn't used anywhere else AND a new UI toolkit just because Google's internal team structure has put them in a position to keep Dart going. Back when Dart came out, it made sense. But Typescript came along, filled basically the same niche and got significant mindshare.
- thosakwe 7y ago
  This horse has been beaten to death. They wrote an article about their choice of language, anyways: https://hackernoon.com/why-flutter-uses-dart-dd635a054ebf https://hackernoon.com/why-flutter-uses-dart-dd635a054ebf
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    And now, Swift, C# and naturally Kotlin are coming up with similar tooling, which kind invalidates the reasoning why it had to be Dart, above all languages. Not to mention that Flutter experience isn't nothing more than cute to anyone that has experience doing UI design on Common Lisp or Smalltalk environments, which I reckon all of us are quite old for SV standards. EDIT: Or if you really want to be amazed go play with SELF.
    - brabel 7y ago
      > And now, Swift, C# and naturally Kotlin are coming up with similar tooling... That may be true, but right now, none of them has something as polished and usable as Flutter. And it looks like it will be many years before they do, all the while Flutter keeps getting better. So, if you have time to wait for these other platforms to catch up, go ahead while people who need to write code right now can enjoy something else. > EDIT: Or if you really want to be amazed go play with SELF. Oh come'on, are you really suggesting something that looks straight out of the early 90's is something that would amaze anyone today? Or there's something that actually looks and behaves modern out of the Self and Smalltalk world (certainly was not the case last time I checked, a few years back)?
      - pjmlp 7y ago
        Yes they have, language ecosystems with decades of battle field deployments in production, while Dart still tries to make itself relevant. What I am suggesting is that the reasoning why Dart instead of something else is flawed and can only be naively bought by those that lack experience in UI domain. How pretty those UIs used to look like is secondary. Flutter is being positioned to rescue Dart, and make it meaningful beyond the AdWord team, the place where it landed when all Dart designers eventually left Google. Where is the "Google's Commitment to Dart" blog post?
        craftinator 7y ago
        Personification of a programming language, nice. Flutter is ready to use, and is very rewarding for quickly building a specific use application; try it.
  - nl 7y ago
    I think those reasons are entirely valid. I don't see any reason why Typescript (for example) couldn't be made to meet them (relatively easily).

craftinator 7y ago

+1 for Flutter. Fast iteration, few gotchyas, decent documentation, a growing community, very fine control, but forgiving to those learning the framework.

nl 7y ago

I wish they'd dump Dart and replace it with basically anything else (Typescript? Swift? Kotlin?). I'm not going to learn a new language which isn't used anywhere else AND a new UI toolkit just because Google's internal team structure has put them in a position to keep Dart going. Back when Dart came out, it made sense. But Typescript came along, filled basically the same niche and got significant mindshare.

thosakwe 7y ago
This horse has been beaten to death. They wrote an article about their choice of language, anyways: https://hackernoon.com/why-flutter-uses-dart-dd635a054ebf https://hackernoon.com/why-flutter-uses-dart-dd635a054ebf
- pjmlp 7y ago
  And now, Swift, C# and naturally Kotlin are coming up with similar tooling, which kind invalidates the reasoning why it had to be Dart, above all languages. Not to mention that Flutter experience isn't nothing more than cute to anyone that has experience doing UI design on Common Lisp or Smalltalk environments, which I reckon all of us are quite old for SV standards. EDIT: Or if you really want to be amazed go play with SELF.
  - brabel 7y ago
    > And now, Swift, C# and naturally Kotlin are coming up with similar tooling... That may be true, but right now, none of them has something as polished and usable as Flutter. And it looks like it will be many years before they do, all the while Flutter keeps getting better. So, if you have time to wait for these other platforms to catch up, go ahead while people who need to write code right now can enjoy something else. > EDIT: Or if you really want to be amazed go play with SELF. Oh come'on, are you really suggesting something that looks straight out of the early 90's is something that would amaze anyone today? Or there's something that actually looks and behaves modern out of the Self and Smalltalk world (certainly was not the case last time I checked, a few years back)?
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      Yes they have, language ecosystems with decades of battle field deployments in production, while Dart still tries to make itself relevant. What I am suggesting is that the reasoning why Dart instead of something else is flawed and can only be naively bought by those that lack experience in UI domain. How pretty those UIs used to look like is secondary. Flutter is being positioned to rescue Dart, and make it meaningful beyond the AdWord team, the place where it landed when all Dart designers eventually left Google. Where is the "Google's Commitment to Dart" blog post?
      - craftinator 7y ago
        Personification of a programming language, nice. Flutter is ready to use, and is very rewarding for quickly building a specific use application; try it.
- nl 7y ago
  I think those reasons are entirely valid. I don't see any reason why Typescript (for example) couldn't be made to meet them (relatively easily).