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I think Flutter now can survive without google. It has enough developer momentum behind it and it’s unlike react native a bolt on solution to somehow make it wo

I think Flutter now can survive without google. It has enough developer momentum behind it and it’s unlike react native a bolt on solution to somehow make it work. It might fit Facebook’s case (although they abandoned it themselves in favour of native speaks volumes about it). But I think keeping in sync changes in API, hardware device drivers and new interactions across different platforms and device will still be nightmare and in general it will play catch up with native. It can be seen in the number of issues opened on flutter project on GitHub [1]. Hopefully there is some support from different platforms so it remains reasonable choice and perform well compared to native. Also it’s declarative UI paradigm is good and even SwiftUI is doing the same. I had concern about this project earlier although personally I looked at Dart just because it’s developed by Lara Bak the person who transformed google by giving them V8 engine in chrome. Earlier dart could not take off because no one wants dartvm in browsers except chrome. It might not have succeeded in replacing JS from browser but Flutter is dart’s killer platform and it is very much focused now on becoming a language focused on user interface programming. So I think dart will survive beyond google. [1] https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues

SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
Dart replacing JS would be an interesting timeline but not one we’re in for at least short term. I also had concerns about Dart/Flutter at first but they almost entirely went away a week after starting. It’s just really friendly. As far as Flutter is concerned it’s awesome you can see the Dart objects that build the Flutter widgets, the language itself is good and getting better, I’m just really happy we went this direction.
ddxxdd 7y ago
>But I think keeping in sync changes in API, hardware device drivers and new interactions across different platforms and device will still be nightmare and in general it will play catch up with native. It can be seen in the number of issues opened on flutter project on GitHub [1]. Hopefully there is some support from different platforms so it remains reasonable choice and perform well compared to native. I am an optimist; I have high hopes for the future of mobile development. Specifically, I hope that the developers who develop AndroidOS and iOS will metaphorically bend over backwards to make Flutter compatible with those operating systems. After all, isn't it in Apple and Google's best interest to make mobile development as painless as possible?
- eptcyka 7y ago
  It's in Apple's interest to make development for solely iOS as painless as possible. See Metal vs Vulkan. Android exists so that Apple doesn't have 100% of the market share, not because Google cares about the UX of the users or the developers. I think neither have any real incentive to make Flutter work better than it already does.
  - h0l0cube 7y ago
    A lot of apps are still developed iOS-first, which is a problem for Android. Encouraging cross-platform development over iOS-first is a win for the Android platform, not so much for Apple.
    - ddxxdd 7y ago
      >A lot of apps are still developed iOS-first Why? Last time I checked, Android had 85% of the market share.
      - iudqnolq 7y ago
        Value of users = number of users * amount users spend A chunk of Android's market share is people for whom $5 isn't a coffee but a days wages.
        MrDresden 7y ago
        While probably true globally, that isn't so in every local. My team develops and maintains a mobile banking application for a national market of a small European nation, and our user base is 70% Android. Due to wages here, 5$ is chump change. Obviously though, we aren't monetizing our product in the usual way.
        chrisan 7y ago
        > Obviously though, we aren't monetizing our product in the usual way. I think that could be a large difference in approaches. You are a bank and want all of your customers happy. If bank made an iOS only it would piss off a lot of its customers. On the other hand if you are monetizing, you have to look at revenue streams from both platforms and decide which is the bigger revenue stream (not most users) and make sure that one work's first. Obviously you want both to work well but if the split is 70/30 to iOS you will prioritize iOS first.
okareaman 7y ago
> Lara Bak Lars Bak > no one wants dartvm in browsers except chrome The Chrome team also rejected the Dart VM
h0l0cube 7y ago
> It has enough developer momentum behind it and it’s unlike react native a bolt on solution to somehow make it work. I see React as a web-first framework, and RN as a fast path for porting to mobile. I've heard that flutter has early stage web support, but that it's all based on canvas, which is enough to dissuade me for using it for a web-first app. I'd be curious to know your perspective on this.
- realusername 7y ago
  Not the OP but React-native support for the web is also very early stage, I don't think I would use either for building a web platform.
  - h0l0cube 7y ago
    It's not something I've attempted yet, but I'm under the impression that a React -> React Native port is easier than building a Flutter app for Mobile, and then doing something else for web. Might be wrong?
    - realusername 7y ago
      With React Native you would also have to rewrite your components, it's unlikely your average React component would work without web dom & css.
      - h0l0cube 7y ago
        That's stating the obvious. Of course the UI would need re-implementation. Just like in Flutter, you might have a different UI for Cupertino and Android flavours, except with React, you'd have generic UI for mobile in RN (for better or worse), and your dom/css for React. You would be able to re-use much of the javascript logic and have .tsx as the consistent language throughout the code base. Ideally...
  - tomduncalf 7y ago
    This isn’t quite accurate, it’s mature enough for Twitter to use it for their new site for example (and to hire the creator of react-native-web): https://twitter.com/necolas/status/913877194199359488?s=21 https://twitter.com/necolas/status/913877194199359488?s=21
pjmlp 7y ago
Everyone from original Dart team left, Lars is now one of co-founders of a startup trying to sell a Dart like language for IoT. Dart and Flutter futures are are now married, and I still don't buy into Flutter. Languages married with UI frameworks seldom last, specially when the competition outside of the UI framework is so much better in tooling and available set of libraries. Plus hot reloading were a novelty when Smalltalk, Common Lisp, Oberon System, Eiffel got introduced into the market. And the competition isn't sleeping either, Flutter touched the Android team nerves hard enough that now we are getting Jetpack Composer, Xamarin already has its prototype available, Qt always kind of had it, so in the next twos (give or take it), all the cross-platform mobile frameworks will have dynamic code reload, with more market relevant languages, couple with 20 - 30 years of libraries. Until Google releases Fuchsia and makes everyone write Dart code, I will pass. Qt, Xamarin, PWAs do the job just fine, with more mature languages.
- discreteevent 7y ago
  Your post reads as FUD. Of course it isn't because I assume you are not one flutter's competitors. Nevertheless, worrying about what something might do in the future is classic FUD. We don't know if those others will develop hot reload, we don't know when and we don't know how good it will be. So FUD is a poor basis for a technical decision. There's some merit in the mature language argument but dart has been around for some time now and doesn't have any radical features - although on the other hand you seem to be saying it's not novel enough like Oberon etc. Do all those others have 20-30 years of libraries? I think that's just Qt. I spent a couple of years using Qt and it's very good but it is C++ which isn't for everyone. (The python version probably fails your maturity criteria)
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Yes they do, Java was released in 1996, .NET in 2002, JavaScript if we consider only npm release then 2010. What FUD? Had not been for AdWords team there wouldn't be any Dart to talk about. Right now, Dart is meaningless without Flutter. While all the other languages are a safer bet, in terms of what to have on the CV, even if the frameworks written in them fail in the market.
jjeaff 7y ago
>It might fit Facebook’s case (although they abandoned it themselves in favour of native speaks volumes about it). This doesn't appear to be true. Do you have a source?
- jamil7 7y ago
  I’m not sure about abandoned but I think the uptake at facebook was never really that big, on iOS only the marketplace is written in RN with the rest remaining in ObjC / UIKit. This doesn’t really mean much though since theres no reason for them to rewrite everything in RN. I would be interested to know what the uptake is for new projects there.
loftyal 7y ago
React Native is still used widely at Facebook. It's never been abandoned. They abandoned HTML5, which is entirely different.

SlowRobotAhead 7y ago

Dart replacing JS would be an interesting timeline but not one we’re in for at least short term. I also had concerns about Dart/Flutter at first but they almost entirely went away a week after starting. It’s just really friendly. As far as Flutter is concerned it’s awesome you can see the Dart objects that build the Flutter widgets, the language itself is good and getting better, I’m just really happy we went this direction.

ddxxdd 7y ago

>But I think keeping in sync changes in API, hardware device drivers and new interactions across different platforms and device will still be nightmare and in general it will play catch up with native. It can be seen in the number of issues opened on flutter project on GitHub [1]. Hopefully there is some support from different platforms so it remains reasonable choice and perform well compared to native. I am an optimist; I have high hopes for the future of mobile development. Specifically, I hope that the developers who develop AndroidOS and iOS will metaphorically bend over backwards to make Flutter compatible with those operating systems. After all, isn't it in Apple and Google's best interest to make mobile development as painless as possible?

eptcyka 7y ago
It's in Apple's interest to make development for solely iOS as painless as possible. See Metal vs Vulkan. Android exists so that Apple doesn't have 100% of the market share, not because Google cares about the UX of the users or the developers. I think neither have any real incentive to make Flutter work better than it already does.
- h0l0cube 7y ago
  A lot of apps are still developed iOS-first, which is a problem for Android. Encouraging cross-platform development over iOS-first is a win for the Android platform, not so much for Apple.
  - ddxxdd 7y ago
    >A lot of apps are still developed iOS-first Why? Last time I checked, Android had 85% of the market share.
    - iudqnolq 7y ago
      Value of users = number of users * amount users spend A chunk of Android's market share is people for whom $5 isn't a coffee but a days wages.
      - MrDresden 7y ago
        While probably true globally, that isn't so in every local. My team develops and maintains a mobile banking application for a national market of a small European nation, and our user base is 70% Android. Due to wages here, 5$ is chump change. Obviously though, we aren't monetizing our product in the usual way.
        chrisan 7y ago
        > Obviously though, we aren't monetizing our product in the usual way. I think that could be a large difference in approaches. You are a bank and want all of your customers happy. If bank made an iOS only it would piss off a lot of its customers. On the other hand if you are monetizing, you have to look at revenue streams from both platforms and decide which is the bigger revenue stream (not most users) and make sure that one work's first. Obviously you want both to work well but if the split is 70/30 to iOS you will prioritize iOS first.

okareaman 7y ago

> Lara Bak Lars Bak > no one wants dartvm in browsers except chrome The Chrome team also rejected the Dart VM

h0l0cube 7y ago

> It has enough developer momentum behind it and it’s unlike react native a bolt on solution to somehow make it work. I see React as a web-first framework, and RN as a fast path for porting to mobile. I've heard that flutter has early stage web support, but that it's all based on canvas, which is enough to dissuade me for using it for a web-first app. I'd be curious to know your perspective on this.

realusername 7y ago
Not the OP but React-native support for the web is also very early stage, I don't think I would use either for building a web platform.
- h0l0cube 7y ago
  It's not something I've attempted yet, but I'm under the impression that a React -> React Native port is easier than building a Flutter app for Mobile, and then doing something else for web. Might be wrong?
  - realusername 7y ago
    With React Native you would also have to rewrite your components, it's unlikely your average React component would work without web dom & css.
    - h0l0cube 7y ago
      That's stating the obvious. Of course the UI would need re-implementation. Just like in Flutter, you might have a different UI for Cupertino and Android flavours, except with React, you'd have generic UI for mobile in RN (for better or worse), and your dom/css for React. You would be able to re-use much of the javascript logic and have .tsx as the consistent language throughout the code base. Ideally...
- tomduncalf 7y ago
  This isn’t quite accurate, it’s mature enough for Twitter to use it for their new site for example (and to hire the creator of react-native-web): https://twitter.com/necolas/status/913877194199359488?s=21 https://twitter.com/necolas/status/913877194199359488?s=21

pjmlp 7y ago

Everyone from original Dart team left, Lars is now one of co-founders of a startup trying to sell a Dart like language for IoT. Dart and Flutter futures are are now married, and I still don't buy into Flutter. Languages married with UI frameworks seldom last, specially when the competition outside of the UI framework is so much better in tooling and available set of libraries. Plus hot reloading were a novelty when Smalltalk, Common Lisp, Oberon System, Eiffel got introduced into the market. And the competition isn't sleeping either, Flutter touched the Android team nerves hard enough that now we are getting Jetpack Composer, Xamarin already has its prototype available, Qt always kind of had it, so in the next twos (give or take it), all the cross-platform mobile frameworks will have dynamic code reload, with more market relevant languages, couple with 20 - 30 years of libraries. Until Google releases Fuchsia and makes everyone write Dart code, I will pass. Qt, Xamarin, PWAs do the job just fine, with more mature languages.

discreteevent 7y ago
Your post reads as FUD. Of course it isn't because I assume you are not one flutter's competitors. Nevertheless, worrying about what something might do in the future is classic FUD. We don't know if those others will develop hot reload, we don't know when and we don't know how good it will be. So FUD is a poor basis for a technical decision. There's some merit in the mature language argument but dart has been around for some time now and doesn't have any radical features - although on the other hand you seem to be saying it's not novel enough like Oberon etc. Do all those others have 20-30 years of libraries? I think that's just Qt. I spent a couple of years using Qt and it's very good but it is C++ which isn't for everyone. (The python version probably fails your maturity criteria)
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Yes they do, Java was released in 1996, .NET in 2002, JavaScript if we consider only npm release then 2010. What FUD? Had not been for AdWords team there wouldn't be any Dart to talk about. Right now, Dart is meaningless without Flutter. While all the other languages are a safer bet, in terms of what to have on the CV, even if the frameworks written in them fail in the market.

jjeaff 7y ago

>It might fit Facebook’s case (although they abandoned it themselves in favour of native speaks volumes about it). This doesn't appear to be true. Do you have a source?

jamil7 7y ago
I’m not sure about abandoned but I think the uptake at facebook was never really that big, on iOS only the marketplace is written in RN with the rest remaining in ObjC / UIKit. This doesn’t really mean much though since theres no reason for them to rewrite everything in RN. I would be interested to know what the uptake is for new projects there.

loftyal 7y ago

React Native is still used widely at Facebook. It's never been abandoned. They abandoned HTML5, which is entirely different.