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The app is built with Flutter [1], which uses Material design by default. So it's cross-platform, but uses an Android design system. I briefly experimented with

The app is built with Flutter [1], which uses Material design by default. So it's cross-platform, but uses an Android design system. I briefly experimented with making it look more native on iOS, but although Flutter is capable of that in theory, it was a giant pain in the butt in practice and not worth it to me for this app. [1] https://flutter.dev/ https://flutter.dev/

wpietri 7y ago
How did you like Flutter for this? I've been playing with it some, and overall I like it a lot. I think they've made a bunch of smart choices, and the developer experience is great. But library support ended up being a huge problem for what I was trying to build. E.g., the official Flutter webview [1] is still marked as "Developers Preview" and says "it is not recommended to rely on webview keyboard in production apps". And I was also very disappointed with the mapping library support. [1] https://pub.dev/packages/webview_flutter https://pub.dev/packages/webview_flutter
- hamaluik 7y ago
  I mostly really like Flutter. I haven't done a huge amount of UI development work in my life, but of the things I have used, I have found Flutter to be far and away the easiest to quickly express the UI you want to build and just build it. I think its killer features are the cross-platform support by default and the hot-reload—I found the hot-reload functionality so invaluable that I ended up jerry-rigging hot-reload into my current product at work. You're right that it is definitely still rough in some places though. The libraries on pub.dev can be very hit-or-miss, and I definitely wasted some time trying various libraries from there before either giving up or rolling my functionality. I too explored a mapping project using it a year or two ago now and ended up having to essentially create my own map view using mapbox APIs (unfortunately I don't have code that I can share from that project). That said, I find Flutter is at least relatively easy enough to implement things that you can't find from the ecosystem.
  - wpietri 7y ago
    Thanks! I appreciate the reply.
osrec 7y ago
I was going to ask why your app is 50+mb. I guess it's all the flutter related bundles that add to the weight... Not criticising - just curious! Nice app and congrats on getting it live :)
- hamaluik 7y ago
  Yea.. I’m not fond of the build size on iOS but I don’t know how to shrink it from what it is. On Android at least it’s only ~8 MB.

wpietri 7y ago

How did you like Flutter for this? I've been playing with it some, and overall I like it a lot. I think they've made a bunch of smart choices, and the developer experience is great. But library support ended up being a huge problem for what I was trying to build. E.g., the official Flutter webview [1] is still marked as "Developers Preview" and says "it is not recommended to rely on webview keyboard in production apps". And I was also very disappointed with the mapping library support. [1] https://pub.dev/packages/webview_flutter https://pub.dev/packages/webview_flutter

hamaluik 7y ago
I mostly really like Flutter. I haven't done a huge amount of UI development work in my life, but of the things I have used, I have found Flutter to be far and away the easiest to quickly express the UI you want to build and just build it. I think its killer features are the cross-platform support by default and the hot-reload—I found the hot-reload functionality so invaluable that I ended up jerry-rigging hot-reload into my current product at work. You're right that it is definitely still rough in some places though. The libraries on pub.dev can be very hit-or-miss, and I definitely wasted some time trying various libraries from there before either giving up or rolling my functionality. I too explored a mapping project using it a year or two ago now and ended up having to essentially create my own map view using mapbox APIs (unfortunately I don't have code that I can share from that project). That said, I find Flutter is at least relatively easy enough to implement things that you can't find from the ecosystem.
- wpietri 7y ago
  Thanks! I appreciate the reply.

osrec 7y ago

I was going to ask why your app is 50+mb. I guess it's all the flutter related bundles that add to the weight... Not criticising - just curious! Nice app and congrats on getting it live :)

hamaluik 7y ago
Yea.. I’m not fond of the build size on iOS but I don’t know how to shrink it from what it is. On Android at least it’s only ~8 MB.