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Somewhat of an aside, since this article is about Flutter on embedded systems where React Native isn't even a consideration but... I've used both Flutter and R

Somewhat of an aside, since this article is about Flutter on embedded systems where React Native isn't even a consideration but... I've used both Flutter and React Native. Hands down, Flutter is the more enjoyable experience. Everything from the language, to the toolkit, to the IDE, to the final product, is just BETTER. React Native is a bloated, hacky, slow, garbage pile by comparison.

jamil7 6y ago
Took me a while to get on board with Flutter, only really started enjoying it after I gave it a few goes. Coming to Dart after Swift and Kotlin feels like a big downgrade but languages aren't that important, as you said the whole environment is so much more streamlined than Android dev. I'm using it for Android only however and keeping my existing iOS app in Swift.
- The_rationalist 6y ago
  Off topic but regarding language design, what are some pros about swift that Kotlin hasn't?
  - infinityplus1 6y ago
    I think he's probability talking about not wanting to rewrite existing apps which are working fine already in Swift.
  - jamil7 6y ago
    Ah my comment wasn’t that clear. What I meant was as nice as flutter is dart felt like a downgrade after working with kotlin and swift (both of which I like a lot)
  - jurip 6y ago
    Not the OP, but: 1. Value types 2. Tuples 3. Key paths 4. Checked exceptions (could be more powerful in Swift, but they are there, and when not used in excess they are actually pretty nice, and Swift's `try` syntax is excellent) 5. Swift's enums and `switch` feel both more straightforward and more powerful than Kotlin's sealed classes and `when` (I'm not sure about this, but I think there are situations where you get better coverage checking with Swift's pattern matching.) 6. Reified generics (I know that opinions on this vary, and it doesn't often matter, but I've been just writing some code where it's been nice to be slightly more type safe with Any values) 7. More principled null handling (Optional is just an enum, although with some extra syntactic support) 8. `if let`, `if case`, `guard let` and `guard case` allow for simpler handling of multiple values than Kotlin's `?.let` and null checks I like Kotlin being more expression oriented, but in the end I often find my Swift code to be less contorted due to the more powerful conditional constructs. GC vs ARC isn't much of an issue, both work for me.
notsureaboutpg 6y ago
Any tips for getting into Flutter? I've been working with React Native for over 2 years straight now, and I'm hesitant to move on from an ecosystem I know really well and a toolkit that finally feels comfortable. But I also know React Native is hacky, slow, constantly has changes and breakages, sometimes stupid styling things are nearly impossible, etc. And if Flutter is as much better as people say, then I'd love to try it. Any plusses/minuses I should know before diving in?
preommr 6y ago
I can't figure out flutter. I see so many rave reviews. But I personally tried it and strongly disliked it. The toolkit and Android Studio run horribly slow - like really slow. And the output is basically this generation's flash. Some of the samples I tried on their gallery are mediocre. Very slight, but noticeable sluggishness. Some are just terrible; the 2d transformations moves at like 7fps. Plus there are so many other small things like issues with scrollbars, things that take time to sort out that native and web have had time to figure out. Also dart is a real PITA coming from typescripts which is basically c#. Actually, the issue with dart is it's own whole thing. It was meant to be an alternative to js, but not ts has taken over with much greater success. I am not talking about aot or stuff like that - just the dev experience for app dev. Now it's in this really weird spot. I just don't know. I would honestly have thought that flutter is dead in the water - every personal experience I've had with it has been bad, there are objective facts about it that are bad, and yet so many people love it.
- ironmagma 6y ago
  Flutter is just for people who need to get something basic done without too much trouble, I think. It's been over a decade of mobile UI iteration and we still don't have something that does everything for all OSes in a declarative way, so I think we are just doomed to writing a native app for each platform if you want performance, correctness in terms of UI, and productivity.
  - The_rationalist 6y ago
    And on the other side there is Ionic which is has no real performance issues (contrary to flutter), has the biggest ecosystem (the web) and is elegant, expressive, simple -> The thousands of powerful web APIs, Angular and typescript
    - acoard 6y ago
      Ionic just wraps the web browser on mobile devices. So you still have to target two browsers, Safari and Chrome.
- 6y ago
young_unixer 6y ago
I didn't like Flutter because I don't like deeply nested code, especially when you have to care about parentheses, braces, brackets and commas, and the standard indentation is only 2 spaces.
- malkia 6y ago
  Placing trailing "," helps with making it being less nested. Try it out!
nwienert 6y ago
Can you point to some really well done, larger Flutter apps in production? Especially ones that run across multiple platforms but feel good in each? I used to think the same of React Native a couple years ago but this year I picked it up again and was shocked how far its come - incredibly smooth experience, far better ecosystem, and it's hard (impossible?) to beat Chrome DevTools + VSCode. Runs fast, too. The thing is, Flutter is a no-go for the web as of now, it delivers a huge bloated bundle that's not accessible or performant. But with React Native you can build an app that shares 90% of the code across all native platforms and the web, and feels/is more native on each of the three platforms.

jamil7 6y ago

Took me a while to get on board with Flutter, only really started enjoying it after I gave it a few goes. Coming to Dart after Swift and Kotlin feels like a big downgrade but languages aren't that important, as you said the whole environment is so much more streamlined than Android dev. I'm using it for Android only however and keeping my existing iOS app in Swift.

The_rationalist 6y ago
Off topic but regarding language design, what are some pros about swift that Kotlin hasn't?
- infinityplus1 6y ago
  I think he's probability talking about not wanting to rewrite existing apps which are working fine already in Swift.
- jamil7 6y ago
  Ah my comment wasn’t that clear. What I meant was as nice as flutter is dart felt like a downgrade after working with kotlin and swift (both of which I like a lot)
- jurip 6y ago
  Not the OP, but: 1. Value types 2. Tuples 3. Key paths 4. Checked exceptions (could be more powerful in Swift, but they are there, and when not used in excess they are actually pretty nice, and Swift's `try` syntax is excellent) 5. Swift's enums and `switch` feel both more straightforward and more powerful than Kotlin's sealed classes and `when` (I'm not sure about this, but I think there are situations where you get better coverage checking with Swift's pattern matching.) 6. Reified generics (I know that opinions on this vary, and it doesn't often matter, but I've been just writing some code where it's been nice to be slightly more type safe with Any values) 7. More principled null handling (Optional is just an enum, although with some extra syntactic support) 8. `if let`, `if case`, `guard let` and `guard case` allow for simpler handling of multiple values than Kotlin's `?.let` and null checks I like Kotlin being more expression oriented, but in the end I often find my Swift code to be less contorted due to the more powerful conditional constructs. GC vs ARC isn't much of an issue, both work for me.

notsureaboutpg 6y ago

Any tips for getting into Flutter? I've been working with React Native for over 2 years straight now, and I'm hesitant to move on from an ecosystem I know really well and a toolkit that finally feels comfortable. But I also know React Native is hacky, slow, constantly has changes and breakages, sometimes stupid styling things are nearly impossible, etc. And if Flutter is as much better as people say, then I'd love to try it. Any plusses/minuses I should know before diving in?

preommr 6y ago

I can't figure out flutter. I see so many rave reviews. But I personally tried it and strongly disliked it. The toolkit and Android Studio run horribly slow - like really slow. And the output is basically this generation's flash. Some of the samples I tried on their gallery are mediocre. Very slight, but noticeable sluggishness. Some are just terrible; the 2d transformations moves at like 7fps. Plus there are so many other small things like issues with scrollbars, things that take time to sort out that native and web have had time to figure out. Also dart is a real PITA coming from typescripts which is basically c#. Actually, the issue with dart is it's own whole thing. It was meant to be an alternative to js, but not ts has taken over with much greater success. I am not talking about aot or stuff like that - just the dev experience for app dev. Now it's in this really weird spot. I just don't know. I would honestly have thought that flutter is dead in the water - every personal experience I've had with it has been bad, there are objective facts about it that are bad, and yet so many people love it.

ironmagma 6y ago
Flutter is just for people who need to get something basic done without too much trouble, I think. It's been over a decade of mobile UI iteration and we still don't have something that does everything for all OSes in a declarative way, so I think we are just doomed to writing a native app for each platform if you want performance, correctness in terms of UI, and productivity.
- The_rationalist 6y ago
  And on the other side there is Ionic which is has no real performance issues (contrary to flutter), has the biggest ecosystem (the web) and is elegant, expressive, simple -> The thousands of powerful web APIs, Angular and typescript
  - acoard 6y ago
    Ionic just wraps the web browser on mobile devices. So you still have to target two browsers, Safari and Chrome.
6y ago

young_unixer 6y ago

I didn't like Flutter because I don't like deeply nested code, especially when you have to care about parentheses, braces, brackets and commas, and the standard indentation is only 2 spaces.

malkia 6y ago
Placing trailing "," helps with making it being less nested. Try it out!

nwienert 6y ago

Can you point to some really well done, larger Flutter apps in production? Especially ones that run across multiple platforms but feel good in each? I used to think the same of React Native a couple years ago but this year I picked it up again and was shocked how far its come - incredibly smooth experience, far better ecosystem, and it's hard (impossible?) to beat Chrome DevTools + VSCode. Runs fast, too. The thing is, Flutter is a no-go for the web as of now, it delivers a huge bloated bundle that's not accessible or performant. But with React Native you can build an app that shares 90% of the code across all native platforms and the web, and feels/is more native on each of the three platforms.