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I really doubt that Flutter/Dart will displace Android/Jetpack Compose/Kotlin. Kotlin already very quickly replaced Java for new Android code at many places, an
by jitl 6y ago
I really doubt that Flutter/Dart will displace Android/Jetpack Compose/Kotlin. Kotlin already very quickly replaced Java for new Android code at many places, and it offers big productivity advantages without any downsides. So, on Android there’s a strengthening incumbent.
I think Flutter could evolve an interesting platform for “line of business” or “rapid application development” projects, similar to Lazarus/Delphi. In that respect, I agree that we could see growth for flutter for low-cost cross-platform projects, and on Linux.
But, after the failures of React Native, none of the mobile developers I talk to have any interest in these non-native, layered-on-top frameworks that need a plugins ecosystem to call into native code or native APIs. Your productivity is basically held hostage by the runtime to an even greater degree than it already is on a mobile OS.
I also don’t thing Google needs any new web APIs to make Flutter accessible. They can position some invisible divs with the right spots with the right WARIA attributes.
- hajile 6y agoThe major downside of Dart is no threading. Once they decide to fix that, there's not much standing in the way from completely replacing all the java bits. React Native has issues from how it bridges all the things from React to native. Flutter shims in the native APIs, but uses it's own components to avoid the bridge issue. In 2 years, most Android phones are no longer getting updates. Since the flutter app carries along most of its own dependencies, it can continue to provide up-to-date software long after the manufacturers have abandoned users. Flutter's canvas approach is literally Macromedia Flash all over again. I don't care if it's possible to shim in A11Y into flutter, it's bad for the web and bad for users. They need to rethink how to convert their renderer into DOM elements.