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Are you a native mobile developer? I am (was I'm moving to ML/AI/Data engineering) and I don't think flutter is in any way easier or nicer than the native toolc

Are you a native mobile developer? I am (was I'm moving to ML/AI/Data engineering) and I don't think flutter is in any way easier or nicer than the native toolchains for mobile. Both Swift and Kotlin are better languages than Dart IMO, the IDE and tooling is far superior for both also. Flutter is faster but once to deploy a substandard quality of app for sure but matching the quality of a native app? That takes just as long in Flutter as building a native app in each tool chain. I've built apps in React Native, Flutter, Ionic, and Swift/Kotlin. I'd reach of Swift/Kotlin for developer experience, performance, and quality of app EVERY time.

joe_fishfish 6y ago
I am a native mobile developer, and I am presuming GP is most definitely not, because I completely agree with you.
- ksec 6y ago
  I have seen this a lot. Most of those people are Web Developers. They want their Web technology to move towards cross platform native apps. And are frustrated with people bashing or stopping this progress. On the other hand you have Native Apps developers, while equally being excited about Cross Platform UI and toolset have been burned more than enough. And this didn't even start with Smartphone. It goes back to earlier PC history with Java or even further. None of them were good enough. At the same time Native Apps developers dont understand why Web Dev or those who has Web Dev background now working on cross platform toolchain constantly push and produce the same thing years after years. You cant blame them for being skeptical.
awesomepeter 6y ago
If you had to pick a multiplatform solution (for whatever reason) which one would you pick? I've been exploring this space a bit, and it's really hard to form an opinion on this.
- jaegerpicker 6y ago
  I've been in that situation 3 times, I choose React Native and Flutter each once. I was forced to use Ionic. I would NEVER use Ionic again, terrible experience and very difficult to get decent quality/performance. I like Flutter's technology much more. I like that it is natively compiled. I dislike that it has it's own UI toolkit. React Native with TypeScript is a highly productive environment but I LOATHED the developer experience and any code that had performance goals was way harder to be successful with, not impossible but the threading model that RN imposes (it doesn't really thread at all) was hard to make the UI snappy and crisp as it should be. I've played with Xamarin also since I was a .net dev for 10+ years (I'm old in the industry 25 years now) and the developer experience was actually pretty good but the compile times and the UI performance were not. Though that was not a production level app and I might have been able to make it work. tldr; If I HAD to do cross platform I'd use the following logic to choice one: If I have a team of react JS/TS devs: React Native else if I have a .net team: Xaramin else: Flutter Then I'd apply for a job writing native apps in Swift/Kotlin and run away ;)
  - rubicon33 6y ago
    > a job writing native apps Sadly, a shrinking market day by day.
  - yesimahuman 6y ago
    Sorry to hear you had a bad experience with Ionic. The stack has improved considerably in recent years and actually Capacitor, our replacement for Cordova, was just rated the highest satisfaction mobile tool on the latest State of JS survey. Cordova was definitely a sore spot for Us but we’ve since moved beyond that and you can use any web stack to build apps with Capacitor (seeing a lot of React + Next.js apps of late)
  - claytongulick 6y ago
    Out of curiosity, what version of Ionic were you using? Ionic 4+ is a complete rewrite from the ground up to use web components. I use it in a non-traditional way, I do vanilla js + lit-html + web components and it works great. Performance is smooth, mobile first approach makes responsive apps straightforward. I don't do any of the native things or command line app creation or any of that. I've been generally pleased with it.
jpsoft 6y ago
I am, and I agree, native toolchains can be better but that is expected, they have a lot more resources dedicated to their development. I also am responsible for an app built using flutter, it's been on production for almost two years with a very good rating in the app stores and over a hundred thousand users, isn't that what matters? that the technology enables you to solve problems? Flutter did that for us, keep happily working on Xcode if that works for you, for our startup this announcement is great news.
tofuahdude 6y ago
What are your thoughts on the business end of deciding to build two separate versions of the app in two languages (not to mention the web) vs the efficiencies of one code base? We're close to needing to make this decision and I'm real hesitant to introduce two additional languages (we're already React for the web but haven't build apps yet) vs a React Native app where our team can be immediately productive.
- vorpalhex 6y ago
  I was with a team that went the React Native route. At first it was fine until we had to go slightly off the rails.. and I was rebuilding .so files based off random gists and updating linkage assemblies. React Native works until it doesn't and then you are getting into very detailed platform specific territory. A lot of the cross platform promises were untrue - we quickly learned the importance of QAing both builds and frequently had platform specific patches. Just bite the bullet and go native upfront.
  - The_rationalist 6y ago
    Or give Ionic react a try
    - vially 6y ago
      I would not recommend Ionic. I've been using it in a medium sized app for about 3 years now and I get the feeling it's good for getting started, but once your app grows past a certain size it's starting to create more issues than it solves. Some examples from the top of my head: - various performance issues (e.g.: memory leaks which haven't been fixed for years [1]) - their push/pop router navigation seems like a really bad idea - worse developer experience than using Angular directly (e.g.: last time I checked this, the save/compile/reload cycle of an Ionic project was an order of magnitude slower than the same project without Ionic) [1] - https://github.com/ionic-team/ionic-framework/issues/19242 https://github.com/ionic-team/ionic-framework/issues/19242
      - 6y ago
The_rationalist 6y ago
What do you think of jetpack compose? It has reached beta and there is experimental desktop support
- MrDresden 6y ago
  As a native Android developer (who is also doing Flutter atm) I look at compose as a seismic shift in the Android space. Flutter wont be able to compete
gurkendoktor 6y ago
I am a native app developer. I have only built one small app with Flutter. Here's where I disagree: - I've used Xcode since version 2 and like it, but in my opinion it's a worse developer experience than Flutter. Refactoring and code navigation were much better in both Android Studio and VS Code. - Flutter's hot reloading is fantastic. Meanwhile, SwiftUI previews seem to be built on the same technology as IBDesignable, that is, they're just barely stable enough for a short WWDC demo. - I am very sensitive to non-native controls on macOS, but UIKit doesn't even have a standard button class, the first thing that everyone has to reinvent (Apple included). I wouldn't pick Flutter for business apps with loads of text editing, but it feels perfect for social game-ish apps, like QuizUp or Duolingo. - In my experience (German freelancing market), the typical native app developer does not care about the user experience anymore. Ever since RxJava and Swift have hit the scene, the focus has moved from impressing the user, to one-upping your coworkers with exotic language features and avant-garde architecture patterns. Dart is a dumb language like Go, and I think that's exactly what's needed to bring UX back into the spotlight.
- nsainsbury 6y ago
  I'm a native app developer too (iOS and Android) and I've got some experience with Flutter. I agree with most of your comment, but the only thing I'd add is that from what I've seen if your concern is the quality of apps then Flutter definitely is not where you'll go to find that. If anything, Flutter developers seem to care even less about the end-user experience and instead simply focus on their own productivity. The end results are often horrible with a ton of jank, UI weirdness, etc.
- mwcampbell 6y ago
  > but UIKit doesn't even have a standard button class Doesn't anyone else use UIButton? Granted, the native iOS app I developed was intended primarily for blind people, so I didn't really make it visually polished.
  - gurkendoktor 6y ago
    Yes, the visual polish is what I mean. It's not rocket science to style UIButton, but the lack of a good default style means that mediocre native apps often have weird/inconsistent highlighted button states, and so on.
Aduket 6y ago
why do you move to ML/AI/Data Engineering from Mobile?

joe_fishfish 6y ago

I am a native mobile developer, and I am presuming GP is most definitely not, because I completely agree with you.

ksec 6y ago
I have seen this a lot. Most of those people are Web Developers. They want their Web technology to move towards cross platform native apps. And are frustrated with people bashing or stopping this progress. On the other hand you have Native Apps developers, while equally being excited about Cross Platform UI and toolset have been burned more than enough. And this didn't even start with Smartphone. It goes back to earlier PC history with Java or even further. None of them were good enough. At the same time Native Apps developers dont understand why Web Dev or those who has Web Dev background now working on cross platform toolchain constantly push and produce the same thing years after years. You cant blame them for being skeptical.

awesomepeter 6y ago

If you had to pick a multiplatform solution (for whatever reason) which one would you pick? I've been exploring this space a bit, and it's really hard to form an opinion on this.

jaegerpicker 6y ago
I've been in that situation 3 times, I choose React Native and Flutter each once. I was forced to use Ionic. I would NEVER use Ionic again, terrible experience and very difficult to get decent quality/performance. I like Flutter's technology much more. I like that it is natively compiled. I dislike that it has it's own UI toolkit. React Native with TypeScript is a highly productive environment but I LOATHED the developer experience and any code that had performance goals was way harder to be successful with, not impossible but the threading model that RN imposes (it doesn't really thread at all) was hard to make the UI snappy and crisp as it should be. I've played with Xamarin also since I was a .net dev for 10+ years (I'm old in the industry 25 years now) and the developer experience was actually pretty good but the compile times and the UI performance were not. Though that was not a production level app and I might have been able to make it work. tldr; If I HAD to do cross platform I'd use the following logic to choice one: If I have a team of react JS/TS devs: React Native else if I have a .net team: Xaramin else: Flutter Then I'd apply for a job writing native apps in Swift/Kotlin and run away ;)
- rubicon33 6y ago
  > a job writing native apps Sadly, a shrinking market day by day.
- yesimahuman 6y ago
  Sorry to hear you had a bad experience with Ionic. The stack has improved considerably in recent years and actually Capacitor, our replacement for Cordova, was just rated the highest satisfaction mobile tool on the latest State of JS survey. Cordova was definitely a sore spot for Us but we’ve since moved beyond that and you can use any web stack to build apps with Capacitor (seeing a lot of React + Next.js apps of late)
- claytongulick 6y ago
  Out of curiosity, what version of Ionic were you using? Ionic 4+ is a complete rewrite from the ground up to use web components. I use it in a non-traditional way, I do vanilla js + lit-html + web components and it works great. Performance is smooth, mobile first approach makes responsive apps straightforward. I don't do any of the native things or command line app creation or any of that. I've been generally pleased with it.

jpsoft 6y ago

I am, and I agree, native toolchains can be better but that is expected, they have a lot more resources dedicated to their development. I also am responsible for an app built using flutter, it's been on production for almost two years with a very good rating in the app stores and over a hundred thousand users, isn't that what matters? that the technology enables you to solve problems? Flutter did that for us, keep happily working on Xcode if that works for you, for our startup this announcement is great news.

tofuahdude 6y ago

What are your thoughts on the business end of deciding to build two separate versions of the app in two languages (not to mention the web) vs the efficiencies of one code base? We're close to needing to make this decision and I'm real hesitant to introduce two additional languages (we're already React for the web but haven't build apps yet) vs a React Native app where our team can be immediately productive.

vorpalhex 6y ago
I was with a team that went the React Native route. At first it was fine until we had to go slightly off the rails.. and I was rebuilding .so files based off random gists and updating linkage assemblies. React Native works until it doesn't and then you are getting into very detailed platform specific territory. A lot of the cross platform promises were untrue - we quickly learned the importance of QAing both builds and frequently had platform specific patches. Just bite the bullet and go native upfront.
- The_rationalist 6y ago
  Or give Ionic react a try
  - vially 6y ago
    I would not recommend Ionic. I've been using it in a medium sized app for about 3 years now and I get the feeling it's good for getting started, but once your app grows past a certain size it's starting to create more issues than it solves. Some examples from the top of my head: - various performance issues (e.g.: memory leaks which haven't been fixed for years [1]) - their push/pop router navigation seems like a really bad idea - worse developer experience than using Angular directly (e.g.: last time I checked this, the save/compile/reload cycle of an Ionic project was an order of magnitude slower than the same project without Ionic) [1] - https://github.com/ionic-team/ionic-framework/issues/19242 https://github.com/ionic-team/ionic-framework/issues/19242
    - 6y ago

The_rationalist 6y ago

What do you think of jetpack compose? It has reached beta and there is experimental desktop support

MrDresden 6y ago
As a native Android developer (who is also doing Flutter atm) I look at compose as a seismic shift in the Android space. Flutter wont be able to compete

gurkendoktor 6y ago

I am a native app developer. I have only built one small app with Flutter. Here's where I disagree: - I've used Xcode since version 2 and like it, but in my opinion it's a worse developer experience than Flutter. Refactoring and code navigation were much better in both Android Studio and VS Code. - Flutter's hot reloading is fantastic. Meanwhile, SwiftUI previews seem to be built on the same technology as IBDesignable, that is, they're just barely stable enough for a short WWDC demo. - I am very sensitive to non-native controls on macOS, but UIKit doesn't even have a standard button class, the first thing that everyone has to reinvent (Apple included). I wouldn't pick Flutter for business apps with loads of text editing, but it feels perfect for social game-ish apps, like QuizUp or Duolingo. - In my experience (German freelancing market), the typical native app developer does not care about the user experience anymore. Ever since RxJava and Swift have hit the scene, the focus has moved from impressing the user, to one-upping your coworkers with exotic language features and avant-garde architecture patterns. Dart is a dumb language like Go, and I think that's exactly what's needed to bring UX back into the spotlight.

nsainsbury 6y ago
I'm a native app developer too (iOS and Android) and I've got some experience with Flutter. I agree with most of your comment, but the only thing I'd add is that from what I've seen if your concern is the quality of apps then Flutter definitely is not where you'll go to find that. If anything, Flutter developers seem to care even less about the end-user experience and instead simply focus on their own productivity. The end results are often horrible with a ton of jank, UI weirdness, etc.
mwcampbell 6y ago
> but UIKit doesn't even have a standard button class Doesn't anyone else use UIButton? Granted, the native iOS app I developed was intended primarily for blind people, so I didn't really make it visually polished.
- gurkendoktor 6y ago
  Yes, the visual polish is what I mean. It's not rocket science to style UIButton, but the lack of a good default style means that mediocre native apps often have weird/inconsistent highlighted button states, and so on.

Aduket 6y ago

why do you move to ML/AI/Data Engineering from Mobile?