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I am bringing some negative energy but I've been burned. I don't understand the hype about flutter - putting aside that dart is a tool that made more sense in

I am bringing some negative energy but I've been burned. I don't understand the hype about flutter - putting aside that dart is a tool that made more sense in a different timeline, or that some of the examples seem really slow/buggy, or that it's rendering behavior is a nightmare to guarantee consistency - putting all that aside, I've yet to see anyone build anything non-trivial with flutter. And then there's Ubuntu. Canonical is just all over the place. There was Unity, there was their weird mobile phone, there was their mobile OS, the weird ads in desktop searches. I am doubtful anytime I see anything Ubuntu related.

jeswin 6y ago
> Canonical is just all over the place. We should encourage experimentation and risk taking. No company can always get things right. Phones are a duopoly, but I'm glad they tried. Unity was fairly decent, but in the end adopting Gnome benefitted everyone. Ads were the only bad idea I can think of; but hey I've been using their wonderful software for 15 years now at a total cost of zero.
- ampdepolymerase 6y ago
  There was literally nothing wrong with Canonical technology. They just kept cancelling projects to satisfy a vocal minority of Ubuntu users.
  - popey 6y ago
    No, we didn't. Unity was cancelled when we downsized in 2017 (4 years ago). It wasn't due to any vocal minority at all. We just refocused our energy.
- axaxs 6y ago
  In theory I agree, but Canonical really seem to do it over and over. Whether it's NIH or something else, it seems every time technology starts shifting, Ubuntu goes its own way only to drop it a year or two later. Unity/compiz, Mir , Ubuntu One, Upstart, Bazaar. And currently baking are Snaps and LXD. This isn't to say any of these are bad products, but it has real effects to the end user, who invest time in something that just seems to get vaporized.
  - scaladev 6y ago
    Don't forget that snaps came almost a year before flatpak. This is being parroted all over HN and still many don't know it and blame Canonical for reinventing the wheel, which is why I'm posting this. (I agree with your general idea and the rest of your comment.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap_(package_manager) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap_(package_manager) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatpak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatpak
    - the_why_of_y 6y ago
      Don't forget that FlatPak has been designed out in the open and plans were presented as far back as GUADEC 2013. https://www.superlectures.com/guadec2013/sandboxed-applications-for-gnome https://www.superlectures.com/guadec2013/sandboxed-applicati...
  - jamesponddotco 6y ago
    What is wrong with LXD? It provides a nice REST API and better user experience for those of us who like LXC.
  - snicker7 6y ago
    Bazaar and snaps came before git and flatpak. Unity came about with the Gnome 2 to 3 transition (and earlier versions of Gnome 3 were widely agreed to be a step backwards). Upstart has a very different design philosophy than systemd. Hard to say its NIH when it was different tech. NIH apparently means "not adopting whatever RedHat develops/supports".
    - axaxs 6y ago
      Bzr and Git started at about the same time, but Git moved much faster and its 1.0 was way before bzr(not that that matters much, honestly). Flatpak was known about and talked about before snaps, as another pointed out. Upstart - that's fair, upstart was something new that didn't get replaced by systemd for a couple cycles. Like it or not, Red Hat controls gnome which is a huge ecosystem. Your best bet for effecting change there is collaboration, not hacking together your own UI for yourself. I mean, sure they are free to do that, but the writing was on the wall before it even started.
panta 6y ago
Yes, in my view Canonical betting on flutter is almost a testament to flutter doom. Choosing flutter is not the right choice anyway: it’s a lot more limited compared to Qt, it requires a language which is not used anywhere else, it’s slow and heavy, its tooling is incredibly complex, on some platforms won’t probably be ported anytime soon (if ever).
- je42 6y ago
  what exactly of flutters tooling is complex ? getting through the tutorial is a 15min thing. I don't see much complexity exposed to the developer.
hillelcoren 6y ago
Flutter deserves the hype it's getting. I've been developing apps for 20 years, it's the real deal. We're using it at our company to rebuild our app and now have a single front-end codebase which compiles to web, iOS, Android, Windows, Linux and macOS. You can try the demo here: https://demo.invoiceninja.com https://demo.invoiceninja.com
- nmfisher 6y ago
  FYI this is what it looks like on my iPhone https://imgur.com/gallery/A5ltUKC https://imgur.com/gallery/A5ltUKC
  - hillelcoren 6y ago
    Thanks for trying it out! It looks like you tried refreshing the data in the app to resolve the problem, does refreshing page in the browser help? Not sure why I'm not seeing the same problem on my iPhone. If you use the app and would like me to help debug it feel free to email us at contact@invoiceninja.com.
- jiofih 6y ago
  Scrolling is not the smoothest, and that’s on the latest iPhone, but overall pretty good. I can see it working if it becomes as responsive as web / native.
  - hillelcoren 6y ago
    Thanks for trying it out! I'll be the first to admin that the performance is currently not quite as good as a plain HTML/JS/CSS webapp, however as a small team being able to compile one codebase to every platform is game changing. The performance issues of Flutter Web are more apparent on mobile however users can install our native mobile app which performs much betters.

jeswin 6y ago

> Canonical is just all over the place. We should encourage experimentation and risk taking. No company can always get things right. Phones are a duopoly, but I'm glad they tried. Unity was fairly decent, but in the end adopting Gnome benefitted everyone. Ads were the only bad idea I can think of; but hey I've been using their wonderful software for 15 years now at a total cost of zero.

ampdepolymerase 6y ago
There was literally nothing wrong with Canonical technology. They just kept cancelling projects to satisfy a vocal minority of Ubuntu users.
- popey 6y ago
  No, we didn't. Unity was cancelled when we downsized in 2017 (4 years ago). It wasn't due to any vocal minority at all. We just refocused our energy.
axaxs 6y ago
In theory I agree, but Canonical really seem to do it over and over. Whether it's NIH or something else, it seems every time technology starts shifting, Ubuntu goes its own way only to drop it a year or two later. Unity/compiz, Mir , Ubuntu One, Upstart, Bazaar. And currently baking are Snaps and LXD. This isn't to say any of these are bad products, but it has real effects to the end user, who invest time in something that just seems to get vaporized.
- scaladev 6y ago
  Don't forget that snaps came almost a year before flatpak. This is being parroted all over HN and still many don't know it and blame Canonical for reinventing the wheel, which is why I'm posting this. (I agree with your general idea and the rest of your comment.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap_(package_manager) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap_(package_manager) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatpak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatpak
  - the_why_of_y 6y ago
    Don't forget that FlatPak has been designed out in the open and plans were presented as far back as GUADEC 2013. https://www.superlectures.com/guadec2013/sandboxed-applications-for-gnome https://www.superlectures.com/guadec2013/sandboxed-applicati...
- jamesponddotco 6y ago
  What is wrong with LXD? It provides a nice REST API and better user experience for those of us who like LXC.
- snicker7 6y ago
  Bazaar and snaps came before git and flatpak. Unity came about with the Gnome 2 to 3 transition (and earlier versions of Gnome 3 were widely agreed to be a step backwards). Upstart has a very different design philosophy than systemd. Hard to say its NIH when it was different tech. NIH apparently means "not adopting whatever RedHat develops/supports".
  - axaxs 6y ago
    Bzr and Git started at about the same time, but Git moved much faster and its 1.0 was way before bzr(not that that matters much, honestly). Flatpak was known about and talked about before snaps, as another pointed out. Upstart - that's fair, upstart was something new that didn't get replaced by systemd for a couple cycles. Like it or not, Red Hat controls gnome which is a huge ecosystem. Your best bet for effecting change there is collaboration, not hacking together your own UI for yourself. I mean, sure they are free to do that, but the writing was on the wall before it even started.

panta 6y ago

Yes, in my view Canonical betting on flutter is almost a testament to flutter doom. Choosing flutter is not the right choice anyway: it’s a lot more limited compared to Qt, it requires a language which is not used anywhere else, it’s slow and heavy, its tooling is incredibly complex, on some platforms won’t probably be ported anytime soon (if ever).

je42 6y ago
what exactly of flutters tooling is complex ? getting through the tutorial is a 15min thing. I don't see much complexity exposed to the developer.

hillelcoren 6y ago

Flutter deserves the hype it's getting. I've been developing apps for 20 years, it's the real deal. We're using it at our company to rebuild our app and now have a single front-end codebase which compiles to web, iOS, Android, Windows, Linux and macOS. You can try the demo here: https://demo.invoiceninja.com https://demo.invoiceninja.com

nmfisher 6y ago
FYI this is what it looks like on my iPhone https://imgur.com/gallery/A5ltUKC https://imgur.com/gallery/A5ltUKC
- hillelcoren 6y ago
  Thanks for trying it out! It looks like you tried refreshing the data in the app to resolve the problem, does refreshing page in the browser help? Not sure why I'm not seeing the same problem on my iPhone. If you use the app and would like me to help debug it feel free to email us at contact@invoiceninja.com.
jiofih 6y ago
Scrolling is not the smoothest, and that’s on the latest iPhone, but overall pretty good. I can see it working if it becomes as responsive as web / native.
- hillelcoren 6y ago
  Thanks for trying it out! I'll be the first to admin that the performance is currently not quite as good as a plain HTML/JS/CSS webapp, however as a small team being able to compile one codebase to every platform is game changing. The performance issues of Flutter Web are more apparent on mobile however users can install our native mobile app which performs much betters.