3 ms·

I think the core problem any cross platform solution is going to face is that maintaining a compatibility layer between 2+ proprietary OS’s* is a recipe for a b

I think the core problem any cross platform solution is going to face is that maintaining a compatibility layer between 2+ proprietary OS’s* is a recipe for a bad time. It is why these projects need to be supported by a massive tech company. My only point being even if Flutter is at an advantage today over react native on this point, long term they will face the same problems as react native with stagnating cross platform support. edit: silly mistake Android is open source, not sure how much it helps when compatibility layer is not a priority for the OS developers

zigzag312 4y ago
> I think the core problem any cross platform solution is going to face is that maintaining a compatibility layer between 2+ proprietary OS’s* is a recipe for a bad time. Flutter has big advantage in this area as it doesn't wrap OS's controls, but has build it's own controls on top of lower level OS's APIs. Avalonia (which also renders it's own controls) has posted an article, describing how it's easier supporting new platforms this way: https://dev.to/avalonia/avalonia-platform-support-why-its-simple-cjd https://dev.to/avalonia/avalonia-platform-support-why-its-si... Avalonia GUI apps can run on Linux without a desktop environment installed because of this.
- mrbombastic 4y ago
  Aha that is interesting I wasn’t aware of this difference. Pushing the layer down to lower level controls does seem like it would help with this but perhaps at the cost of ui consistency on the platforms? Either way thanks for the link, I’ll check it out.
  - zigzag312 4y ago
    Yeah, since all controls are created from scratch there is no inherited consistency with the controls of the underlying platform. However, framework developers often develop controls that emulate platform controls. Not all are 100% match. Depends on the quality of the implementation. The quality of Flutter controls is not yet on par with iOS's controls, but if they continue to improve at the same rate as they currently do, in 1-3 years they could match or even surpass them.

zigzag312 4y ago

> I think the core problem any cross platform solution is going to face is that maintaining a compatibility layer between 2+ proprietary OS’s* is a recipe for a bad time. Flutter has big advantage in this area as it doesn't wrap OS's controls, but has build it's own controls on top of lower level OS's APIs. Avalonia (which also renders it's own controls) has posted an article, describing how it's easier supporting new platforms this way: https://dev.to/avalonia/avalonia-platform-support-why-its-simple-cjd https://dev.to/avalonia/avalonia-platform-support-why-its-si... Avalonia GUI apps can run on Linux without a desktop environment installed because of this.

mrbombastic 4y ago
Aha that is interesting I wasn’t aware of this difference. Pushing the layer down to lower level controls does seem like it would help with this but perhaps at the cost of ui consistency on the platforms? Either way thanks for the link, I’ll check it out.
- zigzag312 4y ago
  Yeah, since all controls are created from scratch there is no inherited consistency with the controls of the underlying platform. However, framework developers often develop controls that emulate platform controls. Not all are 100% match. Depends on the quality of the implementation. The quality of Flutter controls is not yet on par with iOS's controls, but if they continue to improve at the same rate as they currently do, in 1-3 years they could match or even surpass them.