4 ms·

Shouldn’t clicking the link answer the question? —edit— And since there’s flutter devs here, how is dart as a general purpose programming language? I’ve look

Shouldn’t clicking the link answer the question? —edit— And since there’s flutter devs here, how is dart as a general purpose programming language? I’ve looked into it a couple times but never really too hard because it didn’t seem like the Linux support was all that good, probably changed now though.

teg4n_ 4y ago
I would hope Linux support is decent since Ubuntu is supposed to be adopting Flutter as their default choice for UI https://ubuntu.com/blog/bring-multi-platform-apps-to-linux-desktop-with-flutter-3 https://ubuntu.com/blog/bring-multi-platform-apps-to-linux-d...
- imiric 4y ago
  Where do you see that Ubuntu is adopting Flutter as default? That link is an announcement for the latest version of Flutter, which supports building Linux apps, and that Canonical helped make happen, but I don't see a mention of it becoming the default toolkit.
  - teg4n_ 4y ago
    Here, this link explicitly says it https://ubuntu.com/blog/flutter-and-ubuntu-so-far https://ubuntu.com/blog/flutter-and-ubuntu-so-far >making Flutter the default choice for future Canonical mobile and desktop apps. The other link was more up-to-date about the state of Flutter on Ubuntu though.
    - imiric 4y ago
      Ugh, thanks. Canonical can't seem to escape bad strategic and technical decisions. They're still pushing Snaps, and now settling on a default tech stack that might disappear whenever Google gets bored of it.
      - mhoad 4y ago
        Google is also making Flutter the de facto UI solution in their upcoming Fuchsia general purpose OS. It also is powering their single biggest money maker (Ads). It’s an absolutely core part of their future strategy with almost zero chance of disappearing like you described. I imagine Canonical also got the same assurances in writing before making that decision.
        imiric 4y ago
        You might be right, but Google choosing to use it in Fuchsia doesn't inspire much confidence, given Fuchsia's rocky and lengthy development. I wouldn't be surprised if Fuchsia itself is abandoned, given Google's track record. I wouldn't quite be sure it has an "almost zero chance of disappearing", but hopefully Canonical has done their due diligence before making such a decision, as you say. Though, even if it does become a long-term Google project, I'd be concerned that any Flutter app on Ubuntu would have aggressive tracking. Considering their announcement of integration with FlutterFire Auth, it's only a matter of time before something like Google Play Services makes its way into desktop apps as well. Canonical's record of protecting user privacy is already far from stellar.
owenpalmer 4y ago
> Shouldn’t clicking the link answer the question? you're right, I probably should have prepended "Ask HN:"
randyrand 4y ago
As someone who's used C, C++, Obj-C professionally, with some JS and Python. Dart does most things right. It's heavily C# inspired. I enjoy using it.
- toastal 4y ago
  But Dart can't do basic functional things like ADTs or pattern matching and has no pipe or composition operators. That puts it in the no-go category for me—and by proxy I never looked at Flutter.
  - bmitc 4y ago
    These are the number one things keeping me from jumping into Flutter. Flutter is very attractive, but I always pause at Dart coming from F#.
    - mhoad 4y ago
      Good news. It’s about to land. One nice thing about Dart is that they are extremely transparent in how they design the language. You can check out the entire repo here for an example of what I mean but if we are talking about these specific features this is a good place to start Here is the intro: https://github.com/dart-lang/language/blob/master/accepted/future-releases/0546-patterns/goals-and-constraints.md https://github.com/dart-lang/language/blob/master/accepted/f... Here is the spec of what they are currently implementing: https://github.com/dart-lang/language/blob/master/accepted/future-releases/0546-patterns/feature-specification.md https://github.com/dart-lang/language/blob/master/accepted/f... I think they both serve as a really good example of the kind of thoughtful approaches the language team are known for which coming from some different language communities previously I wasn’t accustomed to.
      - toastal 4y ago
        Good to hear. This could make Dart a compile target candidate for a number of languages whose ergonomics better match these concepts, while having good native support from the language.
rjh29 4y ago
Linux support is fine, I test my phone apps using the Linux build. Dart has changed a lot since it was released, it has null safety now for example, you can put if and for inside a list constructor which helps when building widget trees. I like it a lot more than JavaScript. Its biggest weakness IMO is a lack of data classes, considering you spend a lot of dev time building classes that just have properties and a toString(), toJson() and equality test. The code generator functionality is quite verbose as you need to run it manually. Both of these things are being worked on though, along with pattern matching.
ihateolives 4y ago
I've built lightweight things for my own use. I like Dart as a language and performance is adequate, I'm not building Fortune 500 level services. For me Dart covers all the basics while having a syntax that took literally no time to learn. I have no problems with Linux support, at least for things that I do (file io, sqlite, http requests) but one thing that is giving me the pause is inability to cross-compile. It'd be super-duper if I could compile on my Mac and just drop the binary to my Linux server but I can't.

teg4n_ 4y ago

I would hope Linux support is decent since Ubuntu is supposed to be adopting Flutter as their default choice for UI https://ubuntu.com/blog/bring-multi-platform-apps-to-linux-desktop-with-flutter-3 https://ubuntu.com/blog/bring-multi-platform-apps-to-linux-d...

imiric 4y ago
Where do you see that Ubuntu is adopting Flutter as default? That link is an announcement for the latest version of Flutter, which supports building Linux apps, and that Canonical helped make happen, but I don't see a mention of it becoming the default toolkit.
- teg4n_ 4y ago
  Here, this link explicitly says it https://ubuntu.com/blog/flutter-and-ubuntu-so-far https://ubuntu.com/blog/flutter-and-ubuntu-so-far >making Flutter the default choice for future Canonical mobile and desktop apps. The other link was more up-to-date about the state of Flutter on Ubuntu though.
  - imiric 4y ago
    Ugh, thanks. Canonical can't seem to escape bad strategic and technical decisions. They're still pushing Snaps, and now settling on a default tech stack that might disappear whenever Google gets bored of it.
    - mhoad 4y ago
      Google is also making Flutter the de facto UI solution in their upcoming Fuchsia general purpose OS. It also is powering their single biggest money maker (Ads). It’s an absolutely core part of their future strategy with almost zero chance of disappearing like you described. I imagine Canonical also got the same assurances in writing before making that decision.
      - imiric 4y ago
        You might be right, but Google choosing to use it in Fuchsia doesn't inspire much confidence, given Fuchsia's rocky and lengthy development. I wouldn't be surprised if Fuchsia itself is abandoned, given Google's track record. I wouldn't quite be sure it has an "almost zero chance of disappearing", but hopefully Canonical has done their due diligence before making such a decision, as you say. Though, even if it does become a long-term Google project, I'd be concerned that any Flutter app on Ubuntu would have aggressive tracking. Considering their announcement of integration with FlutterFire Auth, it's only a matter of time before something like Google Play Services makes its way into desktop apps as well. Canonical's record of protecting user privacy is already far from stellar.

owenpalmer 4y ago

> Shouldn’t clicking the link answer the question? you're right, I probably should have prepended "Ask HN:"

randyrand 4y ago

As someone who's used C, C++, Obj-C professionally, with some JS and Python. Dart does most things right. It's heavily C# inspired. I enjoy using it.

toastal 4y ago
But Dart can't do basic functional things like ADTs or pattern matching and has no pipe or composition operators. That puts it in the no-go category for me—and by proxy I never looked at Flutter.
- bmitc 4y ago
  These are the number one things keeping me from jumping into Flutter. Flutter is very attractive, but I always pause at Dart coming from F#.
  - mhoad 4y ago
    Good news. It’s about to land. One nice thing about Dart is that they are extremely transparent in how they design the language. You can check out the entire repo here for an example of what I mean but if we are talking about these specific features this is a good place to start Here is the intro: https://github.com/dart-lang/language/blob/master/accepted/future-releases/0546-patterns/goals-and-constraints.md https://github.com/dart-lang/language/blob/master/accepted/f... Here is the spec of what they are currently implementing: https://github.com/dart-lang/language/blob/master/accepted/future-releases/0546-patterns/feature-specification.md https://github.com/dart-lang/language/blob/master/accepted/f... I think they both serve as a really good example of the kind of thoughtful approaches the language team are known for which coming from some different language communities previously I wasn’t accustomed to.
    - toastal 4y ago
      Good to hear. This could make Dart a compile target candidate for a number of languages whose ergonomics better match these concepts, while having good native support from the language.

rjh29 4y ago

Linux support is fine, I test my phone apps using the Linux build. Dart has changed a lot since it was released, it has null safety now for example, you can put if and for inside a list constructor which helps when building widget trees. I like it a lot more than JavaScript. Its biggest weakness IMO is a lack of data classes, considering you spend a lot of dev time building classes that just have properties and a toString(), toJson() and equality test. The code generator functionality is quite verbose as you need to run it manually. Both of these things are being worked on though, along with pattern matching.

ihateolives 4y ago

I've built lightweight things for my own use. I like Dart as a language and performance is adequate, I'm not building Fortune 500 level services. For me Dart covers all the basics while having a syntax that took literally no time to learn. I have no problems with Linux support, at least for things that I do (file io, sqlite, http requests) but one thing that is giving me the pause is inability to cross-compile. It'd be super-duper if I could compile on my Mac and just drop the binary to my Linux server but I can't.