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I've been curious about Kotlin Multiplatform for cross platform desktop apps (as an alternative to Electron). If anyone here has used it for that, care to shar

I've been curious about Kotlin Multiplatform for cross platform desktop apps (as an alternative to Electron). If anyone here has used it for that, care to share your experience?

scosman 3y ago
Tools, language and performance are great. Ecosystem is no good. Almost all Kotlin libraries assume Android and don’t work on multi platform. Common things just don’t exist.
Grimburger 3y ago
- Flutter is reliable and simple to build with - React Native is easy to find workers for but slow - Kotlin is somewhat in the middle of both but has better performance - Tauri is coming out of left field with webview2 apps but it's very early days for their mobile plans and completely unproven Kotlin does a good job with all the compromises you have to make with cross platform but it's quite application dependent?
- cageface 3y ago
  I started building a Flutter app recently and so far I’ve been quite impressed. The ecosystem is surprisingly mature and dev velocity has been good even though I’m learning a new language and framework at the same time. On a purely technological level I’d take this over React Native any day and I have a lot of React experience. I think Google has a winner on their hands here if they don’t give up on it.
  - novok 3y ago
    Big worry for me has been a history of ignoring ios bugs for years, causing things like long startup times
    - cageface 3y ago
      It’s a legitimate concern but so far my experience on iOS has been quite good. They’ve put a lot of effort into polishing iOS performance recently.
    - malkia 3y ago
      You are probably thinking of the shader compilation step that has to happen - https://docs.flutter.dev/perf/shader https://docs.flutter.dev/perf/shader - and the long term solution (from the page) is https://github.com/flutter/flutter/wiki/Impeller https://github.com/flutter/flutter/wiki/Impeller
  - Grimburger 3y ago
    Dart is honestly so easy to pick up, seen it cop some flack on here but its simplicity is a virtue, have onboarded people with zero experience and they are perfectly productive within a week. There's not many languages like that.

I've been curious about Kotlin Multiplatform for cross platform desktop apps (as an alternative to Electron). If anyone here has used it for that, care to share your experience?

scosman 3y ago

Tools, language and performance are great. Ecosystem is no good. Almost all Kotlin libraries assume Android and don’t work on multi platform. Common things just don’t exist.

Grimburger 3y ago

- Flutter is reliable and simple to build with - React Native is easy to find workers for but slow - Kotlin is somewhat in the middle of both but has better performance - Tauri is coming out of left field with webview2 apps but it's very early days for their mobile plans and completely unproven Kotlin does a good job with all the compromises you have to make with cross platform but it's quite application dependent?

cageface 3y ago
I started building a Flutter app recently and so far I’ve been quite impressed. The ecosystem is surprisingly mature and dev velocity has been good even though I’m learning a new language and framework at the same time. On a purely technological level I’d take this over React Native any day and I have a lot of React experience. I think Google has a winner on their hands here if they don’t give up on it.
- novok 3y ago
  Big worry for me has been a history of ignoring ios bugs for years, causing things like long startup times
  - cageface 3y ago
    It’s a legitimate concern but so far my experience on iOS has been quite good. They’ve put a lot of effort into polishing iOS performance recently.
  - malkia 3y ago
    You are probably thinking of the shader compilation step that has to happen - https://docs.flutter.dev/perf/shader https://docs.flutter.dev/perf/shader - and the long term solution (from the page) is https://github.com/flutter/flutter/wiki/Impeller https://github.com/flutter/flutter/wiki/Impeller
- Grimburger 3y ago
  Dart is honestly so easy to pick up, seen it cop some flack on here but its simplicity is a virtue, have onboarded people with zero experience and they are perfectly productive within a week. There's not many languages like that.