7 ms·

Flutter is really not some big revelation and it's always shocking to me how it's evangelists act like it's the game changer no one else has noticed. It's just

Flutter is really not some big revelation and it's always shocking to me how it's evangelists act like it's the game changer no one else has noticed. It's just not that good? Just build native UIs. I don't know why cross platform UI has been such a hobbyhorse for so many for so long: it's a stupid idea.

divan 2y ago
> Just build native UIs Do you see any reasons why many companies/teams/devs don't want to "just build native UIs" and instead are looking for cross-platform solutions designed from ground apps for modern UI development needs?
- 1propionyl 2y ago
  Yeah I do see why they don't want to do it and I see it as a critical failure of risk management. If you think pinning your entire product on a cross platform UI kit when every single one (except maybe QT) had proven a failure... then yeah I think maybe you should consider actually just eating the cost of building native UIs. The risk analysis of building against supposed cross platform "solutions" just doesn't work out. Why do we keep trying to do it? The idea of cross platform UI is frankly "f*cked from the jump" and should never have been a goal. I think it's only a goal because it's intellectually satisfying, not because it's really desirable.
  - mdhb 2y ago
    Back in the real world however you have canonical for years now who have made flutter the default for all native linux desktop development. I think your anecdotes are a bit out of date and irrelevant. People much better informed than you looked at this problem in a lot more detail in real life situations and came to very different conclusions.
    - 1propionyl 2y ago
      > you have canonical for years now who have made flutter the default for all native linux desktop development And yet, I can't think of a single app I depend on for anything on Linux that relies on it. How'd Snap go for Canonical?
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - mdhb 2y ago
        Cool, none of that is remotely relevant to what we are talking about here. Your anecdotes are dated and you should think about updating them so you don’t talk so confidently on things you don’t actually seem to know much about. I mean that sincerely not as some internet gotcha there’s just no need to sit there defending a position that is based on old info just for the sake of it.
  - divan 2y ago
    > and I see it as a critical failure of risk management. I also want to live in the world where risk management is the only variable that determines how CTOs and devs choose the stack for the software.
LordDragonfang 2y ago
As someone desperately fighting to keep their company's main product to stay using a native desktop UI, Microsoft makes it real hard. WinUI3 hasn't even officially launched and it already feels like it's on life support. QT is good, but even qt seems to be starting to use a web renderer.
- contextfree 2y ago
  "WinUI3 hasn't even officially launched" ? It officially launched with version 1.0 and it's now on 1.6?
  - c-hendricks 2y ago
    I can't really speak to the differences but > At this time, there are two generations of WinUI: WinUI 2 for UWP and WinUI in the Windows App SDK (WinUI 3). > https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/winui/ https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/winui/
    - int_19h 2y ago
      Hence why OP was specifically talking about WinUI 3 (which is indeed at version 1.6.1 as of right now).
      - c-hendricks 2y ago
        Windows App SDK seems to be at 1.6.1, which includes WinUI 3.
  - poulpy123 2y ago
    It's really something I know nothing about so I googled WinUI3 and the 3 first results are microsoft website and github, and the next two are "is winui3 dead ?" and "Oh winui3 is really" dead. So it doesn't inspire confidence :)
  - LordDragonfang 2y ago
    I suppose it was incorrect of me to say it hasn't "officially" launched then. But one would certainly seem to get that impression, considering it's missing major features (data table support?) isn't anywhere near feature parity with either WPF or winforms, and doesn't even have a visual editor (which should be table stakes for a modern 1.0 release from a company as large as Microsoft).
epcoa 2y ago
What's a native UI? The only thing closeish to a native UI is macOS and iOS AppKit and UIKit. Winforms aka Win32 is still a thing, but Microsoft has been undogfooding that and putting out alternatives for years, now WinUI3 will definitely kill off Winforms for good! What is native on Linux? Gtk, Qt, Motif (lol)? And then Android? Ironic then that Google is the one behind Flutter. The concept of native outside of MacOS/iOS is pretty busted at this point. At best it just means something non-web.
- dotancohen 2y ago
  I would consider both GTK and Qt native on Linux.
  - epcoa 2y ago
    So that means one has to target both GTK and Qt to be native on Linux. Fat chance of that on anything but yet another music player or other relatively trivial UI app. In any event, that still doesn't answer what it means to be "native"? And my point is I think most definitions are dumb or useless. If I'm running a GTK desktop, Qt apps are generally not "native" no matter how much theme fuckery one tries. Native can also speak to other common UI affordances and design guidelines, and there sure as hell is nothing like there is in the MacOS world for linux. Some core GNOME and KDE desktop apps maybe, but overall there isn't much adopted standardization in Linux world. 90% of the work I get done involving a GUI outside a browser on Linux usually involves Java, whether it be Intellij, ghidra, etc. Maybe I'll pick up blender from time to time. Audacity, there's a good one, targeting (for now) a cross-platform toolkit that pretends you can have your cake and eat it too - wxWidgets never fooled anyone - they sure as hell don't look native on MacOS, and they invariably look much closer to what they riffed off of, a 90s MFC app. (And wxWidgets wraps GTK and AppKit, so is it native? If so, native is meaningless IMHO. If not, why not?)
    - einpoklum 2y ago
      > So that means one has to target both GTK and Qt to be native on Linux. Doesn't it mean that you can target _either_ and be considered native? Also, I'm not sure I buy the claim that of "GTK and Qt are native" in the first place. I'd say either that there is no native UI, or if I must call something native, it's the toolkit the desktop environment uses. And yes, that does mean that there is no "Linux nativeness" like there is Windows nativeness, as every DE is different. And rightly so, because one could in principle write a different DE over the Windows kernel, whose UI would behave differently.
wiseowise 2y ago
> I don't know why cross platform UI has been such a hobbyhorse for so many for so long: it's a stupid idea. You suggest to build and maintain same logic in at least C#/C++ + Swift + Kotlin + JS + C++ and you ask why crossplatform UI is a popular idea?

divan 2y ago

> Just build native UIs Do you see any reasons why many companies/teams/devs don't want to "just build native UIs" and instead are looking for cross-platform solutions designed from ground apps for modern UI development needs?

1propionyl 2y ago
Yeah I do see why they don't want to do it and I see it as a critical failure of risk management. If you think pinning your entire product on a cross platform UI kit when every single one (except maybe QT) had proven a failure... then yeah I think maybe you should consider actually just eating the cost of building native UIs. The risk analysis of building against supposed cross platform "solutions" just doesn't work out. Why do we keep trying to do it? The idea of cross platform UI is frankly "f*cked from the jump" and should never have been a goal. I think it's only a goal because it's intellectually satisfying, not because it's really desirable.
- mdhb 2y ago
  Back in the real world however you have canonical for years now who have made flutter the default for all native linux desktop development. I think your anecdotes are a bit out of date and irrelevant. People much better informed than you looked at this problem in a lot more detail in real life situations and came to very different conclusions.
  - 1propionyl 2y ago
    > you have canonical for years now who have made flutter the default for all native linux desktop development And yet, I can't think of a single app I depend on for anything on Linux that relies on it. How'd Snap go for Canonical?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - mdhb 2y ago
      Cool, none of that is remotely relevant to what we are talking about here. Your anecdotes are dated and you should think about updating them so you don’t talk so confidently on things you don’t actually seem to know much about. I mean that sincerely not as some internet gotcha there’s just no need to sit there defending a position that is based on old info just for the sake of it.
- divan 2y ago
  > and I see it as a critical failure of risk management. I also want to live in the world where risk management is the only variable that determines how CTOs and devs choose the stack for the software.

LordDragonfang 2y ago

As someone desperately fighting to keep their company's main product to stay using a native desktop UI, Microsoft makes it real hard. WinUI3 hasn't even officially launched and it already feels like it's on life support. QT is good, but even qt seems to be starting to use a web renderer.

contextfree 2y ago
"WinUI3 hasn't even officially launched" ? It officially launched with version 1.0 and it's now on 1.6?
- c-hendricks 2y ago
  I can't really speak to the differences but > At this time, there are two generations of WinUI: WinUI 2 for UWP and WinUI in the Windows App SDK (WinUI 3). > https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/winui/ https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/winui/
  - int_19h 2y ago
    Hence why OP was specifically talking about WinUI 3 (which is indeed at version 1.6.1 as of right now).
    - c-hendricks 2y ago
      Windows App SDK seems to be at 1.6.1, which includes WinUI 3.
- poulpy123 2y ago
  It's really something I know nothing about so I googled WinUI3 and the 3 first results are microsoft website and github, and the next two are "is winui3 dead ?" and "Oh winui3 is really" dead. So it doesn't inspire confidence :)
- LordDragonfang 2y ago
  I suppose it was incorrect of me to say it hasn't "officially" launched then. But one would certainly seem to get that impression, considering it's missing major features (data table support?) isn't anywhere near feature parity with either WPF or winforms, and doesn't even have a visual editor (which should be table stakes for a modern 1.0 release from a company as large as Microsoft).

epcoa 2y ago

What's a native UI? The only thing closeish to a native UI is macOS and iOS AppKit and UIKit. Winforms aka Win32 is still a thing, but Microsoft has been undogfooding that and putting out alternatives for years, now WinUI3 will definitely kill off Winforms for good! What is native on Linux? Gtk, Qt, Motif (lol)? And then Android? Ironic then that Google is the one behind Flutter. The concept of native outside of MacOS/iOS is pretty busted at this point. At best it just means something non-web.

dotancohen 2y ago
I would consider both GTK and Qt native on Linux.
- epcoa 2y ago
  So that means one has to target both GTK and Qt to be native on Linux. Fat chance of that on anything but yet another music player or other relatively trivial UI app. In any event, that still doesn't answer what it means to be "native"? And my point is I think most definitions are dumb or useless. If I'm running a GTK desktop, Qt apps are generally not "native" no matter how much theme fuckery one tries. Native can also speak to other common UI affordances and design guidelines, and there sure as hell is nothing like there is in the MacOS world for linux. Some core GNOME and KDE desktop apps maybe, but overall there isn't much adopted standardization in Linux world. 90% of the work I get done involving a GUI outside a browser on Linux usually involves Java, whether it be Intellij, ghidra, etc. Maybe I'll pick up blender from time to time. Audacity, there's a good one, targeting (for now) a cross-platform toolkit that pretends you can have your cake and eat it too - wxWidgets never fooled anyone - they sure as hell don't look native on MacOS, and they invariably look much closer to what they riffed off of, a 90s MFC app. (And wxWidgets wraps GTK and AppKit, so is it native? If so, native is meaningless IMHO. If not, why not?)
  - einpoklum 2y ago
    > So that means one has to target both GTK and Qt to be native on Linux. Doesn't it mean that you can target _either_ and be considered native? Also, I'm not sure I buy the claim that of "GTK and Qt are native" in the first place. I'd say either that there is no native UI, or if I must call something native, it's the toolkit the desktop environment uses. And yes, that does mean that there is no "Linux nativeness" like there is Windows nativeness, as every DE is different. And rightly so, because one could in principle write a different DE over the Windows kernel, whose UI would behave differently.

wiseowise 2y ago

> I don't know why cross platform UI has been such a hobbyhorse for so many for so long: it's a stupid idea. You suggest to build and maintain same logic in at least C#/C++ + Swift + Kotlin + JS + C++ and you ask why crossplatform UI is a popular idea?