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Nice work! I'm happy to see the server is in Dart, no Firebase! I wish the Dart server ecosystem was more mature though. Being able to compile Dart into a stat

Nice work! I'm happy to see the server is in Dart, no Firebase! I wish the Dart server ecosystem was more mature though. Being able to compile Dart into a static binary is so nice for deployment.

hoppp 2y ago
I wrote some dart servers years ago, there is a nice framework called aqueduct that makes it very easy and productive. I stopped using it because I needed to make money and my work was with nodejs.
satvikpendem 2y ago
Serverpod and Dart Frog are both pretty good backend Dart frameworks, what are you looking for?
- blopker 2y ago
  Dart is crazy because it runs on every platform, compiles to native, has real parallelism via isolates, native async, and native type safety. There's not really a backend that takes advantage of all that. In theory, one server binary could handle REST, web sockets, background workers, and have generated type safe client packages for every platform. Dart also has a great Rust ffi story. It would be great to see that leveraged. ServerPod is a great start, but it's really Flutter focused. The web apis feel like second class. Additionally, database management isn't a solved problem yet. ServerPod uses yaml to define models, and the other main option is just a Prisma wrapper. Dart needs something like Drizzle.
  - satvikpendem 2y ago
    You could state the same thing as your first sentence for e.g. Rust or many other languages, I personally only see Dart being useful if you already have a Flutter app and you don't want to learn another language, and to have shared types easily, similar to fullstack web devs using TypeScript for their React and Node apps. I personally use Rust backends and Flutter frontends for my apps. I'd use pure Rust for the entire thing but Rust frontends are nowhere near the capabilities and maturity as Flutter, but I use FFI like flutter_rust_bridge and rinf at least, as you mention.
    - blopker 2y ago
      I actually can't think of another language that has all of that built in. Rust doesn't, it needs a run time for async. JavaScript doesn't, it needs typescript and it doesn't compile to native.
      - Borealid 2y ago
        Kotlin Native has every one of those features.
        wiseowise 2y ago
        Hahahaha, by a long shot not. Kotlin Native is a toy for JetBrains to eat some of that Apple pie and capture teams that want to share logic between their mobile codebases. Kotlin Native has no std, they cut down platform support with K2, performance and compilation speed are atrocious and there are no plans to improve any of that short term. Kotlin without JVM can’t hold a candle to Dart. Which is a real shame for Dart, because Dart has improved dramatically last couple years while Kotlin has not introduced anything major last 5 years since release of coroutines. Their K2 compiler, that was supposed to promise major compilation speed improvements, was mostly a flop and we are yet to see if they’ll do anything good with it. Context receivers are not even close, pattern matching is not even on a roadmap and they’re refusing to consider union types. Kotlin lives on a borrowed time.
        Borealid 2y ago
        The listed features are: 1. runs on every platform (KNative runs natively on Linux, Mac, Windows, Android, iOS. It can also run under the JVM non-natively, and anywhere Javascript runs non-natively. The native code can build for a variety of architectures including ARM and x86) 2. compiles to native (As above, compiles to native on Linux/Mac/Windows/Android/iOS) 3. has real parallelism via isolates (Kotlin can spawn and interact with full processes, OS threads, and/or green threads in any admixture) 4. native async (Kotlin has native async/await support via coroutines, which work under KNative) 5. native type safety (Kotlin has a strong static type system which is available for native code as well and encompasses native types interactive with Kotlin code in either direction) I don't think anything you said pertains to the listed five features. Especially complaining about compile speed is a strange thing to be doing in the context of this conversation.
  - SpaghettiCthulu 2y ago
    On the topic of databases, I think https://drift.simonbinder.eu/ https://drift.simonbinder.eu/ might interest you. I've been using it in a Flutter app with SQLite, but my understanding is that you could use it on the server too. I recall them having support for at least SQLite and Postgres.
desumeku 2y ago
> I wish the Dart server ecosystem was more mature though. Being able to compile Dart into a static binary is so nice for deployment. Considering that both are made by Google, I can imagine that they just use Go for everything servers.
igor_st 2y ago
Agree, Dark is pretty nice, but ecosystem is not mature.

Nice work! I'm happy to see the server is in Dart, no Firebase! I wish the Dart server ecosystem was more mature though. Being able to compile Dart into a static binary is so nice for deployment.

hoppp 2y ago

I wrote some dart servers years ago, there is a nice framework called aqueduct that makes it very easy and productive. I stopped using it because I needed to make money and my work was with nodejs.

satvikpendem 2y ago

Serverpod and Dart Frog are both pretty good backend Dart frameworks, what are you looking for?

blopker 2y ago
Dart is crazy because it runs on every platform, compiles to native, has real parallelism via isolates, native async, and native type safety. There's not really a backend that takes advantage of all that. In theory, one server binary could handle REST, web sockets, background workers, and have generated type safe client packages for every platform. Dart also has a great Rust ffi story. It would be great to see that leveraged. ServerPod is a great start, but it's really Flutter focused. The web apis feel like second class. Additionally, database management isn't a solved problem yet. ServerPod uses yaml to define models, and the other main option is just a Prisma wrapper. Dart needs something like Drizzle.
- satvikpendem 2y ago
  You could state the same thing as your first sentence for e.g. Rust or many other languages, I personally only see Dart being useful if you already have a Flutter app and you don't want to learn another language, and to have shared types easily, similar to fullstack web devs using TypeScript for their React and Node apps. I personally use Rust backends and Flutter frontends for my apps. I'd use pure Rust for the entire thing but Rust frontends are nowhere near the capabilities and maturity as Flutter, but I use FFI like flutter_rust_bridge and rinf at least, as you mention.
  - blopker 2y ago
    I actually can't think of another language that has all of that built in. Rust doesn't, it needs a run time for async. JavaScript doesn't, it needs typescript and it doesn't compile to native.
    - Borealid 2y ago
      Kotlin Native has every one of those features.
      - wiseowise 2y ago
        Hahahaha, by a long shot not. Kotlin Native is a toy for JetBrains to eat some of that Apple pie and capture teams that want to share logic between their mobile codebases. Kotlin Native has no std, they cut down platform support with K2, performance and compilation speed are atrocious and there are no plans to improve any of that short term. Kotlin without JVM can’t hold a candle to Dart. Which is a real shame for Dart, because Dart has improved dramatically last couple years while Kotlin has not introduced anything major last 5 years since release of coroutines. Their K2 compiler, that was supposed to promise major compilation speed improvements, was mostly a flop and we are yet to see if they’ll do anything good with it. Context receivers are not even close, pattern matching is not even on a roadmap and they’re refusing to consider union types. Kotlin lives on a borrowed time.
        Borealid 2y ago
        The listed features are: 1. runs on every platform (KNative runs natively on Linux, Mac, Windows, Android, iOS. It can also run under the JVM non-natively, and anywhere Javascript runs non-natively. The native code can build for a variety of architectures including ARM and x86) 2. compiles to native (As above, compiles to native on Linux/Mac/Windows/Android/iOS) 3. has real parallelism via isolates (Kotlin can spawn and interact with full processes, OS threads, and/or green threads in any admixture) 4. native async (Kotlin has native async/await support via coroutines, which work under KNative) 5. native type safety (Kotlin has a strong static type system which is available for native code as well and encompasses native types interactive with Kotlin code in either direction) I don't think anything you said pertains to the listed five features. Especially complaining about compile speed is a strange thing to be doing in the context of this conversation.
- SpaghettiCthulu 2y ago
  On the topic of databases, I think https://drift.simonbinder.eu/ https://drift.simonbinder.eu/ might interest you. I've been using it in a Flutter app with SQLite, but my understanding is that you could use it on the server too. I recall them having support for at least SQLite and Postgres.

desumeku 2y ago

> I wish the Dart server ecosystem was more mature though. Being able to compile Dart into a static binary is so nice for deployment. Considering that both are made by Google, I can imagine that they just use Go for everything servers.

igor_st 2y ago

Agree, Dark is pretty nice, but ecosystem is not mature.