3 ms·

Dunno about Skip, but I can always tell when an app is Flutter. They feel like crap. Everything's a bit off with the native looking widgets. And fully custom de

by skavi 9mo ago

Dunno about Skip, but I can always tell when an app is Flutter. They feel like crap. Everything's a bit off with the native looking widgets. And fully custom designs still animate a bit weirdly. And they definitely still stutter. Somehow a tier below React Native.

winrid 9mo ago
Flutter re-generates the entire layout every tick and diffs it (immediate-mode), like a game engine. If your device isn't quite fast enough it'll lag, yep. RN is retained mode (but written in immediate-mode style and the diffing only happens when it has to).
- SoKamil 9mo ago
  Interesting, I didn’t know that it was immediate mode. According to the article [1] though, it now uses rendering engine with Retained Mode due to performance issues. [1] https://medium.com/@0s.and.1s/flutter-part-iv-skia-vs-impeller-graphics-engines-33327e408ba8 https://medium.com/@0s.and.1s/flutter-part-iv-skia-vs-impell...
  - winrid 9mo ago
    ah neat, so they rewrote the rendering engine in C++ and exposed it via Dart APIs, as opposed to everything being in Dart.
    - matt_kn 9mo ago
      It has been like that since the very beginning (sky engine).
- realusername 9mo ago
  I'd say it's the opposite, on crappy devices, Flutter feels faster than native, not sure how but that's the end result. I've been testing on an old Samsung J3 and it's definitely better than native. That's also maybe why it's so popular in India.
  - agentifysh 9mo ago
    Flutter is essentially a game engine so it bypasses the typical cycles involved with native widgets and there are several different ways why Flutter works well on lower end phones
- matt_kn 9mo ago
  That is absolutely not true. Elements with dirty layouts are tracked and layout is only recomputed up to the neearest layout boundary.
  - winrid 9mo ago
    Weird, it looks like you're right but I recall their early marketing saying stuff like just rebuild the whole layout, it's cheap since it's compiled. They must have meant it's cheap to rebuild as needed haha
duskdozer 9mo ago
I've noticed several of the apps that don't respect device animation settings were built with Flutter. Not sure if that's a limitation of it or if the developers culturally don't bother.

by skavi 9mo ago

winrid 9mo ago

Flutter re-generates the entire layout every tick and diffs it (immediate-mode), like a game engine. If your device isn't quite fast enough it'll lag, yep. RN is retained mode (but written in immediate-mode style and the diffing only happens when it has to).

SoKamil 9mo ago
Interesting, I didn’t know that it was immediate mode. According to the article [1] though, it now uses rendering engine with Retained Mode due to performance issues. [1] https://medium.com/@0s.and.1s/flutter-part-iv-skia-vs-impeller-graphics-engines-33327e408ba8 https://medium.com/@0s.and.1s/flutter-part-iv-skia-vs-impell...
- winrid 9mo ago
  ah neat, so they rewrote the rendering engine in C++ and exposed it via Dart APIs, as opposed to everything being in Dart.
  - matt_kn 9mo ago
    It has been like that since the very beginning (sky engine).
realusername 9mo ago
I'd say it's the opposite, on crappy devices, Flutter feels faster than native, not sure how but that's the end result. I've been testing on an old Samsung J3 and it's definitely better than native. That's also maybe why it's so popular in India.
- agentifysh 9mo ago
  Flutter is essentially a game engine so it bypasses the typical cycles involved with native widgets and there are several different ways why Flutter works well on lower end phones
matt_kn 9mo ago
That is absolutely not true. Elements with dirty layouts are tracked and layout is only recomputed up to the neearest layout boundary.
- winrid 9mo ago
  Weird, it looks like you're right but I recall their early marketing saying stuff like just rebuild the whole layout, it's cheap since it's compiled. They must have meant it's cheap to rebuild as needed haha

duskdozer 9mo ago

I've noticed several of the apps that don't respect device animation settings were built with Flutter. Not sure if that's a limitation of it or if the developers culturally don't bother.