While I've used Flutter since Alpha, I've been away for a few years. A few things have shocked me in these release notes: how come Impeller still wasn't the default engine for all platforms? Also, why are they migrating to WASM if one of the core features of Dart is compiling to JavaScript? Finally, how come multi window support only get viable now, after four years having desktop support?
Honestly, Flutter is an extremely enjoyable development experience I would recommend anyone I care for to stay away from. The fact it's developed by Google doesn't help: it's a matter of time before they kill it like they did with so many UI libraries and frameworks already, specially with JetBrains developing Compose Multiplatform and the Android team going all-in in the Compose strategy.
Yes, hopefully now that this decoupling is complete, they'll actually start being updated again. The progress was a bit stalled while this process was ongoing.
great for mobile apps, fine for desktops, basically unusable for browsers unless you do wasm, if web can be revamped/improved it can be the best option for cross platform GUI
Of all the myriad projects from Google, how is Flutter/Dart the one that survived the axe? I’m not saying I hate them - I think they’re both really neat - I just don’t understand why Google keeps these limping along with weak support and no clear vision within their broader web ecosystem.
Easy, there are a few google teams that use flutter and the cost savings from not having to have dedicated ios and android teams is very easy to point at to justify the project's existence.
I think Dart and Flutter are very overlooked. The language has completely changed since its release, its statically typed, has null safety, enums, and pattern matching, and is very simple and easy to read. It has fast compilation and a ui framework with hot reload. It's as fast as Js on v8 while using less memory and has the overlooked feature of having very fast, almost 0 overhead, ffi.
I think the importance of good ffi is underrated for these ui languages. For reference, everyone that's using electron has to run two node processes doing ipc over a websocket connection. That's going to waste an absurd number of cpu cycles and memory when you are passing messages around when your app is basically a ui for a cli.
But they also fund JetBrains, Jetpack Compose, and KMP. It feels like the company threw their support behind Kotlin a long while ago on mobile, but internal struggles keep the others limping along. Compose UI tooling no longer requires viewing on device.
You're thinking of Google as a single top down company. It isn't. Think of it as an anarchy of warlords where each pulls the strings and management doesn't really know what's going on.
Flutter made a lot of sense during the Oracle lawsuit when Google needed a way to show Oracle that it can pivot from Java. Now it no longer makes sense but the inertia is too deep.
My guess is that flutter is sold internally through the Huawei support as a leg within China.
How are they limping? Flutter has completely replaced it's rendering engine across all platforms and they're building out major window management support on desktop platforms.
At some point there's just not much exciting new stuff to add. Flutter is a nice stable platform, I'd highly recommend it.
> Flutter has completely replaced it's rendering engine across all platforms
And that new rendering engine is also why apps like Immich are unable to show HDR photos. Apple & Google both pushed broad support for that a couple years ago, with things like Ultra HDR and subsequently ISO 21496-1.
Of course they need to prioritize where to spend resources, like any project, but Flutter also doesn't seem to be on any critical path for fancy headlining new features, either.
I've made a huge critic towards Flutter in another comment of mine, but adoption isn't it: the biggest bank in Brazil, with 135 million clients, is a digital bank whose sole interface is their Flutter app. They are different regarding tech choices (they use Clojure on the backend too), but I think it's a huge testament of how far along Flutter adoption has come.
Is that true though? I'm reading HN on an app built using Flutter. I had no idea until recently, so I would assume more apps could use it without my knowledge.
I understand it's limitations vs native apps, but there's quite a few cases where it really doesn't matter.
The biggest one for me is always the fear it will be abandoned. Pretty much goes for any cross platform app framework though.
Sure, Adwords migrated from GWT to Dart. (And eventually I followed.) At one point, Dart moved from the Chrome division to the Adwords division. And Adwords alone can fund a team to do developer tools for them. Then, Flutter came a bit later.
It's been over a decade since then, though, and I'm out of touch now.
Most Google's projects that users loved were axed for a reason, typically internal management wars for promotions. Like YouTube really wanted to kill belowed Google Music, so they did. Or Google Pay vs Google Wallet.
Killing Flutter would not promote a manager. For now, of course.
I always find it strange that flutter isn’t built with golang or typescript. Why create a new language? When flutter came out both languages existed so curious about that
Honestly, Flutter is an extremely enjoyable development experience I would recommend anyone I care for to stay away from. The fact it's developed by Google doesn't help: it's a matter of time before they kill it like they did with so many UI libraries and frameworks already, specially with JetBrains developing Compose Multiplatform and the Android team going all-in in the Compose strategy.
its a cross platform framework that you can share component between mobile and other platform and always has been
I personally would like for it to pick up some ideas from Svelte.
I think Dart and Flutter are very overlooked. The language has completely changed since its release, its statically typed, has null safety, enums, and pattern matching, and is very simple and easy to read. It has fast compilation and a ui framework with hot reload. It's as fast as Js on v8 while using less memory and has the overlooked feature of having very fast, almost 0 overhead, ffi.
I think the importance of good ffi is underrated for these ui languages. For reference, everyone that's using electron has to run two node processes doing ipc over a websocket connection. That's going to waste an absurd number of cpu cycles and memory when you are passing messages around when your app is basically a ui for a cli.
Flutter made a lot of sense during the Oracle lawsuit when Google needed a way to show Oracle that it can pivot from Java. Now it no longer makes sense but the inertia is too deep.
My guess is that flutter is sold internally through the Huawei support as a leg within China.
At some point there's just not much exciting new stuff to add. Flutter is a nice stable platform, I'd highly recommend it.
And that new rendering engine is also why apps like Immich are unable to show HDR photos. Apple & Google both pushed broad support for that a couple years ago, with things like Ultra HDR and subsequently ISO 21496-1.
Meanwhile Flutter still doesn't really have wide gamut support https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/189155
Of course they need to prioritize where to spend resources, like any project, but Flutter also doesn't seem to be on any critical path for fancy headlining new features, either.
Also, Google dogfoods it quite a bit.
I understand it's limitations vs native apps, but there's quite a few cases where it really doesn't matter.
The biggest one for me is always the fear it will be abandoned. Pretty much goes for any cross platform app framework though.
So they're probably investing in it enough for basic maintenance, but don't really care about evolving the language.
It's been over a decade since then, though, and I'm out of touch now.
Killing Flutter would not promote a manager. For now, of course.