Lately, there is lots of buzz around Flutter. Some say Flutter is about to win over the web with the cross-platform framework that offers the most compelling web development experience. What are your thoughts?
Most of the websites today are written in HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Is it really true that I can create a website without using any of these three technologies? There has to be a catch, right?!
So being new to the whole world of coding and know my way around the block with HTML and JavaScript, I am wondering how Google is making this possible. Made by Google, Flutter is Google's UI toolkit for building beautiful, natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase. Claims like productively build apps faster, layered architecture for full customization, faster rendering, expressive and flexible designs, and stateful hot reload to build native interfaces in minutes is amazing. But I am skeptical, maybe it is because I just got to know the ins and outs of HTML and JavaScript, or because as developers we are curious and look to build amazing solutions and find their potential breaks, or that our technological world is ever-changing and sometimes it hard to keep up.
What're your two cents? Is this the newest latest and great solution to building apps?
Top comments (7)
I have been using flutter for over two years now. Although the start was a bit more difficult for me than expected, but now I love and live Flutter. When it comes to the implementation of a new frontend application, I first look to see if I can use flutter for this.
I probably wouldn't choose Flutter today to build a website / web app, until Flutter Web matures a bit more. Angular is still very active and a good choice for web apps. However, Flutter itself is excellent for mobile app development and I would pick it for that.
good insight thanks for sharing
Dart/Flutter is next logical evolution step towards to programming multiplatform aplications.
Before 1990 was C as the most popular programing language but problem was creating applications for all different environments (Windows, Linux, Mac and others) in some fast way.
Between 1990-2000 came Java with JVM as universal machine for create applications for every desktop with the same code.
Between 2000-2010 growed up C# as concurrent for Java in Windows and web technologies like PHP and JavaScript in web development. Java is used only in Android and servers due to some problems which had. Apple is using Objective-C in iOS and mac.
So here we have again plenty different languages for different platforms (Desktop, Mobile, Web)
Between 2010-2020 growed up web technologies very fastly and JavaScript was rapidly evolved to using in Web (React, Angular, Vue), Mobile (React Native, Cordova, Ionic), Servers (next.js, nest.js, nuxt.js, express, etc..) and Desktop (Electron)
Of course Microsoft is again developing TypeScript as a better concurrent to JavaScript and Xamarin for multiplatform mobile development.
But also here are appearing some new languages like: Kotlin, Swift, Dart, Rust and Go as successors for Java, Objective-C, JavaScript or C/C++ with improved properties.
Now Between years 2020-2030 will be running fight between these all languages which will be provide better multiplatform support like Java vs C 30 years ago or which will be only solution for some special optimalized things in some platforms.
Because when companies want to create some application or service. They doesn't want to pay a lot of different developers focused to different platforms (Web browser, Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, Android, Wearable or other things)
They want to have a few developers which can create same code for wide range of platform with some one technology which is simple for learn. And you as developer don't want to learn a lot of different languages for different platforms.
And therefore everybody is now developing their own multiplatform ecosystem:
Kotlin Multiplatform (kotlinlang.org/docs/multiplatform....)
C#/.NET Cross-platform (dotnet.microsoft.com/)
Dart/Flutter as cross devices UI toolkit (dev.to/diachenko_maria/why-use-flu...)
JavaScript/TypeScript (React/Vue for web, React Native/Cordova, Electron)
Swift for Android (scade.io/)
This will be very interesting fight because every this technologies support very big companies:
JetBrains with Kotlin is very improving Java language,
Microsoft with C# is very dominating in the most used of desktop operating systems,
Google with Dart/Flutter is dominating in Web browsers and mobile operating systems
Javascript/TypeScript with React have a strong community of web developers
and Apple is very strong Brand with personal computers and mobile phones
Finally what will be the best we will se after years but Flutter have a same abilities as React and Dart can have a little better performance than JavaScript, multiplatform abilities are better then JVM and Google is very strong company in Web browsers and in the open source community..
Finally what will be used decide only developers are with Flutter very sutisfactioned: medium.com/flutter/are-you-happy-w...
Maybe same or better than with React: 2020.stateofjs.com/en-US/technolog...
And in the future Flutter Team adds also support for all other desktop or wearable platforms where you will can reuse your widgets from your mobile application..
Martin thank you so much for your insight, and it truly is helping me sift through all things to consider. I appreciate your time and knowledge Martin!
Lol, most websites use PHP, 😂.
;)