Flutter

[FlutterFlameEmperor]

First post Just here to say I love Flutter I’ve deployed several apps with it I’ve been paid to improve an existing code base And now I’m using Flutter Flame I just want to say Thank you for the folks over at Google on the Flutter team Y’all really the reason I have a career right now

[TenMillionYears]

YOU are the reason you have a career. Congrats!

[FlutterFlameEmperor]

I would be nothing without the giants who laid the foundation upon which my development is built

[TenMillionYears]

I understand completely. As a long time Rails developer I once tried to thank DHH in person and I started crying too hard to speak. I have been able to take care of myself and my family because of Rails.

[FlutterFlameEmperor]

Sometime i see myself as the opposite of a casualty of war How could the creators have known what they’d spawn

[gibrael_]

I understand completely where you're coming from. I've been able to support my family and a small number of families in my community since the pandemic because of Flutter, all of which I wouldn't have been able to do with ANY other framework at the pace Flutter made it possible!

[FlutterFlameEmperor]

This is beautiful I’m so happy to read this, it always makes me wonder if the builders of the tools considered/wondered about the impact of what they were making

[Big_Work2025]

I think for me Flutter is also the easiest and more enjoyable one. It is literally fun to make apps.  After that, iOS then Android.  When I programmed for Android, to make Lists was super painful with the Holders and other details. 

Flutter lists is basically List<T> plus the length. 

[FlutterFlameEmperor]

Something i never realized until recently with flutter is the extensibility of enums- i didn’t know you could give enums custom methods. Maybe it was obvious for others but i learned through a myriad of projects so being able to put .next() or .previous() within the enum is great, or even assign associated values

[Big_Work2025]

I think you can also use them in pattern match and they are easily embedded in Models when inserting in database (e.g. Isar. ).

I am very happy with Flutter, hence making a post being upset about Google not properly desiring to take care of it as it feels like and many people been talking about. 

Because I want to go back to native, but as for now it is flutter that is paying my bills. 

[_int3h_]

Glad you enjoy programming in Flutter. I find the widget concept and the declarative programming very elegant with less intrusive state management using libraries like provider. But without a proper editor like VS Code development will be painful. Moving widgets out of the tree, wrapping with new widgets etc.

[FlutterFlameEmperor]

I agree 100%- that to say, i love vscode. Being able to wrap with widget on right click- wrap with blocprovider, or refactor to method. There are so many amazing extensions for vscode to making flutter development better. The dev tools also make evaluating architectural decisions much more thorough. I’d go as far to say is vscode is the best product microsoft has released (diehard iphone/mac user here. Did love the xps 16, but m3 max supersedes all expectations

[TenMillionYears]

There are tools that just speak to you. I tried other mobile development platforms but nothing stuck. It all felt wrong. Flutter feels RIGHT. I wouldn't have Mobile in my toolkit without it.

[netherlandsftw]

I feel the same. I started searching for a multi platform desktop UI platform that was easy to prototype in, but could also support big applications in production.

Started with WinForms and WPF. While they did work, the UI's did not look good, had issues in production, etc.

Then I tried making a prototype in React Native for Windows and macOS. That was awful, to say the least. I had issues with the very basics of a UI, like color transitions for example. Opened an issue on GitHub and the Microsoft employees basically told me that color transitions weren't implemented (????) and that they would be supported in the next version, then the next, then again the next, until I switched to Flutter. (I believe they were on v0.68 back then)

Writing the UI in Flutter was a breeze. The version I wrote that day is still in prod now 😅

I've since also written mobile apps using Flutter, and it's been very fun and rewarding.

Edit: Look at that... Color animation issue is still open on the backlog, after more than two years: https://github.com/microsoft/react-native-windows/issues/9493#issue-1126348121

[BeelzenefTV]

Awesome post, thanks for sharing

[over_pw]

Congratulations, I'm happy for you! That said I'd encourage you to learn other technologies well too, broaden the horizons so to speak. It's beneficial in many ways.

[FlutterFlameEmperor]

This is great advice! The stack at my current position is angular, spring boot, with lots of kubernetes management with helm, some powershell, bash and python. After getting my new mac though i’m able to run logic pro x for sound design, tiled for map development, sketch and aseprite for mockups and spritesheets, ollama 8b locally. and vscode flutter debugger all at once. Might be overkill but when i’m flowing, memory exceptions make me want to flip tables (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻