Flutter flits onto Windows, declared fit for production

Google's cross-platform app framework Flutter has hit version 2.1 and added production support for apps on Windows. Flutter first turned up in Alpha form just under five years ago, aimed at speeding up development on mobile operating systems. Apps are written in the Dart language and should run on Android, iOS, Windows, macOS …

[ShadowSystems]

Google + Microsoft = Fail.

Commodore BASIC FTW!

Best. Language. Evar!!!OneOneEleventyOne!One111! =-D

*Head explodes in sarcasm*

[lotus123]

Yet another corporate language. Thanks but no thanks.

[sreynolds]

It's the Visual Basic of Development.

Flutter - pretty much only good for display form data across different platforms in the worst possible way.

[AMBxx]

Don't worry. With a combination of Google and MS, this will soon be abandoned.

[katrinab]

How long before Google abandons this?

Three years?

[breakfast]

Re: How long before Google abandons this?

It's hard to incline oneself strongly to a language or platform that you know will suddenly be abandoned and have all support withdrawn.

At least Microsoft have shown a certain dogged persistence with a bunch of technologies over the years- Xamarin seems to have been around for ages. Google seem to delight in whimsically declaring something no longer useful, dropping it and walking away leaving anyone unlucky enough to have adopted it far behind.

You can only do that so many times before you have burnt the majority of your potential users, certainly enough to warn everyone else what is likely to happen if they adopt your tools.

[Gene Cash]

Re: How long before Google abandons this?

Are you kidding? 6 months is more like it.

[Anonymous Coward]

This Flutter seems to be just what I need !!!

I am going to change all our development for windows to Flutter as it will be so useful to be able to support this excellent idea.

Best idea ye ........

Sorry, just been told i need to take another Pink pill !!!

Feeling much better now !!!

:)

[Not Irrelevant]

Xamarin? You mean .NET MAUI, MS' new Xamarin replacement that's based on .NET Core?

[Anonymous Coward]

Flutter?

So Star Trek Voyager.

[pip25]

Checked it out

Apparently, Flutter webapps are one big canvas tag. Not sure how I feel about this. Accessibility is probably a concern.

[OffBeatMammal]

Remember Silver light?

Both Kevin and Tim were significant folks behind that effort, as well as many of the other .Net and XAML adventures at MS. They know how to play well together, and that if nothing else gives me comfort thinking this might be a success.

Dart as a language, and Flutter as a framework have been growing and continue to get more interesting.

[Paper]

I tried Flutter, but...

I tried Flutter, but codewise it's ugly imo. Dart is a cool idea, but in practice the language as used by Flutter just ends up getting in the way than compared to Javascript (for those that love typing and verboseness, Typescript has pretty much fixed the pitfalls). The flutter plugins seem to be a bit ad-hoc, with mediocre documentation and with a limited API.

In the end I opted for React Native, whilst having some downsides (performance sometimes), it's pretty easy to do. Using React's function notation with "react hooks" keeps things very clean and small. The documentation for React Native and many of the plugins is all pretty well written, the process kinda holds your hand a lot more.