I have personally used flutter over a month now. Been an Android developer over 10 years. I love flutter. Devs love flutter. The flutter community is not as mature as the native community. May be over the years things would change. It's changing!
99% of android job posts require native kotlin developers for android, with the remaining 0.1% of posts requiring Java developers for android. I have yet to see any post listing flutter as either a requirement or a "optional advantage".
I did not see this video in the past. Just saw it now. Amazing explanations. To be aware of the problems and limitations is one of the most important points for a new tech adoption. What I have seem around me is that many devs focus only at "The good". Not that it's a bad thing and it's a must have. If you do not be aware of the problems and limitations, you have great chances to hit the wall.
I have been using flutter for almost a year now. It helped a lot yet the reactivity is to me a down part. I mean it works well with static or low changing GUI like form and text, image in general but it really becomes challenging when you have to intensively update your GUI.
@@prijupaul2680 Yes we can do that in Flutter, I have built an app with features such as camera, geolocation, etc in Flutter. What I mean is, like Donn Felker say in this video 10:30, If the app need deep level integration I will choose Native. Also with Native, you can make a really small APK.
Is flutter\dart only for simply apps, or can you also build complex user interfaces, with dynamic layouts, resizable grids, grids within grids, etc? Thanks
Hi Donn great overview! Could you elaborate on system level integration? Would this include Bluetooth, NFC, Networks Mgmt.... Etc? Or is it more low low level stuff you might do on AOSP for example?
At the time of recording some of the BT, NFC, etc stuff can be tricky so it’s a case by case basis there. If I find that I need to hop deep down into the guts of the native platform to do the work I need to do, that’s often a signal that I need to think long and hard about my decision to use a cross platform tech like flutter. AOSP definitely is low level.
Great video. I was curious why you're not as positive about Flutter on the desktop as on mobile? Sure it's not as far along on desktop, but I don't see any reason why it won't be at least as great a solution for desktop apps as mobile apps in the near future.
I dont have any scientific reason, purely gut feeling. It could be very wrong on this one, so I'll own that. Just doesnt "feel" right yet. Not sure yet though. I think the big bearish feeling I have is that many people are trying to make one codebase for mobile, and desktop and web. I think each are their own beast. iOS and Android are the same form factor so they work, but the other two are different beasts entirely.
Good presentation of all the technical issues. But what about the techno-politics? Google is known to start major initiatives and then toss them for whatever reason. Also Apple obviously doesn't want cross platform apps on iOS, so they could throw a big monkey wrench into Flutter at any time (AppStore rejection, Metal rendering re-architecture or API changes, etc.).
Good points. Gmail could go away tomorrow and so could any number of apple apps. We can speculate or create. I choose the latter. In regards to apple not liking cross platform apps, yes, you’re right. Companies don’t like anything that encroaches upon their method of revenue generation. However, the web is the ultimate cross platform app. They can’t stop that. The App Store will lose (imo) that battle.
Nice Video ! I am also Flutter Developer, Whats your view on Flutter Web and Dart Web(Dart+HTML) should we use in production, because no one talks about it. Please also make video How you plan and edit videos...nice editing
I won't mind building my apps 3 times for web, Android & IOS as long as I can use Swift on windows. My app ideas are extremely media heavy, so if I need an expensive MacBook pro for Swift, I'll build the full app on the web while only building the live chat / messenger part of my app with flutter until my apps generate enough income for a MacBook pro.
19:32 do you mean the app startup time? For react-native it feels a lot, and it is noticeable for flutter apps too. There is like a while blank screen at the app startup ( unless you put up your logo on it and use it as a splashscreen xD )
I’ve seen this a couple times too. However, in my experience it’s usually because I’m losing data upon the start of the app. I should have started the app, then shown a loader abs then retrieved the data in those instances. That’s been my experience with that issue.
Interesting… if I were to make an app like Instagram or TikTok would you say flutter or native? I felt like this could be easily doable in flutter, however your mention of media apps should be made natively made me rethink… is that due to the rendering engine of flutter not being suitable?
No, I think he's referring to the high number of platform-specific APIs (which Flutter requires you to write "platform channels" for) that need to be called in order to work extensively with media. I wish he would have explained his reasoning in more detail though. I'll post a question of my own about this...
I don't have a video on it, but I have worked with React Native before and while it's useful I've personally run into many issues where it was simply a pain to bridge between react native and native (for the occasional instances where I needed to go native). I've avoided React Native for that reason. Nowadays though I will mainly go with Jumpstart Pro as it allows you to go web first, with native when you need it. For me, at this point, its the best of both worlds. Check it out here: jumpstartrails.com (disclaimer: I'm the developer of the Android side of things on that team)
When you say that "a lot of headaches" and risk could come from using Flutter for media related apps, are you saying that it's not enough to write platform channels for calling the platform-specific APIs?
Media playback can be tricky with latency. Tools like exoplayer handle this gracefully and work superbly. There are some plugins written to delegate down to native code in these situations, but it’s work.
@@donnfelkeryt Thanks for the reply! Shouldn't it be possible to use ExoPlayer with Flutter by writing platform channels? This seems to be exactly what some Flutter plugins like just_audio do, so it appears most of this grunt work has already been done. Wouldn't this be much easier than building two apps natively? Are there costs and risks that I'm not considering?
Thanks for the video. Flutter's future may be like Flash or silver light. But as you said it does the job done for business apps. It is free. I had experience using Flash Professional, it was cool, it could work on Android and Desktop. But it died. Now I use Qt for mobile. Qt is mature and it is suitable for complex apps that requires more modules. I like its performance.
What is the learning curve in learning Dart and Flutter? I come from a background of JavaScript and PHP for almost 1 year. I would like to create a mobile health app which wouldn't require much. I am looking to create a mobile app with the lowest learning curve and the least number of headaches. I am still new to web development, but I would like to create a mobile app as a hobby would you recommend Dart/Flutter or should I go with Swift. Which is easier to learn, thank you Donn.
I once heard it put like this "Dart is not an exciting language, but it works well." I would agree with that. It's not a "omg this is amazing language" but it has the constructs to do the job. Dart is ecma script standard so if you're coming from JS you'll find it quite easy to work with. Ultimately you need to ask yourself - do I need integration with the health data API's in the phone? Does Dart/Flutter easily support this? If so, maybe it will work for you, if not, you might need to look more native. But it looks like there are a number of health packages on pub. Here's one: pub.dev/packages/health (I have no affiliation with the author of this package, just looked it up).
From what I've heard is that you can learn Flutter alongside Dart. Which usually also means that you don't need to fully master Dart since you'll be using the Flutter API that abstracts away implemenation techniques. It's kinda like JavaScript like that, for most you either interact with the DOM api or a framework, so you'll almost never need to understand the deeper details of Js. Although if you want to be a better programmer, understanding the tools you use is your path to growth: your text editor, languages, algorithms, data structures, patterns, paradigm or framework.
@@donnfelkeryt Thank you Donn, at the moment I did about 4 months of Django creating API's now for the past month learning Kotlin for Android. Despite the fact I am in NYC I went with Android because there are about the same range of jobs as iOS development but I do notice there are more people aiming for iOS development versus Android. I figured aim for what isn't as popular so I am focused on Android. I enjoy your videos I've learned many things from them, thanks once again.
Is this not a nightmare for the developers of Flutter? Duplicating everything perfectly down to the pixel seems like a massive undertaking and the moment an update changes something, the Flutter app may look out of place.
They're just drawing on a canvas. So technically they don't have to change much of anything when updates come out. If the flutter team wants to update to some new widget styles/etc then yes, that will require additional work, but it's not something that will "break" with each release.
@@donnfelkeryt If Apple changes something in the interface style, doesn't the Flutter team have to redo every Cupertino Flutter widget to match? This seems really difficult for the Flutter team (relative to just connecting to native interfaces which automatically reflect changes).
Guys who use Java r kotlin they will go for KMM for Multiplatfrom rather than Flutter,I don't see a heavy and a valid reason to choose flutter intead of KMM !!
@@TZCoder well yes, but UI code should be separate from the back-end code either way if you don't do that then your app is not made with scalability in mind KMM is still back-end, if you already followed good practices then this would not be a problem.
I have used Flutter, to be honest it's not up to mark I think it's shit. Supporting different screen sizes is really difficult in Flutter. Also you still need Native code atleast once in your career. IDK about React Native. But I would prefer learning Native development over cross platform.
@@NMNaufaldo Yeah! That's what I am saying that atleast once in your life you have to deal with Platform specific code so I don't really think it's good option at least for now.
@@acid2go It may be, but I had used Flutter for some basic games like tic tac toe in that game I had used some animations, that animations just sucked on my phone, on other phones it worked fine but when I tested it on other phones similar to mine, it failed miserably. Also I used to calculate dimensions of my widgets by the percentage of device dimensions. It worked fine for larger devices but again it failed to draw widgets properly on smaller devices. This is why I shifted to Native Android development, it is a lot more easier at least for me. I respect your opinion because I was not an expert in Flutter but yeah experience I had with Flutter was just terrible. It's been one year since I have left Flutter so some issues might have been fixed. But yeah I would definitely not goanna try Flutter again 🤣😂.
I have personally used flutter over a month now. Been an Android developer over 10 years. I love flutter. Devs love flutter. The flutter community is not as mature as the native community. May be over the years things would change. It's changing!
What about Jetpack Compose...
I have also around 10 years android native experience, and I think "mature" is not the word I would used to describe any of that 🙃
99% of android job posts require native kotlin developers for android, with the remaining 0.1% of posts requiring Java developers for android. I have yet to see any post listing flutter as either a requirement or a "optional advantage".
Please keep making these videos. Love your style, you don't waste my time with filler. Thank you. 10/10
Your this video is so good that I have watched it twice. Thanks. Great hardwork.
Thank you!
I did not see this video in the past. Just saw it now. Amazing explanations.
To be aware of the problems and limitations is one of the most important points for a new tech adoption. What I have seem around me is that many devs focus only at "The good". Not that it's a bad thing and it's a must have. If you do not be aware of the problems and limitations, you have great chances to hit the wall.
Your explanation at the beginning was just excellent! I actually did the involuntary “OHHHHH!”. Thx! 😄👍🏾
Glad it helped you!
Great editing in this video! Looks spectacular
Thank you
Great Talk Sir! Always learn something new from your talks. Video quality, editing, transitions are also very good.
Thanks for watching
Loved the content, in-depth yet not boring. Will share the word around :)
Thank you
I have been using flutter for almost a year now. It helped a lot yet the reactivity is to me a down part. I mean it works well with static or low changing GUI like form and text, image in general but it really becomes challenging when you have to intensively update your GUI.
Can you explain why that is?
Your video editing skills are amazing!
Got a team involved now, so I can’t take a the credit, but thank you Sam. I’ll pass the word along 🤙🏻
Flutter is really great to build non-platform specific features, especially form based app 💙
Agreed!
You still have many plugins that would interact platform specific features or you can still write one. It's doable. Not impossible
@@CleanupStack I know, I mean heavy platform specific and the app need really good performance
@@NMNaufaldo Yep. True.. However, the basic functionalities like Bluetooth, Video streaming can be done with Flutter.
@@prijupaul2680 Yes we can do that in Flutter, I have built an app with features such as camera, geolocation, etc in Flutter. What I mean is, like Donn Felker say in this video 10:30, If the app need deep level integration I will choose Native. Also with Native, you can make a really small APK.
This is my new favorite channel
Is flutter\dart only for simply apps, or can you also build complex user interfaces, with dynamic layouts, resizable grids, grids within grids, etc? Thanks
We are using flutter and web is slow, not drawing quit well and it cant handle even zooming. But for mobile development is quite a pleasure
Nice!
Good content, but what I really love is that it’s a 20+ minute video, but you get to the real content in less than 20 seconds. Nice.
I’m glad you recognized that!
Hi Donn great overview! Could you elaborate on system level integration? Would this include Bluetooth, NFC, Networks Mgmt.... Etc? Or is it more low low level stuff you might do on AOSP for example?
At the time of recording some of the BT, NFC, etc stuff can be tricky so it’s a case by case basis there. If I find that I need to hop deep down into the guts of the native platform to do the work I need to do, that’s often a signal that I need to think long and hard about my decision to use a cross platform tech like flutter.
AOSP definitely is low level.
Great video. I was curious why you're not as positive about Flutter on the desktop as on mobile? Sure it's not as far along on desktop, but I don't see any reason why it won't be at least as great a solution for desktop apps as mobile apps in the near future.
I dont have any scientific reason, purely gut feeling. It could be very wrong on this one, so I'll own that. Just doesnt "feel" right yet. Not sure yet though. I think the big bearish feeling I have is that many people are trying to make one codebase for mobile, and desktop and web. I think each are their own beast. iOS and Android are the same form factor so they work, but the other two are different beasts entirely.
Good presentation of all the technical issues. But what about the techno-politics? Google is known to start major initiatives and then toss them for whatever reason. Also Apple obviously doesn't want cross platform apps on iOS, so they could throw a big monkey wrench into Flutter at any time (AppStore rejection, Metal rendering re-architecture or API changes, etc.).
Good points. Gmail could go away tomorrow and so could any number of apple apps. We can speculate or create. I choose the latter. In regards to apple not liking cross platform apps, yes, you’re right. Companies don’t like anything that encroaches upon their method of revenue generation. However, the web is the ultimate cross platform app. They can’t stop that. The App Store will lose (imo) that battle.
The video is very informative. But I want to know your thoughts about React Native.
Nice Video ! I am also Flutter Developer, Whats your view on Flutter Web and Dart Web(Dart+HTML) should we use in production, because no one talks about it. Please also make video How you plan and edit videos...nice editing
I talk about this in the video (web, etc), its in the latter half actually. :)
I won't mind building my apps 3 times for web, Android & IOS as long as I can use Swift on windows. My app ideas are extremely media heavy, so if I need an expensive MacBook pro for Swift, I'll build the full app on the web while only building the live chat / messenger part of my app with flutter until my apps generate enough income for a MacBook pro.
Excellent video, thank you.
Glad you liked it!
19:32 do you mean the app startup time? For react-native it feels a lot, and it is noticeable for flutter apps too. There is like a while blank screen at the app startup ( unless you put up your logo on it and use it as a splashscreen xD )
I’ve seen this a couple times too. However, in my experience it’s usually because I’m losing data upon the start of the app. I should have started the app, then shown a loader abs then retrieved the data in those instances. That’s been my experience with that issue.
finally a fresh perspective
Interesting… if I were to make an app like Instagram or TikTok would you say flutter or native?
I felt like this could be easily doable in flutter, however your mention of media apps should be made natively made me rethink… is that due to the rendering engine of flutter not being suitable?
No, I think he's referring to the high number of platform-specific APIs (which Flutter requires you to write "platform channels" for) that need to be called in order to work extensively with media. I wish he would have explained his reasoning in more detail though. I'll post a question of my own about this...
Flutter does method channel to achieve the platform specific stuff.
Excellent excellent presentation
Thanks a lot :)
Very insightful donn
Nice Video! Can you pls make a similar video like this for Kotlin Multiplatform?
I don’t have any experience with KMP, but if I do decide to try it out I will make a video on it.
Can an audio file be played within a flutter application?
What about react native ? With its huge community and the leader of the market ?
I just want to warn ppl who think learning Flutter gonna be easy and fast, then you are dead wrong.
Depends on the individual and experience level. Some find it easy, others are challenged.
Have you compared Flutter with React Native ?
I don't have a video on it, but I have worked with React Native before and while it's useful I've personally run into many issues where it was simply a pain to bridge between react native and native (for the occasional instances where I needed to go native). I've avoided React Native for that reason. Nowadays though I will mainly go with Jumpstart Pro as it allows you to go web first, with native when you need it. For me, at this point, its the best of both worlds. Check it out here: jumpstartrails.com (disclaimer: I'm the developer of the Android side of things on that team)
When you say that "a lot of headaches" and risk could come from using Flutter for media related apps, are you saying that it's not enough to write platform channels for calling the platform-specific APIs?
Media playback can be tricky with latency. Tools like exoplayer handle this gracefully and work superbly. There are some plugins written to delegate down to native code in these situations, but it’s work.
@@donnfelkeryt Thanks for the reply! Shouldn't it be possible to use ExoPlayer with Flutter by writing platform channels? This seems to be exactly what some Flutter plugins like just_audio do, so it appears most of this grunt work has already been done. Wouldn't this be much easier than building two apps natively? Are there costs and risks that I'm not considering?
nice content thanks
What's wrong with building games on Flutter?
Thanks for the video. Flutter's future may be like Flash or silver light. But as you said it does the job done for business apps. It is free. I had experience using Flash Professional, it was cool, it could work on Android and Desktop. But it died. Now I use Qt for mobile. Qt is mature and it is suitable for complex apps that requires more modules. I like its performance.
What is the learning curve in learning Dart and Flutter? I come from a background of JavaScript and PHP for almost 1 year. I would like to create a mobile health app which wouldn't require much. I am looking to create a mobile app with the lowest learning curve and the least number of headaches. I am still new to web development, but I would like to create a mobile app as a hobby would you recommend Dart/Flutter or should I go with Swift. Which is easier to learn, thank you Donn.
I once heard it put like this "Dart is not an exciting language, but it works well." I would agree with that. It's not a "omg this is amazing language" but it has the constructs to do the job. Dart is ecma script standard so if you're coming from JS you'll find it quite easy to work with. Ultimately you need to ask yourself - do I need integration with the health data API's in the phone? Does Dart/Flutter easily support this? If so, maybe it will work for you, if not, you might need to look more native. But it looks like there are a number of health packages on pub. Here's one: pub.dev/packages/health (I have no affiliation with the author of this package, just looked it up).
From what I've heard is that you can learn Flutter alongside Dart. Which usually also means that you don't need to fully master Dart since you'll be using the Flutter API that abstracts away implemenation techniques.
It's kinda like JavaScript like that, for most you either interact with the DOM api or a framework, so you'll almost never need to understand the deeper details of Js.
Although if you want to be a better programmer, understanding the tools you use is your path to growth: your text editor, languages, algorithms, data structures, patterns, paradigm or framework.
@@donnfelkeryt Thank you Donn, at the moment I did about 4 months of Django creating API's now for the past month learning Kotlin for Android. Despite the fact I am in NYC I went with Android because there are about the same range of jobs as iOS development but I do notice there are more people aiming for iOS development versus Android. I figured aim for what isn't as popular so I am focused on Android.
I enjoy your videos I've learned many things from them, thanks once again.
@@DevlogBill You bet. I'm glad you found something you enjoy. There are a lot of Android opportunities out there. Best of luck!
@@donnfelkeryt I appreciate it, thank you.
10:06 Flame Game Engine For Flutter: Am I a joke to you?
Which camera have you used for this video?
Canon M6 Mark II with a Sigma 1.4 Lense
save game dev frameworks, flutter would be better over vanilla native
Is this not a nightmare for the developers of Flutter? Duplicating everything perfectly down to the pixel seems like a massive undertaking and the moment an update changes something, the Flutter app may look out of place.
They're just drawing on a canvas. So technically they don't have to change much of anything when updates come out. If the flutter team wants to update to some new widget styles/etc then yes, that will require additional work, but it's not something that will "break" with each release.
@@donnfelkeryt If Apple changes something in the interface style, doesn't the Flutter team have to redo every Cupertino Flutter widget to match? This seems really difficult for the Flutter team (relative to just connecting to native interfaces which automatically reflect changes).
I'm sooo dizzy from the SWISHES!
Guys who use Java r kotlin they will go for KMM for Multiplatfrom rather than Flutter,I don't see a heavy and a valid reason to choose flutter intead of KMM !!
You cant do UI in KMM so KMM still means KMM + Android Native UI + iOS Native UI so the complexity is much higher than Flutter/ReactNative
What is KMM?
@@TZCoder but you will share your business logic and the most you will have two native apps with the native APIs of them
@@TZCoder well yes, but UI code should be separate from the back-end code either way
if you don't do that then your app is not made with scalability in mind
KMM is still back-end, if you already followed good practices then this would not be a problem.
YOU NEED TO MAKE YOUR VIDEOS SHORTER!
REALLLY!
I have used Flutter, to be honest it's not up to mark I think it's shit. Supporting different screen sizes is really difficult in Flutter. Also you still need Native code atleast once in your career. IDK about React Native. But I would prefer learning Native development over cross platform.
You use flutter for wrong purpose. If you have to deal with platform specific, you should code in native.
If you’re needing platform specific code, that’s when it’s a a sign that Flutter might not be the best option for you.
@@NMNaufaldo Yeah! That's what I am saying that atleast once in your life you have to deal with Platform specific code so I don't really think it's good option at least for now.
Supporting multiple screen sizes is very easy in Flutter. It doesn't seem you were using it correctly.
@@acid2go It may be, but I had used Flutter for some basic games like tic tac toe in that game I had used some animations, that animations just sucked on my phone, on other phones it worked fine but when I tested it on other phones similar to mine, it failed miserably. Also I used to calculate dimensions of my widgets by the percentage of device dimensions. It worked fine for larger devices but again it failed to draw widgets properly on smaller devices. This is why I shifted to Native Android development, it is a lot more easier at least for me. I respect your opinion because I was not an expert in Flutter but yeah experience I had with Flutter was just terrible. It's been one year since I have left Flutter so some issues might have been fixed. But yeah I would definitely not goanna try Flutter again 🤣😂.