6 ms·

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 jus

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.

deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]
monocasa 1mo ago
Google internally uses dart, and I remember hearing that adwords in particular was rewritten in dart at least for the frontend relatively recently. So they're probably investing in it enough for basic maintenance, but don't really care about evolving the language.
- skybrian 1mo ago
  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.
  - pjmlp 1mo ago
    In fact AdWords is the reason Dart was still around when Flutter came to be.
    - spwa4 1mo ago
      They still maintaining it's predecessor that the Google "core properties" ran on: Closure (not Clojure), the javascript compiler. It's an evolution of the hack that Gmail initially was built on.
vmg12 1mo ago
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.
- cageface 1mo ago
  I’ve had good experiences with Flutter too. It’s actually much easier to build a performant macOS app with flutter than with SwiftUI.
  - wiseowise 1mo ago
    > It’s actually much easier to build a performant macOS app with flutter than with SwiftUI. Got any case studies?
    - cageface 1mo ago
      Just my own apps. Getting good performance out of SwiftUI on Mac is quite difficult. Loads of footguns.
      - mathverse 1mo ago
        And yet I dont see any Flutter macos apps at all.
- formvoltron 1mo ago
  Curious how you feel about KMP and Kotlin Compose.
gman83 1mo ago
I guess because they have buy-in from within Google? Google Pay, NotebookLM, Family Link, Google One, etc. are made with Flutter.
deepsun 1mo ago
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.
gumby271 1mo ago
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.
- matchbok3 1mo ago
  Right, but, nobody uses it. So what's the point for Google?
  - gkhartman 1mo ago
    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.
  - monocasa 1mo ago
    Google AdSense uses it.
  - vips7L 1mo ago
    The creator of flutter was on here saying that 1/3 of all apps on the App Store use it. That seems to be a lot more than “nobody”.
    - owebmaster 1mo ago
      [flagged]
      - vips7L 1mo ago
        How do you know? Why are we inclined to believe you over him?
Scene_Cast2 1mo ago
In one of their dev surveys, they did float the idea of divesting Flutter.
jauntywundrkind 1mo ago
Flutter's not a web ecosystem project. It doesn't do HTML at all. Using canvas to pump pixels in people's faces does not the web make.
defo10 1mo ago
People don't get how important it is to have control over the basically the whole programming ecosystem of a particular language. Google services dominate Flutter. Look at all the services Google provides. You'll find first class support in Flutter. Compare that to AWS, Azure, etc and these usually have wip features or simple adapters. So if you like and use flutter/dart, for whatever reason really, chances are you'll use any of Google's services because their integration into the framework is much better, and the libraries are better maintained. I am convinced they did some proper analysis in-house and continuously find that investing the flutter/dart yields returns across all other services. The language/platform is the gateway.

deleted 1mo ago

[deleted]

monocasa 1mo ago

Google internally uses dart, and I remember hearing that adwords in particular was rewritten in dart at least for the frontend relatively recently. So they're probably investing in it enough for basic maintenance, but don't really care about evolving the language.

skybrian 1mo ago
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.
- pjmlp 1mo ago
  In fact AdWords is the reason Dart was still around when Flutter came to be.
  - spwa4 1mo ago
    They still maintaining it's predecessor that the Google "core properties" ran on: Closure (not Clojure), the javascript compiler. It's an evolution of the hack that Gmail initially was built on.

vmg12 1mo ago

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.

cageface 1mo ago
I’ve had good experiences with Flutter too. It’s actually much easier to build a performant macOS app with flutter than with SwiftUI.
- wiseowise 1mo ago
  > It’s actually much easier to build a performant macOS app with flutter than with SwiftUI. Got any case studies?
  - cageface 1mo ago
    Just my own apps. Getting good performance out of SwiftUI on Mac is quite difficult. Loads of footguns.
    - mathverse 1mo ago
      And yet I dont see any Flutter macos apps at all.
formvoltron 1mo ago
Curious how you feel about KMP and Kotlin Compose.

gman83 1mo ago

I guess because they have buy-in from within Google? Google Pay, NotebookLM, Family Link, Google One, etc. are made with Flutter.

deepsun 1mo ago

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.

gumby271 1mo ago

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.

matchbok3 1mo ago
Right, but, nobody uses it. So what's the point for Google?
- gkhartman 1mo ago
  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.
- monocasa 1mo ago
  Google AdSense uses it.
- vips7L 1mo ago
  The creator of flutter was on here saying that 1/3 of all apps on the App Store use it. That seems to be a lot more than “nobody”.
  - owebmaster 1mo ago
    [flagged]
    - vips7L 1mo ago
      How do you know? Why are we inclined to believe you over him?

Scene_Cast2 1mo ago

In one of their dev surveys, they did float the idea of divesting Flutter.

jauntywundrkind 1mo ago

Flutter's not a web ecosystem project. It doesn't do HTML at all. Using canvas to pump pixels in people's faces does not the web make.

defo10 1mo ago

People don't get how important it is to have control over the basically the whole programming ecosystem of a particular language. Google services dominate Flutter. Look at all the services Google provides. You'll find first class support in Flutter. Compare that to AWS, Azure, etc and these usually have wip features or simple adapters. So if you like and use flutter/dart, for whatever reason really, chances are you'll use any of Google's services because their integration into the framework is much better, and the libraries are better maintained. I am convinced they did some proper analysis in-house and continuously find that investing the flutter/dart yields returns across all other services. The language/platform is the gateway.