Flutter, an open-source framework created by Google in 2017, still stands out as a beacon of innovation and efficiency.

(Un)popular opinion written by engineers, first-hand advice on career or challenging projects, and thoughts from prominent industry voices. This is a place to share and comment the best of ShiftMag.

ShiftMag - Insightful Engineering Content

Flutter is an open-source framework that offers high-performance app development, rapid iteration with hot reload, and a thriving community. It excels in networking and custom UI applications, IoT projects, and MVP development. Flutter is a good choice for streamlining development and reducing workload, and it has been continuously enhanced with new features and capabilities. However, it still has some limitations compared to well-established web development frameworks.

Why use Flutter in 2024

Building high-performance, visually appealing applications with ease

Enhancing Flutter is a constant work in progress

I have never used flutter. We need more developers to comment from both using Swiftui and Kotlin vs flutter.

Flutter will be good when we doesn’t have any more things to use.
Jokes apart flutter can be good if the main focus isn’t web because in the web flutter is weak in performance and UX

Page is not a mobile friendly. On my device cut text and I can’t zoom out to see all content

I have not used flutter before but I am investing my energy in kotlin multiplatform mobile development… I dont really know if this is a good decision over flutter, the determination is triggered by my skill in Java which made kotlin a bit understanding and flowing so far… any contrary opinion?

Even if Flutter continues stealing hype from other tools on the market, I continue to prefer Delphi to it.
<ul>
<li>Language: Delphi uses an extended flavor of Object Pascal, supporting advanced features like Generics, Anonymous Methods (Closures), Attributes, RTTI (aka Reflection)… nothing less than Dart. I find it more elegant and readable compared to Dart.</li>
<li>Compiler: Delphi has a full set of native compilers for a lot of platforms, including Windows, Mac OS, iOS, Android, Linux and many tools for the Web, too.</li>
<li>Hot reload: Delphi doesn’t need you to hot reload anything, since you are visually designing your application through components, controls and RAD tools. But you can also get a preview of the UI on any platform at any time if you want, using a dedicated app, or view it right on your desktop.</li>
<li>Rendering: like Flutter, Delphi renders the UI using both native platform components or drawing them, with (or without) using Skia, the same library that Flutter is based on. And you have tons of themes and templates to use.</li>
<li>Projects: like Flutter, Delphi is suitable for business applications, both desktop and mobile, using a single codebase for all the supported platforms and devices; IoT is well supported since you can also deploy your apps on Android or Linux based devices like RaspberryPi, and you also have ready-to-use Bluetooth components and a nice Tethering library to connect apps together in a P2P scenario.</li>
<li>Backward compatibility: Flutter had changed a lot between releases, while Delphi values a lot the code you have writter during the nights supporting an almost unmatched backward compatibility, migrating even the oldest projects to the newer version in order to refactor and enhance the code, or to introduce new features (like new UI controls, theming, and so on).</li>
<li>More and more: Delphi has also a large library of ready-to-use database drivers, prototyping built-in capabilities for data and UI, drag&amp;drop support, integrations with Python, many components and controls available out-of-the-box (more than 400) and spread on the Web for years, source code included, one of the most robust and solid libraries (VCL) to build native Windows applications.</li>
</ul>
I could ramble on about more details but 1) I have limited time, 2) I am not so good in English, 3) it will be a very very long comment. 😊