Why Flutter MAY be the Next Big thing
My first thought reading the article that I’m going to reply, was to ignore it, because I disagree on each point of this writing, but then someone asked me what I thought about it, so I decided to critically answer to each point in this article:
It’s Not React Native
I sincerely tried to understand why this should be an issue, Flutter also has a great number of people believing in the framework, and an increasing numbers of communities focus on Flutter each days, but the main point of the article talked about Companies, because companies already have javascript developers, standing by this logic even Kotlin and Swift should have failed, because Companies had Java and obj-c developer right?
Luckily technologies evolve, and sometime a new framework/languages rises, you can found something you are comfortable on and stick to it until the next big change… Static mind is the worst enemy of a developer, if you don’t keep your mind open to new things you can become obsolete in no time.
It’s Not Native
This, while being false, because Flutter is compiled in native bytecode, also expose another issue that Flutter doesn’t have, if Google or Apple make a breaking change in the way a component is used, make the way React Native manage said component broken, and you have to wait until the framework gets updated, while the vantage point on Flutter is that your application can’t be broken by those kind of updates, because the engine is rendering all the widget without asking using the actual components, sure, if you have Google going out with a major design change you may wait some time to have it (remember the switch between Holo and Material?) but the Widget system is flexible enough to make your developer able to manage any kind of design proposed.
Also Flutter is completely opensource, so if you find a bug, you can wait the fix from Google or just fork the package that have the issue and fix that until you have the official fix, I did it once for the video_player and it was incredibly easy.
You Still Have to Write Most of Your Application Twice
If you have two different version of the application, with a complete different look and feel, yes, you need to write most of your application Twice, but to be honest it never happened to me once.
I had a big application in production, and excluding a couple of line of configuration and when I had to compile the application for the AppStore I never had the need to open XCode, to further prove my point I didn’t even tested the application in iOS before finishing it, just tested it on Android and then tried on iOS and it worked without any breaking issue, only some small tweaking had to be done.
With one small application I had also a further surprise, my application was also working on web without a single change in the code.
Support Is Negligible
Flutter in my opinion has one of the most complete and best written documentation of any code language I have ever seen, and if you ask online for support you get almost immediately an answer, I can agree with the article about online courses and books, but you can find a great amount of tutorial and guides, written and in video, a lot of content from independent devs and Flutter team, communities are increasing in numbers day by day, and I do the opposite of what is said on StackOverflow, I look for unanswered questions, but I can hardly find any question in which I can reply because I found already an answer on those.
Flutter’s Lifetime Is Questionable
Nobody can take for granted anything in technology, but Google is investing heavy on Flutter, many google products are already made in Flutter, even the new Stadia service relies on an app completely done in Flutter.
Sure, Jetpack compose and SwiftUI run along the same line of declarative programming but If both the technologies succede on reduce the time of developing the single native applications, they lack in the great advantage that you can use Flutter to do both in almost the same time!
Also google can cut their support on Flutter, but Flutter is opensource! so it can be continued without Google supporting it.
Watch Your Language
Dart is a full fledged language without any major drawback from other modern languages, sure, Kotlin may be more famous and more used, but language is not really important for a skilled developer, logic and syntax differ really by a small amount, and a seasoned developer will find really easy to switch to any C like language without any trouble.
What matters in development is the basic knowledge about programming, and the knowledge of the platform you are working on, a cycle is a cycle in any programming language, you just need to get used to it.
Dart is lean, modern and not verbose and this is a big advantage in a world full of weird coding languages.
Clients Don’t Want It
Flutter request are increasing day by day, and while having a lot of job requests the number of seasoned Flutter developer is really small, a lot of companies have hard time to find a developer to fill the gap they need to accept all the incoming requests.
Try to check on linkedin for Flutter, you can be surprised by the number of opening on this field.
Direct customers can be a little hard to reach, but market requires time, and for Flutter the time may be in the near future.
