Could you point me to some tools/hardware/solutions you used for home automation? I'm about to start such project for my new flat and I'm looking for information/inspiration.
I think desktop support will always be there in some form or another because I believe to port flutter to some particular platform wouldn't be a massive amount of work. Reason is that Flutter is written to address a graphics layer such as OpenGL or equivalent. The iOS/Android apps it generates are just a single view with graphics and touch input, similar to a Unity game for example.
This sort of thing predates GitHub. Microsoft had the PowerToys for Windows -- it was a Microsoft software product for Windows, but it didn't undergo the same level of vetting as something that was part of Windows, and if you broke something using it, you were on your own.
It's not crazy for someone at Google to want to use Flutter on the desktop, to build something to scratch their own itch, and to release it while not wanting to commit to the same level of support that Google gives to mainline Flutter.
This is pretty off-topic, but I used to love the PowerToys. I have very fond memories of browsing through TweakUI's options and trying things, and what surprises me most about those twenty-year old memories is that I remember how things smelled.
I'd wager you'll find the same statement on 90% of the repos under /google/
Employees agree that Google will own their creative output, even off the clock. Those personal project repos are almost always managed by a Google-owned GitHub organisation.
> Unless your project is an official Google product, you must state “This is not an officially supported Google product” in an appropriate location such as the project’s README file.
> We do this to help set appropriate expectations for users of these projects. Projects that include this label may not be staffed like larger, supported products such as Android, Chromium, or Go are. Support and/or new releases may be limited.
The idea is that projects developed by Googlers and owned by Google will be released under this GitHub org, to indicate Google's giving back to the open-source community, but that it isn't subject to any of Google's terms or support per se.
I love Flutter, but I'm still slightly reluctant to go for full adoption until I see a firm commitment to Dart. If Google makes Dart the main SDK language for Android (like Swift on iOS), that'll do it!
The reply from a Google employee when asked this question was to look at the Google AdWords team - they have invested heavily in Flutter for their Google Ads app on iOS and Android. He basically said Flutter will be supported for 10+ years as a minimum.
I've worked quite a bit with Dart on my time the past year and it was great. Being a JS/TS developper I found my mark pretty quickly. However as it's not _that_ popular and the online resources (be it SO questions or articles) are a bit scarce and the most recent one are usually centered around Flutter and not just Dart.
I'll keep playing with it and if the possibility would occur I'd happily work full time with Dart.
Our product Feather is based on this one. If you want to try running a few Flutter apps on macOS, see the 'Sample Apps' section on this page: https://feather-apps.com/
Just tried the some of the apps and while it seems pretty promising, they are really mobile apps running on the desktop, in fact, it even says that on the website :). For example, the picker is a carousel wheel and not a native looking control. I understand that is still Alpha but do you plan to make it feel more like a desktop application?
Right now we are focused on other areas like producing a Windows version and supporting more Flutter plugins.
Making it feel like a desktop app might be something we tackle in the longer term. But my personal view is that platform fidelity isn't particularly important as long as an app is fast, responsive and looks good. eg. Gmail and Spotify have been wildly successful without needing to look like native apps.
I am old and used a lot of different GUI development tools. From Xwindows to React. Then AWT, Swing, Qt, Android, iOS, and many others inbetween.
Flutter is the real deal, IMO. The reason is it offers a superior developer UX.
It is the hot reload aspect without having to do web development. Then the weird feature that I now love is how it retains state when developing. This is such a simple thing that you get use to and hard to lose.
I think at the annual Flutter conf in November they said they will be working towards making flutter officially support desktops.
I hope Flutter and ScenicUX[1] can become strong options for building lightweight, good looking UIs for apps and embedded device interfaces. By 'embedded' I mean something like a raspi connected to a 7" touch screen
If they support desktop correctly (including accessibility, Left to right languages etc) I honestly believe this technology could be a game changer for cross platform development.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 88.3 ms ] threadI am still waiting to see if that is a Chrome and Angular level commitment or what.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PowerToys
It's not crazy for someone at Google to want to use Flutter on the desktop, to build something to scratch their own itch, and to release it while not wanting to commit to the same level of support that Google gives to mainline Flutter.
Employees agree that Google will own their creative output, even off the clock. Those personal project repos are almost always managed by a Google-owned GitHub organisation.
And it feels like this gets brought up in 90% of HN threads about google owned projects
Is this true, and does it apply to all google employees? Gosh, it better be a huge wage to justify that.
> Unless your project is an official Google product, you must state “This is not an officially supported Google product” in an appropriate location such as the project’s README file.
> We do this to help set appropriate expectations for users of these projects. Projects that include this label may not be staffed like larger, supported products such as Android, Chromium, or Go are. Support and/or new releases may be limited.
The idea is that projects developed by Googlers and owned by Google will be released under this GitHub org, to indicate Google's giving back to the open-source community, but that it isn't subject to any of Google's terms or support per se.
Making it feel like a desktop app might be something we tackle in the longer term. But my personal view is that platform fidelity isn't particularly important as long as an app is fast, responsive and looks good. eg. Gmail and Spotify have been wildly successful without needing to look like native apps.
Flutter is the real deal, IMO. The reason is it offers a superior developer UX.
It is the hot reload aspect without having to do web development. Then the weird feature that I now love is how it retains state when developing. This is such a simple thing that you get use to and hard to lose.
I hope Flutter and ScenicUX[1] can become strong options for building lightweight, good looking UIs for apps and embedded device interfaces. By 'embedded' I mean something like a raspi connected to a 7" touch screen
[1]: https://github.com/boydm/scenic/blob/master/README.md