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Comment by akerro | Hacker News Reader

>It's the best multi-platform solution for mobile

They announced beta version for Windows in the last few weeks, so what to expect? I've been using it on linux desktop for 4 months so far, there were many problems, but it's absolutely the best framework so far. It's miles ahead of Qt (which I've been programming in since 2010). Dart and flutter are just years ahead of Java, C#, Qt and React Native in terms of positive programmer experience, productivity, good looking UI. There are so many bad things to say too, but all I can think about are only due to immature ecosystem, but that's changing literally daily.

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Hoe is it ahead of Qt (on desktop)?

I'm wondering this, too. While I enjoy Flutter, it doesn't hold a candle to the extensive Qt library and QML.

Specially to the graphical designer tools, or the quality of third party component libraries.

I wrote it's more pleasant to be used by programmers by giving better experience, then I wrote it's ecosystem is immature, but growing. As of now, it has its better and worse sides.

Dart is the reason I don't like flutter.

Why do you feel C# is worse then Dart?

Dart is...fine. The real value comes in its code generation features, which enable packages to add whatever language features they want even if the language maintainers don't (yet), such as algebraic data types, functional programming features, etc. You can argue this as being good or bad for future maintenance but it's nice to have the ability to add to the language.

> The real value comes in its code generation features, which enable packages to add whatever language features they want

Got any eamples of ADTs, pattern matching, immutable collections, data classes, named parameters, etc.?

Coming from Scala and TypeScript the Dart language is pretty unappealing wrt syntax and functionality, kind of archaic actually. Flutter looks amazing and have been hoping that Dart would evolve more quickly than it has.

https://pub.dev/packages/freezed is ADTs, pattern matching, Dataclasses. named parameters are already part of the language.

There’s about 4 different packages that provide immutable collections, built_collections might be the most popular.

Dart is just about tolerable but Dart + Flutter widget hell is not.

> It's miles ahead of Qt (which I've been programming in since 2010).

Would you mind elaborating?

Flutter widget hell makes Javascript callback trees look tame. I just don't get the buzz around this atrocious style of coding.

You commented this elsewhere too without elaboration. I'm curious as to what you mean by 'widget hell'.

I founded the nested tree of widgets syntax good after getting over the (short) initial learning curve. Some basic good programming practice over shared bits and it was very maintainable even for complex screens.

Why is this style of programming frowned upon in Javascript yet idiomatic in Flutter?

Widgets are declarative, like in HTML, the nesting is additional information. With callback hell, you nest logic, and actually obfusc information about the control flow.

I'm not sure what you are talking about. Javascript developers also use HTML and the ability to nest HTML elements is "idiomatic" as well.

This is a wonderful answer and much better than what I was about to write.

Flutter Widgets, like HTML are declarative. They're just hierarchical information. This works in HTML, and it works in Flutter - there's nothing to get confused about.

Nested control flow (if statements, loops etc.) obscures the actual behaviour and so good practice is to break it up until it is clear and understandable.

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