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Comment by nevi-me | Hacker News Reader

Flutter is good, I echo the author's sentiments. I wrote a Flutter app for Android in a very short period, relative to my Android Java attempt.

The use of widgets saves a lot of time, leaving one to focus on connecting everything together. It's also easier to learn than React Native (for me at least).

The current downside for me has been the lack of maps (I'm aware of current efforts). I also hit a weird Firebase Messaging bug that leads to an infinite loop of the app opening itself [0].

I agree with the author regarding the strong Firebase push. The community doesn't yet seem large enough, so outside of wine of the Google supported plugins, it's sometimes a struggle.

I am building a second app in Flutter, using the new Material stuff that Google announced this year.

[0] https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/18524

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For me, as a long-time Dart user, the emphasis on Firebase for Flutter surprised me at first, given that there are several existing server-side frameworks in Dart that could be used to create full-stack apps. I personally found myself frustrated at the difficulties and breakages that sometimes come with upgrading native plugins between versions of Flutter, so for some time I was confused.

But it actually makes sense on a closer look. Dart on the server is not officially supported, as the primary focus of Dart is use as a client-side language, so it would be a bit confusing for the Flutter documentation to recommend using Dart for a backend.

That being said, I think Flutter is a great platform for quickly building apps, and getting consistent behavior across different vendors. I think that it can only continue to get better.

> dart on the server is not officially supported

What gives you that idea? The Dart VM is listed on the platform page for command line and server side programs. https://www.dartlang.org/guides/platforms

Dart VM != Dart server in this case.

The focus of Dart 2 and beyond is the client side [0].

You can definitely run Dart in the VM, but beyond the HttpServer API, server-side support is mostly a community effort.

My point isn't that this is a bad thing, it's that it makes sense for Firebase to be promoted because Dart doesn't have _official_ server-side support.

[0]: https://medium.com/dartlang/announcing-dart-2-80ba01f43b6

I just think saying that it doesn't have "server-side support" is misleading. It makes it sound as though you'd need third-party code to run on the server at all.

I do agree they have pivoted to a more client-sided branding though.

Our focusing on the client doesn't mean you can't use Dart on the server. In fact, we (the Flutter team) use it on the server.

Analogy: JavaScript is focused on the client too, but people also use it on the server.

> dart on the server is not officially supported

It is more nuanced: Dart on the server side is supported, but the development focus is on the client-side stories (Flutter and Angular).

Google's Dart team develops e.g. the Dart VM which is great for server workloads too, they do provide some server-side libraries, but they themselves don't work on third-party database drivers (for now).

Think of it as the question of focus: they want to focus on the client-side story, get it right, and then deal with the rest. Spreading thin won't help either.

I'm extremely surprised to hear that dart server doesn't have any database driver. Are you sure about that ?

To me , dart on the server , with their agent / isolate based concurrency as well as async await language support, provides ( in theory ) one of the most exciting environment to develop backends on.

Dart has database drivers, and I'm using the Appengine and the Postgres one in server-side Dart apps.

But Google's Dart team is not actively involved in developing e.g. the Postgres driver, it is done by an independent company who is building their stack on server-side Dart.

Btw. I agree: the isolate-based concurrency + language tools is really great for server-side Dart apps. I use it in a highly concurrent data setup, and I wouldn't switch to other language.

Firebase gets pushed into all Android developers since Google's acquisition, just check the amount of Firebase related sessions at the following IO's.

From Google's point of view, we would all be using it.

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