Comment by agentifysh
16 hours ago
This is a welcome addition but why should Flutter devs use this ?
Seems like it requires 32gb of ram! Also Flutter is already very mature and can produce not only near-native mobile apps (the difference is almost negligible) but can target desktop and even web applications.
I do wonder how much of a boost skip offers vs Flutter's mobile apps. Will give skip a try when dram prices normalize.
See my response below on the KMP question: the comparison with CMP mostly applies to Flutter as well.
> near-native mobile apps (the difference is almost negligible)
Not as of the advent of Liquid Glass on iOS (and, to a lesser extent, Material Expressive on Android). Flutter isn't going to be implementing these new interface conventions[1], and so the UI for these apps are stuck on the last generation and are already starting to feel outdated.
Flutter's grim outlook has resulted in a surge of interest in Skip, and it was one of the drivers for us to open up the platform and catch the wave. If you love Dart, or if your apps don't need to look native (e.g., games or very bespoke interfaces), then Flutter might continue to be acceptable. But everyone else is starting to look elsewhere, especially in cases where their business depends on their apps feeling premium and native.
[1] https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/170310
> Flutter isn't going to be implementing these new interface conventions
To be fair reading those updates it sounds a lot more positive than this comment makes it seem. I.e. "they're pausing design updates while they figure out the best way to do it" rather than "they're not going to bother":
> This strategic pause on design updates gives us the space to ensure the long-term health and maintainability of Flutter's design libraries. We are committed to being transparent with our contributor community as we explore these options and will have more to share on our findings and future direction in the coming weeks.
and
> The material and cupertino libraries are being decoupled into standalone packages to accelerate feature development. All new work for iOS26 updates in Cupertino will happen in the new packages once established in flutter/packages.
Well sorry. But Android UI is bad just bad. The settings, the menus. Its bloated and almost as if they deliberately made it annoying to use. It just sucks.
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Dunno about Skip, but I can always tell when an app is Flutter. They feel like crap. Everything's a bit off with the native looking widgets. And fully custom designs still animate a bit weirdly. And they definitely still stutter. Somehow a tier below React Native.
Flutter re-generates the entire layout every tick and diffs it (immediate-mode), like a game engine. If your device isn't quite fast enough it'll lag, yep. RN is retained mode (but written in immediate-mode style and the diffing only happens when it has to).
That is absolutely not true. Elements with dirty layouts are tracked and layout is only recomputed up to the neearest layout boundary.
Interesting, I didn’t know that it was immediate mode. According to the article [1] though, it now uses rendering engine with Retained Mode due to performance issues.
[1] https://medium.com/@0s.and.1s/flutter-part-iv-skia-vs-impell...
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I'd say it's the opposite, on crappy devices, Flutter feels faster than native, not sure how but that's the end result. I've been testing on an old Samsung J3 and it's definitely better than native.
That's also maybe why it's so popular in India.
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Flutter is fine if you don't care about performance, accessibility, have no need to access native capabilities or non-fluttered widgets (ex: the Google map integration is awful) and overall just want to make an internal app.
The cost of making an excellent flutter app is about the same you'd pay making fully native apps. Except that you're always paying for Skia's costs with Flutter.
This recommends 32GB to run _everything_, so xcode, gradle, emulators, simulators, etc. Not fully surprising.
Flutter doesn't use Skia anymore and you can absolutely bind to native libraries from Flutter with ease [0]. The current strategy (build hooks) is relatively new. You can also just write Kotlin or Swift for your application [1] using channel APIs. Finally, you can still have native pages in your app if needed for certain widgets [2] and still save time rewriting everything and all of your business logic for every single other page of the application that doesn't need those widgets. In fact, you can even mix native widgets and Flutter-rendered widgets in the same screen.
[0]: https://docs.flutter.dev/platform-integration/bind-native-co...
[1]: https://docs.flutter.dev/platform-integration/platform-chann...
[2]: https://docs.flutter.dev/add-to-app
And are comfortable making a 1-2 million dollar per devteam per year bet that Google won't rug pull you. And they seem to have no important or big app on it.
On an unrelated note, in 2024 Google did layoffs on the Flutter team.
That sounds like the worst parts of native dev + PWAs combined
What?! Flutter is literally a game engine, its faster than native even on older phones and pretty much most of the issues you are talking about is old news lol
Flutter still doesn't support liquid glass on iOS so it doesn't seem like a serious contender to me at this point. And due to the nature of how Flutter is implemented, it's going to continuously be an uphill battle. Maybe it's fine if you intend on having a completely custom UI and don't care about platform look and feel.
> Flutter still doesn't support liquid glass on iOS
Literally every iOS developer under the sun will tell me that this is a good thing.
Why? I'm an iOS developer and, while I don't love everything about liquid glass, that is the current design language of iOS.
I certainly don't think having my app sticking out like a sore thumb, using a design language from old outdated iOS versions is "a good thing"
No. I’m an iOS developer and will not tell you that, except to say it’s a good thing to have one more reason for the people not to use flutter.
That’s not a good thing if you don’t adapt liquid glass. I’m an iOS developer.
In general, the "render UI as if it were a video game" route feels like a bit of a dead end on mobile to me. On desktop it's more workable but still isn't without issues.
I've heard bad things about liquid glass and plan to skip that OS release, so not implementing it seems like an advantage from my perspective.
Tried using Flutter a year ago to make a simple Mac app. I don't think it was ready at the time. Also poor documentation.