Flutter is still a thing? :grimacing: :eyes:

# random

[Stefan Oltmann]

Flutter is still a thing? 😬 👀

[trevjones]

you can even identify the offending parties pretty easily.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fluttershark.fluttersharkapp

[Pablichjenkov]

The article makes an unfair comparison between languages and framework popularity by starts on GitHub. It compares swift vs kotlin vs Flutter but the right comparison should be swift vs kotlin vs dart.

[Pablichjenkov]

Above is basically, swift -> 68.8K, Kotlin -> 50.9K, dart -> 10.7K.
The other stuff in the article are basically opinion based not sure if it offers real value TBH 😕

[Pablichjenkov]

BTW I catch 2 Apps using Flutter in my device. One is a local parking App, really simple, less than 5 screens but the other is interesting, it is CVS pharmacy App. It uses Flutter but at the same time they use Compose too. Not sure what side they are migrating to now 😀

[trevjones]

Flutter is new to CVS in the last release or two. Turns out that when your business is so huge a 1 billion dollar fine is just a speed bump, a terrible idea like using flutter when you already invested in compose is too.

[Pablichjenkov]

Seems they don't have what to spend the money in 🤷‍♂️

[trevjones]

Should be interesting for sure to watch what the CVS app team decides to put flutter effort into. Decision seems to have come down from architect types that don't actually write code. I work on the Aetna insurance side so I don't get much leverage to push back on the choice, at least until we update our vaccine scheduling feature we pull from them and get a bunch of bloat in our download size. I'll probably make a bunch of WTF noise once it actually impacts us.

[trevjones]

Even then it might fall on deaf ears. I don't write much app code anymore, gradle and ci/cd tooling for android is my playground

[Pablichjenkov]

Lol but what is evident is the willingness to do multiplatform from many companies nowadays.

[trevjones]

ironically there is very little effort toward KMP here. I have maybe one or two thought leaders that would love to do it on the android + insurance side. Personally I don't want to burn the time in the build migrations until I know the iOS folks won't have such a headache with workflow changes.

[Pablichjenkov]

Like everything, some people might have preferences for other languages and frameworks.
I do foresee an increase of iOS devs wanting to use swift on Android. That is a good step towards multiplatform willingness in general. I do see native Ui and shared logic, either swift or kotlin like a great futuristic approach. I think both Apple and Google have proved that sharing UI is not the best thing to do. Although obviously it depends whether you are interested in looking native or not.