I think this shows that Compose is not ready for i...

# compose

[codeslubber]

I think this shows that Compose is not ready for its Hello World yet: https://gist.github.com/ErikHellman/d95ba1fa789e598a2ec6d40e69512b8d
takes a lot of ugly little tweaks to make a form with 2 input fields..

[Foso]

Compose is in a pre-alpha dev version, it's not supposed to be ready

[shikasd]

What do you consider "ugly little tweaks" though?

[codeslubber]

Are you seriously saying something that was presented to a dev conference should not yet have a clean and convincing Hello World? I didn’t say it wasn’t ready for Production Deployment? My point is if you want to convince people to use something, and that they are going to like the future, show them an impressive example right?

[Ian Warwick]

My effort so far, defo hello ready

[Ian Warwick]

did you check the Jetnews sample? https://github.com/android/compose-samples

[codeslubber]

Yes of course. I have the JetNews Sample, and it’s good. The point I am making is that if a framework makes some stuff easier and better and other things become a nuisance, then it’s not as clean a win. Especially if those other things are required to have your app you are working on not look like garbage. In this respect, I think so far SwiftUI is winning: the code completion guides you to tweaks, and their defaults are not as full of stumbles. And you don’t have to write as much code to do things like fix a border.

[curioustechizen]

The API of Compose is evolving. Google could have developed it behind closed doors and given us a beta once it had many more features. But they chose to develop it in the open in order to get community feedback and to give the community a chance to shape the library.

The feedback that you have is exactly the kind of feedback they're looking for. In my opinion you could just open an issue on the issue tracker with your suggestions for the API. That would be fruitful.

[codeslubber]

I am not crapping on Compose, love it so far. I am mostly talking about 2 things:

1. it’s critical that the defaults are good, the fact that a textbox renders input right up to the border is just plain silly
2. the tooling is potentially going to make or break this, um folks, Apple went after layout oriented tooling with storyboards etc., and now is totally bailing, but somehow they have put more thought into discovery of adjustments people will need? boggles the mind…
My other main thought posting was maybe someone was going to tell me I was wrong. I think I can say with confidence that if I did a presentation talking about the advantages of Declarative, and got someone excited, then showed them that for a username/password, they would think I was punking them.

[codeslubber]

One other point: there is good knowledge, and there is bad knowledge. Bad knowledge is you learned the thousand required hacks to get something to look good with CSS. Good knowledge is you used a domain model, learned it, and now feel like you could come back and use that framework or code again with confidence, not slinking along trying to remember where all the unexploded bombs are in the rubble.

[curioustechizen]

All I'm saying is there are more constructive ways of providing all of this really valuable feedback to the team.

[Ruckus]

...if a framework makes some stuff easier and better and other things become a nuisance...

Isn't that basically the definition of a framework though?

[Ryan Mentley]

Also worth noting that as simple as anything text-related looks from the outside, it's definitely one of the most complex components internally, to the point that text has a dedicated engineering team. I don't want to speak on their behalf, but my impression is that they want to get the details of the API right before focusing on the details of rendering (especially because those details are dictated, to some degree, by the API)

[codeslubber]

Yeah I get that, but I think everyone would agree that intelligent defaults, doing a lot with a little, this is the make or break with these kinds of frameworks, SwiftUI did theirs, Flutter has them, these guys have had a year, all I am saying is just make a better hello world ffs, not busting their chops for not getting to every single thing… lot of people in the Swift community were like ‘until the team has made it possible to _______ I refuse to give it a minute of my time..’ I am not saying that at all.

I think maybe I will make a video of doing some hello world type stuff, and showing how hard things can happen fast and well, then all the time you saved gets bled out in stupid things.. let’s fix the stupid things, make them easier to find/understand, or let me ignore them for as long as possible…