Flutter Desktop - All 3 platforms are now ALPHA

24

I dont recall hearing the investment idea - maybe I did but that wa way outside my role so …
Even if that was mentioned 10 years ago that might not attract investors as the company was already 10 years old and investors in a 10 year old company might expect certain things
No idea - again way outside my role
Would have been interesting though

In one small startup I worked at we shared office space with a small company that was bought by MS for a silly sum
One of the principles of that other company always said “I’d like to have 5% of the shares in a 1 billion company rather than 50% of the shares in a 1 million $ company”
But the one thing he disliked when I talked to him years later was he was no longer his own boss in the same way
No idea if that plays a role in Xojo’s fortunes or not

At any rate I too am interested to see where Flutter / Dart land (along with other tools that are coming and that Iv’e played with a bit so far)

25

You’re saying that .NET6 will not require .NET runtime? I hadn’t heard that. No idea if flutter makes a standalone .exe/.app with no dependencies.

There’s still nothing AT ALL like Visual Studio for Windows on the Mac. I hadn’t heard there was an IDE for Linux. Is there?

Not sure why you checked this. Neither has a drag-drop X-Plat designer in their IDE.

You figure they’ll be a day when you can create MacOS apps on Windows without a Mac computer linked? Hasn’t happened yet. Still AFAIK Xojo is the only system that can do that.

Remains to be seen.

Keep in mind I’m a huge .NET fanboi; Would LOVE to see everything that Xojo does so easily available with the coding power of VB/C#. I have big hopes for .NET6 but remain skeptical. I’ve seen no hints of. a drag/drop UI designer, for example.
Xojo still has a much easier to use IDE than VS, when it comes to creating controls/inherited controls, things like that. And VS kills Xojo for debugging, code completion, organization of projects, etc, and of course power of the language.
VS could learn a lot from Xojo, and vice-versa.

1 Like
26

:face_with_raised_eyebrow:

image
image800×542 93.6 KB

1 Like
27

Neither does Xojo IMO. Back in the days when it could make a single .exe, they could. Now, not only your code is compiled but you need a whole bunch of external .dlls to make it work on Windows. I consider this ‘their’ runtime.

The one in Xojo has some major problems, it is best not to even mention that one. There is a thing like it ‘works’ and it is ‘workable’.

Nope, Xojo can’t anymore either: see macOS 64 bit build on Windows? - General - Xojo Programming Forum

I guess March 2023 would be a more reasonable target, no? :wink:

‘a lot’ is a bit of a stretch… The counter arguments (debugging, code completion, …) you make are a lot further up my list. And foremost stability is a ‘must-have’ for me as a professional programmer. Something Xojo hasn’t been for a decade.

So (together with @Ivan’s remark), as far as I see it, Xojo doesn’t make the cut either in your criteria.

It is clear that now that the big boys are jumping on the cross platform train, Xojo will have a hard time keeping up/chasing after (they are already way behind on the mobile platforms). And with their ‘bug’ track record, they are more and more pushed into the Toy Language category that many professional programmers will never even consider.

It is a tough choice to make indeed. When my brother and I had a company back in the day, we had investors coming over the floor all the time. But they always wanted 34% of the shares or more. Although my brother and me still had the majority (66%), we had the same concern that we wouldn’t be our ‘own boss’ and do the things we liked.

In retrospect, we probably should’ve done it. Although we were able to sell the company later on for a good price, I always think ‘what if?’. The suggested investments could’ve opened up so many doors and opportunities that would’ve allowed us to grow much bigger.
But we were young and wanted to take on the world on our own… :grin:

I too will definitely keep an eye on Flutter/.NET6 as this is a very interesting turn in cross platform world.

28

This: Create a single file for application deployment - .NET | Microsoft Learn

Flutter creates .exe with few companion dlls, zip it, unzip them anywhere, and run. By “dependencies” I understand you were criticizing the old DotNet that needed having the proper framework previously installed in the machine, like Java needs the JRE.

This exact one you see here for Mac, works there:

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/05/maui-03-mvu.gif(image larger than 4 MB)

Your original question was “having a designer” not “having an integrated designer”, but I’m ok if that is not enough for you.

The rest of your arguments are not important to me. Just a Xojo defense. My argument had zero Xojo references in it. I was just answering your questions. But again, I’m ok with Xojo defenses, not a fanboy of any party.

29

The Java JRE can also be embedded in the package (so running without installing Java)

30

The full JRE or just the pieces used by your program? That’s one difference. Last time I checked, JRE was a huge monolithic thing.

31

The 1-Click B4J Packager result is about 50MB in size, which is in the range of a Xojo App. It includes only what is used, next to an .exe

image

image

32

Here Erel did it for a Mac App (35MB)

33

Just click and run, or will see a JRE install at first run? If so, it evolved. JRE was a mess in the past (As DotNet).

34

No install at all.

35

Neither does Xojo IMO. Back in the days when it could make a single .exe, they could. Now, not only your code is compiled but you need a whole bunch of external .dlls to make it work on Windows. I consider this ‘their’ runtime.
Not at all
This is MS C runtimes as of late
And you have always with MS app had options about how to deply
Put DLL’s next to the EXE (got check out an office install) or install them

The old "single file exe’s were admittedly a hack that happened to work but somewhere in archives Aaron explains why they could not do that any more
Static linking of plugins wont work for myriad reasons

Single file exe’s for java are … interesting - GraalVM for instance is one that wraps the JVM and you code into a package that can run

36

That’s great. Now my argument against Java is just hating the language.

37

Indeed. There a quite some misconceptions about java.

But God, I loved it!

And with B4X, that one can go in the bin too as its language is a VB-like one just as Xojos! :laughing:

38

Good arguments. But I intend to follow the trends with large companies backing the tool sets.

39

Agreed, was just pointing out misconceptions, not trying to convince you. B4X is indeed a tool in the range of Xojo, not an industry standard. So let’s go back to topic ‘Flutter’ before they lock this topic and we’ll be banned… Oh right! This doesn’t happen here! :joy:

40

I’m the OP. I’ll invoke all my out of this world powers if such thing happens.

1 Like
41

hahahahaha!

42

The 2 might as well be written by diifferent companies (I think that might be the case - pretty sure VS for Mac was written by Xamarin). They are nothing like each other and VS for Windows is a completely different beast.

43

Xamarin is microsoft owned