Very interesting UI development paradigm: https://youtu.be/nWr6eZKM6no
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Flutter and Dart are a very flexible package with a huge ecosystem in the meantime. Goot stuff for mobile applications. This one is also a good addendum for Flutter Developers
https://www.flutterflow.io/ I really like this tool. The export code is quite messy, but with AI, everything can be cleaned up. When my clients request demo apps, I can complete them in just two hours. Is Flutter the future of multi-platform development?
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I sure hope so. I moved from Xojo to FlutterFlow 2 1/2 years ago and the speed at which I can produce multiplatform apps is unparalleled. I still love it despite all the criticism it receives because of their shift to AI with DreamFlow.
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I tried Dreamflow right away and ended up upgrading immediately. It just makes more sense compared to Xojo, where you have to upgrade just to get API updates, or Livecode, which forces you into a subscription. Dreamflow also has no vendor lock-in. And if I’m feeling lazy about building something, I can just open the AI prompt and still get code done. Honestly, Flutter feels like the future for multi-platform development and learning dart lang from now is the right decision for the latest project
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btw, if any of you are interested, the flutter conference, next summer, is in orlando…
i’ve been using flutter for a little under a year. i’ve been able to build multiple apps with it, but the widget tree is obnoxious the way LISP is obnoxious.
i tried really hard to make flutterflow work, but it has exactly the same problem that every other low/no code tool has - it’s great for prototypes, but it’s awful once it’s time to make those prototypes useful. i eventually threw in the towel on it, because i was able to very quickly get any of the ai models to build much better prototypes, much faster, with code that i could actually extend, afterwards. it’s impressive how fast you can build prototypes with the llm’s - not full production code, but prototypes.
the concern with flutter is that it’s a sibling of kotlin, and google has split loyalties: kotlin seems to build better android apps, and flutter builds better x-platform apps than KMP. KMP is kind-of a 70/30 solution (70% of your app code is universal, 30 is platform-specific), flutter is much closer to 90/10.
now that swift is making a run at trying to be x-platform, it’s going to be really difficult to decide: RN, KMP, Flutter, or Swift?
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Most probably YES!
Swift has still a long way to go to be truly x-platform.
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Hobby developer here. I read this everywhere by seasoned developers, so there must be something to it. Would you have some details/examples where FlutterFlow fails?
every low-no code tool is great for simple projects, and even for some prototypes. if it works for you, by all means, use it. but, every low-no code tool that i have ever tried:
- falls down when it comes to adding complexity (stuff that’s beyond what’s already in their toolkit). in my case, a gridded toolbar broke FF
- is pretty rigid in what they allow you to do, and how you can do it (which, for me, gets to be really annoying, quickly)
- has a property manager that is crippled/underpowered/has some limit that is not the limit of the objects in the UI (why can’t i set property x?). i was trying to make a button that throbbed, but there was no way to do that without extending the framework. doing it just in FF made the animation extremely slow.
- the ones that build code (including flutterflow) do it in such a way that extending the code is difficult - far more difficult than if you didn’t have their framework. i wanted to add my throbbing button, and hooks to serverpod (a dart-based postgres backend).
don’t let me discourage you from using FF, or any other low/no-code tool. build something with it. if it gets you where you need to be, then you’re set. if you can’t get where you need to be, then understand that you are probably going to have to start over, and rebuild with a different tool, because you (probably) won’t be able to export it in a way that makes using it with another tool easy.
i would also suggest that you try using an llm to build the same something, and see how it goes. that’s how i ended up discarding flutterflow, after i paid for a pro subscription. i ran into all of the issues, above, then i tried rebuilding the same app with an llm, completed the work much faster, and had something that was much easier to work with. it was a mess, for sure, but it was still much easier to work with.
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for everyone curious about/interested in flutter, the flutter forum is a good place to hang out. we have members of the flutter team, and some key personnel from a number of the key players in the space on the forum.
It looks good for beginners to get into it, it is nothing for production use and complex UI’s for big apps. And compared to Xojo it has for iOS and android much more functionality than XoJo has. But it isn’t a simple to use toolkit. Yu still have to write Dart Code and you still have to handle Flutter for special things and to make your app nice. So it is nothing for clear beginners with small hobby projects. To make a prototyping FlutterFlow is nice and reliable. Not more. Not less.It woks in the most cases without any problem.
I was prompted by the forum to highlight an answer, which doesn’t really apply to this post. But in re-reading the thread I realized that some/many/all of you maybe didn’t get the gist of genUI.
It is not an AI system for developing the app, it is a built-in, real-time UI generator that adapts the UI to the end user’s needs. So it’s an AI running in your deployed app. It helps end users find and focus on what they need to do in your app without needing to know the entire layout and where everything is. It should help reduce tech support and training for your app. And inherent in this is auto-adapting to each device/platform it runs on.
I haven’t tried it myself yet because a) I haven’t had the time and b) I want to learn Dart/Flutter a little better before diving into this.
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I understood what it is. And I know that it is not AI driven development. But I also realized: should only be used by developers able to write Flutter Dart already. For a XoJo programmer it is a steep learning curve. But it looks not bad