How big is the Flutter team?

https://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1714717681

by serial_dev • 2 years ago

53 19 2 years ago

ln.hixie.ch

Meh.

I've built several small projects in Flutter. Google doesn't Dogfood it properly, and just cut a significant number of staff working on it.

I want Flutter to succeed, but I don't have too much faith it long term. That said, if I had to hack out a quick app right now for a client I'd probably use Flutter. Development is fast and easy. You can just write code as if you're writing JS and learn a bit of extra syntax.

React Native has it's own issues, but I have more faith in Meta to keep funding it.

serial_dev• 2 years ago

It turns out, Google didn't actually cut a significant number of staff working on it:

No change in team size; some DevOps roles moving to new locations.

From the Product Manager of Flutter and Dart.

https://twitter.com/MiSvTh/status/1785767966815985893

9999000009992• 2 years ago

If you outsource people your still cutting the team.

I just don't have too much faith in Google here.

holografix• 2 years ago

What a strange article.

Obviously the question that really needs answered is “does Flutter have a future?”

Given Google is notorious for killing popular products, the fact they just fired a bunch of people dedicated to make this product work and the rather niche nature of Dart and Flutter… all signs point to it being becoming an open source project.

Can it survive as an OSS project?

tracker1• 2 years ago

That's kind of my concern as well. Hoping it does survive.

klabb32• 2 years ago

In my experience Google’s OSS projects have a high bar and have a less kafkaesque leadership than Google products. Now, one issue is that all tech that’s derivative of Google, ie Bazel, Go or k8s, tends to have “blind spots” where some parts are ignored because it’s not a need internally. The prime example would be Go’s utter garbage dependency management prior to go mod, which came very late. This wasn’t much of a priority for Google because they had their monorepo. (Nowadays it’s all dandy though). Conversely, what oss language writes sanitizers, race detectors, coverage checkers, migration tooling etc? Only the big guys do, and that can be quite nice for the rest of us.

Anyway, Flutter! Yes technically it’s an “open source project” but really it’s halfway to product/platform, no? That’s probably a bad sign (not Googles fault but run-of-the-mill oss maintainers don’t typically excel at product and design decision making). Dart? Also probably a bad sign for obvious reasons. And if Google abandons it, I imagine there’s a lot of infra (for cross platform testing etc) that goes away, and that’s assuming Google gives flutter away to the community instead of staffing it with a skeleton crew until it fizzles out. (Maybe I’m missing something in how it’s governed though, let me know)

Yeah, personally I don’t think flutter can survive without the Google breathing apparatus. But it’s not impossible. We really need and deserve something like flutter. But is there enough value over Tauri/Electron etc where people can reuse their frontend stack sanely? I think it depends on how well the competition catches up with mobile support, which is the current pain point.

Disclaimer: ex-google, somewhat recent contributor to (and user of) tauri.

obdev3• 2 years ago

Tauri has a big community. Flutter has a big community. Do you believe Tauri can survive without a direct corporate backing, while Flutter can't?

It's not a rhetoric question. I'm in need of a native application toolkit, and I gravitate towards Tauri for technical reasons. However, I'm not sure if the Tauri project has enough cash flow to sustain a durable alternative to Flutter, Qt, Avalonia, JavaFX, Compose Multiplatform, and likes.

ratg13• 2 years ago

The current project manager of the flutter team has said that their developer headcount, roadmap, etc. hasn’t changed and only some devops positions have been relocated.

Alifatisk• 2 years ago

Such a simple question, yet complex answer

How big is the Flutter team?

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