The other side of the flutter/dart

Flutter is an incredible UI Toolkit for building mobile apps, from its elegant declarative syntax to the flexibility and power of its widget system not to mention beautiful UI and cross-platform. But does that means flutter is the perfect framework for everything?

Dark Side of flutter

Hello guys,This is CodingWithTashi and in this weekly shitty post, We will discuss about some of the dark side of flutter.

Disclaimer: I still still uses flutter in fact I have a roof over my head thanks to this wonderful technology. So no hate from my side.

1. So What makes me write this post?

Please don’t hate me for writing this if you are a huge fan of flutter/dart 😁 or at least read this post and then you decide.

I have been working on flutter for quite some time including client projects, personal, and some applications that I contribute to the community.

Building these projects/apps is super easy compared to implementing different codebases for each platform.

But It was no magic even with flutter we have to go through some trouble which make me write this post.

2. What are the dark side/drawbacks of flutter?

• Application size

Application size of the initial flutter project is around (15.8MB) with “flutter build apk — release”

Built build\app\outputs\flutter-apk\app-release.apk (15.8MB).

Note: We can still reduce this app size but it also come with price.

I personally don’t think this is a major issue especially these days technologies improve a lot and almost most device has enough storage but still, if you want to consider your application to support all device then size does matter sometimes.

In fact, Back then, I used to install applications only if the size is less than 10 MB or so. This saves both mobile data and device storage.

You can also read more from here too.

Flutter app size is huge

• Performance Issue

Performance plays a big role in application especially when it comes to animation and UI performance but it gets improves over time.

In the earlier version of Google Pay which was built on flutter, You might have seen a lot of performance issues, especially with the ios build. You can read from here.

You might come across issue frame drop while starting your app or while navigating from one page to another.

Note: Flutter is way better in terms of performance compare to other platform since flutter does’t use any bridge like webview

For more related to application performance. You can read it here

• UI Support

You might have any reason to use flutter but I think cross-platform support is one of the main reasons you went with flutter.

But did you notice what happens when you run the same app on android, ios web, etc? Though the app runs fine, You get the same exact looking UI instead of returning native UI such as material UI for android material and Cupertino for IOS.

For now, there are only a few widgets such as Slider, Switch, Icons, etc

Check out this video for a more adaptive UI

FLutter UI support

Adaptive UI package that you can use to make your application look and feel.

flutter_platform_widgets | Flutter Package

• Package Support

If you are building an application for android and ios then the package is not kinda big deal as by now flutter has very good package support for android and ios.

But You might still run into some problems that you are not able to do as the native application does.

Package support for web and desktop is still less compared to mobile devices.

In my case, I end up using a separate package for each platform(mobiles, web, window) which is another headache.

Eg. webview,image picker,barcode reader, image compressor, etc

But since flutter is an emerging technology, I have good faith in the coming time 😊.

3. What do people think about flutter (dart)?

Alright, Let’s talk about what people think about the dark side of flutter or dart since both go along together.

Please note that my goal is not to mis inform or change your mind about flutter as I mentioned before I make a living with flutter so personally flutter is my goto solution.

I have made a post on some goods things about flutter. You can from here. Is flutter worth learning in 2022?

• Jake Wharton (Great Developer) once tweet this on Twitter.

• TeadLead made a video on flutter I personally don’t agree with him but you can check out his video and see what he has to say about flutter.

That's all guys, I have added this link and tag for educational purposes only.

If anything is misleading in some way. Please let me know, I will take it down. With that said. Let's discuss what you can learn from this shitty post.

4. What is the takeaway?

Here are some keynote

• Flutter is an emerging framework and based on historical trends and data, flutter is way ahead compared to other frameworks.
• Flutter may or may not be there for the next 10,20 years. So brace yourself and always keep your mind open to learning new technology and framework.
• Don’t get too attached to one technology/framework instead focus on the underlying concept.

Thanks, guys, I hope you like this shitty post. please make sure to give a clap 👏 and leave some engagement. let me know if you have anything on your mind. I would love to connect with you.

Check out more blogs from CodingWithTashi. Connect me on GitHub or Instagram or YouTube.