Flutter, PWAs, and Xamarin, Oh My! (Premium)



Google Flutter helps developers more easily create mobile apps that run on both Android and iOS. So how does this release impact PWAs?

... is a question I've received from several readers. And usually in the form of an accusation. Like, "but you said that PWAs were the future!"

Relax, guys. :) PWAs---Progressive Web Apps---are the future. And while it's fair to say that Flutter "competes" in some ways with PWAs, in the sense that both are a means to a cross-platform end, these technologies are also, in some ways, unrelated.

The developers in the audience may be rolling their eyes by now. That's fine. But this discussion is for the non-developer, for the most part, and it's a great example of how my developer background really pays off. I've long understood that knowing what's going on in the developer space is a key way for even non-developers to best understand any software platform.

For example, if you want to know what's really new in the latest release of Windows 10, iOS, Android, or whatever, you need to read up on the APIs and the developer documentation that the platform makers provide. Think about it: Build, Google IO, and WWDC, which are all developer conferences, and each is literally the single biggest event that each of those companies each year.

And here's a very recent example of this phenomenon: Last week, we learned that Store apps in Windows 10 version 1803 will finally support multi-instancing, meaning the ability to have multiple copies of the same app running at the same time. That information came via something that most non-developers would assume is boring: A live developer broadcast called the Windows Community Standup featuring Microsoft's Kevin Gallo and Andrew Whitechapel. I watched it live because, again, developer background. (A previous episode of the Windows Community Standup has great info about Always Connected PCs. See how this works?)

OK, so what about Flutter and PWAs?

As Mehedi reported this week, Google has announced the first public beta of Flutter, which it describes as a "new mobile UI framework that helps developers craft high-quality native interfaces for both iOS and Android."

The basic idea here is very common in the developer space: Developers wish to reuse as much code as possible, and ideally they could create a single app that would run anywhere. That kind of nerdvana, however, is elusive, and the history of personal computing is littered with various high-profile defeats, including most notably, Java and it's "write once, run anywhere" mantra. Which was more ideal than reality.

Flutter, more specifically, is an attempt to let developers create truly native apps that run on the only mobile platforms that matter, Android and iOS. So "write once, run on both Android and iOS." Which is the same as "anywhere" when it comes to mobile.

What Flutter requires of developers is learning yet another programming language (called Dart, which is itself yet another C-like ...