[HN Gopher] Skip is now free and open source
___________________________________________________________________
Skip is now free and open source
Author : dayanruben
Score : 225 points
Date : 2026-01-21 15:20 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (skip.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (skip.dev)
| gouthamve wrote:
| https://github.com/skiptools/skip
|
| This is cool, but there is no LICENSE file putting this in DONT
| USE territory.
|
| This has a license: https://github.com/skiptools/skipstone but it
| vendors the other repo according to the readme? I am super
| confused about how this would work.
| marcprux wrote:
| The Xcode build plugin in the /skip repo uses the binary
| created by /skipstone (which is the repository that was just
| opened).
|
| Thanks for pointing out that the /skip repo itself doesn't have
| a license. We'll fix that asap!
| zahlman wrote:
| LGPL3 has now been added:
| https://github.com/skiptools/skip/commit/7ad94680a801ca393fe...
| gpm wrote:
| Huh, what does one have to do to comply with the LGPL on iOS
| anyways?
|
| I'm sort of surprised that only the largest plan
| ($5000/month) and not the ($10/$500/$2,500/month plans)
| includes a license that doesn't involve figuring that
| nonsense out.
| speedgoose wrote:
| Which non sense? The lesser GPL doesn't mean you have to
| license your firstborn under the GPL license.
|
| I think it's fair to milk enterprise companies that can't
| read a FSF license. Otherwise the LGPL is fine.
| gpm wrote:
| As I understand the LGPL - not a lawyer - you have to
| somehow enable all your users to relink your application
| against a different version of Skip (4.d.0 since 4.d.1
| isn't possible on iOS). This means that your application
| must do something like include a copy of all the files
| that went into linking the application and convey that to
| the users along with your application, with scripts to
| build the application against a different version of
| Skip...
|
| I can't imagine the app store would be particularly
| amused with this during app review... though I've never
| tried.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| You can chill - it was their oversight that they've already
| corrected, not an omission by design
| liuliu wrote:
| I wish there are something for SwiftUI on Windows. I meant to
| support Windows for Draw Things, but the opportunity cost is too
| high without proper UI tooling.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Closest thing is SwiftCrossUI. Maybe Skip will come to Windows
| one day.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Note that Swift/WinRT by The Browser Company does not qualify,
| as it's one layer too low (directly exposes the Windows
| framework): https://github.com/thebrowsercompany/swift-winrt
|
| However it seems like it could be a good basis for such a
| project.
| pxc wrote:
| If I use Skip to make a cross-platform app, will TalkBack be able
| to read it to users as well as VoiceOver?
| marcprux wrote:
| Yes, the unique benefit of Skip is that you are using the real
| native toolkits on _both_ platforms. So you get both SwiftUI 's
| accessibility support via VoiceOver, as well as Jetpack
| Compose's support via TalkBack.
| pxc wrote:
| That's awesome! My family has users of both, so this might be
| a convenient way to use a pleasant language to write mobile
| apps that all of my family members can play with.
| well_ackshually wrote:
| Note: TalkBack is the best case scenario you're getting on
| Android. I've seen some abominations coming out of Samsung's
| implementation, and results will vary from device to device.
|
| Still, assume people are using TalkBack and don't take
| reports from anything else, it'll prevent you from going
| insane.
| ppeetteerr wrote:
| This is amazing! Thank you for open sourcing the project. It must
| have been a hard decision.
| marcprux wrote:
| Thanks! It has been a long time coming.
|
| As we mentioned in the post, developer tools really need to be
| freely obtainable in order to gain mass adoption. In that
| sense, it was an easy strategic decision. And we felt that the
| time was right, given that Skip's benefits are being thrust to
| the foreground in light of recent developments.
| sneak wrote:
| You should really consider why free software exists. Open
| source is open source, sure, but it is a disservice to your
| users to ever release proprietary software for any reason.
|
| I personally would not start or run a business that didn't
| release all software it builds under free software licenses.
| We don't open source it because "developers expect it", we
| open source it because it's the right thing to do by your
| users.
|
| Free software is an ideology, not just a license.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| > Free software is an ideology, not just a license.
|
| Yes and people shouldn't enforce ideology on top of each
| other. I am speaking this as an free software advocate too.
|
| the fact of the matter is open source is still barely
| fundable and I am pretty sure that they evaluated multiple
| decisions to come up to this regarding how fundable it is
| and other factors.
|
| If we have to indoctrinate someone into our ideology, it
| means that our ideology is unable to gain weight by its own
| merit. No, let open source do the work and welcome people
| for who are now open source. Have open arms to everyone who
| open sources their work & incentive them to do so with a
| happy heart.
|
| Open source is about freedom. And being honest, If they
| wrote the code themselves, then its their freedom to have
| it in open source or not.
|
| I for one, welcome another great open source! Thanks for
| going open source and Good luck to skip in future!
|
| I know Open source has some issues regarding funding etc.
| so I hope that people donate to skip & make the project
| sustainable!
|
| Have a nice day skip team!
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| I don't open source my iOS apps that provide my living
| because there are many examples already of others using
| this to release identical apps without credit or sharing
| their work back (even with AGPL), which would remove my
| source of income that enables me to work on it in the first
| place. I haven't found a way to make a living off open
| source yet for the type of products I produce.
|
| I'm not independently wealthy to be able to afford to work
| for free. If I release my work for free, then I will have
| to live on the streets or in a cell, or take a job and lose
| the time I have to produce my work in the first place.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Shame that the world has to be like this in the first
| place :<
|
| Perhaps I am way too altruist at times & the world is
| capitalist without any discrimination, stealing anyone's
| work and reselling it feels so scummy and I have heard it
| happen actually so you are not actually completely in the
| wrong and its your code and your lifestyle and so I
| respect it. (Even if I am an open source advocate, I will
| admit making money from Open source is super hard in many
| cases)
|
| Interestingly, what's your thoughts on Source available
| licenses. Like, honestly, like use a license which
| doesn't allow reusing components or providing another
| appstore release of that or similar
|
| If you use github actions with immutable and other
| instances, I feel like there is a real way of like
| verifying that the code written is safe & people can
| verify it & trust it.
|
| If people want to modify your product, they have to pay
| you and get in touch with you.
|
| I will take this with additional security context and
| being able to audit over having nothing in the first
| place! (Hopefully I hope this might not impact your
| living either in any way and honestly even if you do
| this! Some of us would deeply appreciate it)
|
| Something is better than nothing. If even much of the
| world goes to source available licenses, I feel like the
| transition to open source of softwares becomes much
| simpler as well if enough conditions (like people start
| donating/govts start investing in open source) etc.
| happen!
|
| Source availability still provides one to that direction
| & is still overall positive with atleast in this context,
| virtually zero downsides.
|
| What are your thoughts on it?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| See my thoughts under sibling comment
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46712351
| marcprux wrote:
| This is indeed a dilemma, but note that copyleft licenses
| like GPL or MPL do give you considerably more protection
| than a pushover license like MIT/BSD. I wrote about this
| last year at https://appfair.org/blog/gpl-and-the-app-
| stores.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| It gives near zero practical protection as the devs that
| clone in the App Store do not respect licenses and Apple
| is slow to act (sometimes shutting your own dev account
| instead of the copycat's, another high risk).
|
| Enabling copycats also encourages them to target my apps
| for fake negative review spam and bot activity that gets
| my dev account (and personal iCloud) flagged and banned
| without recourse.
|
| I also have no funds to sue someone. And the copycats are
| often anonymous and overseas in random countries, adding
| to the challenge of doing anything about it besides
| begging Apple to help without accidentally hurting me
| instead.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| hey, came from the other comment you messaged me but this
| feels like such an apple issue which is so fixable that I
| am not understanding why Apple won't do it.
|
| I understand what you are feeling but I feel like what
| you are saying is genuine and although sad right now, it
| provides a course of action for Apple to work upon to
| meaningfully improve it so that we can get atleast either
| custom license source available (as I mentioned in my
| other comment) or GPL/restrictive Copyleft as this
| mentions.
|
| If someone from Apple's reading this. This feels such a
| large issue even more than the license issues in general,
| is Apple working on this or not?
|
| This would honestly show the real loyalty towards
| developers if Apple can do this so I am waiting and
| perhaps a movement can be created to establish some
| formally written demands/ perhaps a change.org petition?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Apple won't improve this out of charity for small
| businesses. This requires regulation, and/or mass
| organizing across developers.
| elemdos wrote:
| AGPL seems like a joke when it comes up against the indie
| hacker world. Has there ever been an example of an open-
| source maintainer successfully suing someone who ripped
| off their codebase without attribution? Doubtful.
| elemdos wrote:
| Yeah but if that was the only reason to do open source that
| was encouraged then there'd almost certainly be a lot less
| open source software overall (and lower quality).
| Personally I'd prefer OSS win overall even if it costs some
| ideological purity.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| "At least 32GB of memory is recommended for development with
| Skip."
|
| Dear lord, what?
| dlcarrier wrote:
| IDEs targeting mobile development saw the bloat in FPGA IDEs
| and said "we can beat that".
| marcprux wrote:
| Well, you're running both the iOS development tools (Xcode, iOS
| Simulator), plus the Android development tools (Gradle, Android
| emulator, and maybe Android Studio too). These add up.
|
| 16GB might be possible, though.
|
| (Skip itself doesn't take much memory. If you run it headlessly
| as a SwiftPM plugin, you wouldn't need nearly that much.)
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Do you have to run both at the same time? Because my flow
| with React Native is to focus on one platform at a time, I
| don't try to run everything in one shot.
| marcprux wrote:
| No, you can configure it to just build and launch for iOS
| or Android separately. But we do recommend iterating on
| both in parallel for most of the UI work, just to make sure
| that everything stays in sync.
|
| For framework/library development, you can of course build
| and test separately for each platform.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| Ah, yeah yeah, not meant as slight towards Skip (seems like a
| cool project). Just me being offended by the plain content of
| that sentence.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Likely because it uses both iOS and Android toolchains plus its
| own transpiler (with Skip Lite) or other overhead with Skip
| Fuse. iOS alone is already challenging with 16GB. Don't blame
| Skip for this - it's on Apple and Google for not shipping
| memory-efficient tooling, which shouldn't be a surprise if
| you've used their software.
| catoc wrote:
| I assume that's for the development phase, not (necessarily)
| for apps developed with Skip
| elinear wrote:
| At current prices, if you do not already have 32GB RAM, it will
| cost over $300 for DDR5, and over $200 for DDR4...
| sabdarmdhn wrote:
| Welp atleast they make it more easier for us non-Apple Developer
| to make an App
| publicdebates wrote:
| > The plain truth is that developers expect to get their tools
| free of charge.
|
| I've run into this too with my own app. I thought people would
| like a Lua GUI framework that's professional grade and gives you
| _full_ access to WinAPI via Lua. I was using DragonRuby as my
| model.
|
| So I wasted a thousand hours making the app and its
| documentation. Turns out, even after people understood what it
| was (I suck at marketing), everyone still agreed that whatever it
| could become or ever evolve into was _still_ not worth a dime.
|
| Now I'm faced with a decision. Do I open source it? I think, no.
| What's the point? Marketing for my skills as a developer? There's
| no more need for software consultants now with Copilot/etc. I
| have to change careers.
|
| Then, should I open source it altruistically? What for? First of
| all, giving things away for free is _not_ inherently good. One
| negative side effect is teaching people not to rely on their own
| industry. Another is that they may use it for evil. And then, it
| feels like such a _waste_ to let the code die out.
|
| But _everything_ eventually goes to waste.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Did you reach out to Lua heavy shops?
| fn-mote wrote:
| > What's the point? Marketing for my skills as a developer?
| There's no more need for software consultants now with
| Copilot/etc. I have to change careers.
|
| I encourage you to find a way out of this belief, or at least
| least fend it off as long as possible.
|
| You can see from recent HN postings that most people are not
| experiencing career-ending levels of performance from LLMs.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Hey! (firstly recognized you from your other post on HN)
|
| Personally I would love the idea of creating a lua application
| natively. You don't know how much I wanted it now that you
| mention it.
|
| I remember looking for such solutions,finding none, then I even
| thought of using kotlin apps with lua integration but didn't
| like the idea of learning kotlin
|
| For some reason, even though I have only played just a little
| bit with lua, there are tons of options which compile down to
| lua which can make it really powerful too and so for the end
| developer, there are tons of possibilities and it starts out
| being so simple!
|
| I think the problem with lua was that there is a lack of
| libraries & projects regarding it so this might actually help
| it
|
| I have another question tho and I'd love it if you can answer
| it.
|
| Is there any way that I can write a cli application in golang
| or port it to something with just glue code being lua and using
| it for android somehow?
|
| I don't want to create an android application in golang itself
| for what its worth because I find the primitive a little
| lacking (what do I use, wails?)
|
| I have heard people use python kite or something iirc which
| looked good but python-go support isn't the best & i dont even
| know if its on android
|
| If you can actually provide lua as the UI/UX support (I am
| imagining something simple but powerful) with code being
| allowed in other languages where I can get some powerful
| libraries (golang), I would be super interested in it.
|
| Regarding Open source, I would personally trust the project a
| lot more if this was open source.
|
| That being said, I understand the worry of changing
| careers/consultancy/AI marketing because I am still a teenager
| in high school. I have anxiety because I have an exam for the
| colleg ein 2 days, I am a bit cooked haha but I guess I just
| gotta try
|
| Your fears are valid and somehow I imagine you in a position
| wayy similar to raylib & I remembered this post.
|
| https://gist.github.com/raysan5/04a2daf02aa2a6e79010331f77bf...
|
| Honestly, what are your thoughts in teaching at a college about
| app development with lua, I mean I am a teenager and I would
| die for such a course!
|
| Although I was never into roblox, some of my friends were and
| they treat lua as the holy grail because of roblox development
| and roblox's development community is from what I can gather
| _decently_ respected especially if you are teen, some even
| learn lua just for it.
|
| so you can get people who are interested in already having some
| gui experience with lua (more in a game environment but still)
| and you tell them that you can make apps with it just as
| easily? People will be hooked.
|
| Of course there is some LLM but honestly, nobody cares. LLM's
| wont be able to recreate your project, I am mostly sure of it.
|
| Marketing is something that I relate with too because we never
| know what the public _really really_ wants.
|
| I mean, I will admit it, We people are kind of hypocrites
| (speaking from my behalf)
|
| Sometimes we would open source project and want it to be
| sustainable without paying the devs or donating to them, that
| sucks. Some of us just want open source for ideological reasons
| and um, honestly, I will admit it. It's your code, do what you
| want it, you built it and you should be proud of it!
|
| We can only give suggestions but I recommend you to create some
| video of the project so that I can see it.
|
| App developments are fucking nightmares. I had even thought of
| using godot just to create app development. Any new solution
| provided decent enough can absolutely help.
|
| Personally I believe you should wait for some time & try to
| write a blog post about it. I want to hear all the nerdy
| details!
|
| Create a show HN post, I saw tomhow mention to me how much of
| the audience wants originality and the idea of "aha
| moments"/something novel. Provide us with knowledge of what aha
| moments did you discover during building this, I am soo curious
| myself!
|
| Good luck man and I genuinely hope the best of luck for you
| man! Just message me whenever you feel like it or mail me, Will
| try to respond to ya if you ever need my help (I don't think so
| but I'd love to playtest what you are mentioning too!)
|
| Oh yea just a teeny bti suggestion adding on that golang one,
| can you just make it so that I can have a very simple and
| easy/fast way of compiling golang cli applications into gui
| android applications with lua code. I personally want this so
| bad because there are soo many good and lovely open source
| golang cli and I wanted to be part of f-droid by creating an
| application gui for some golang cli tool we might use but it
| felt _sooooooo_ hard that I gave up. (Yes I even used tauri and
| ended up waking up till 5 am debugging)
|
| The pain point's definitely real and LLM's won't be able to
| make this. Only the people like you who are truly passionate
| about such projects can make it. It's a unique project and you
| should be proud of it and I hope that the project has a good
| future!
| solarkraft wrote:
| The point of open-sourcing is to put it on peoples' map at all.
|
| Development tools have to be fully dependable (maintained, no
| rug pull) and proprietary software just carries too much risk
| in that regard for a lot of people.
| wswin wrote:
| The path frameworks usually go: open source some of it and
| paywall extras or some related service. Look at Expo or
| Next.js.
|
| It's bold to assume people will spend money on something they
| can't see in action and don't know whether it will fit their
| needs.
| DetroitThrow wrote:
| The reasoning for making this choice was refreshingly sober and
| clear-minded. If there was anything that would help tooling reach
| critical mass, it's turning it into OSS.
|
| I've built with Flutter and React Native a few times over the
| years, but I will give Skip a go in my next project, I've heard a
| lot actually.
| RobMurray wrote:
| This is great news, thank you. I have been looking into a way to
| port Soundscape Community [1], a navigation app for the blind to
| Android without having two codebases to maintain. Skip looks
| ideal; I was planning on asking you about licensing for a very
| small team with almost no funding.
|
| Someone else already asked about talkback accessibility; I assume
| it will work because it translates to native UI controls on
| android. Is that correct?
|
| [1] https://github.com/soundscape-community/soundscape
| marcprux wrote:
| Yes, as I just responded there, Skip uses the native toolkits
| and conventions on both platforms: SwiftUI on iOS and Jetpack
| Compose on Android. So you automatically get the platforms'
| built-in accessibility support.
|
| You can see a sample snippet at
| https://skip.dev/docs/components/accessibility/
| jackbravo wrote:
| What big/famous apps are using Skip?
| kwanbix wrote:
| I just started to learn Kotlin, how does it compare with Kotlin
| Multi Platform for those that used both?
| marcprux wrote:
| Good question. I'll try to answer as objectively as possible,
| despite my bias towards Skip's approach.
|
| Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) enables you to target different
| platforms with your Kotlin. In the context of mobile apps, it
| allows you to compile your Kotlin to a native framework for
| iOS, so you can reuse your business logic. On iOS, the Kotlin
| is running in its own little garbage-collected runtime, but it
| sets up a bridge to Objective-C and Swift, so the iOS
| developers can communicate with it from their apps (the
| interface of which will typically be written separately for
| each platform). It is neat technology, and Skip integrates with
| it[1]. We were on their Talking Kotlin podcast in 2024 talking
| about it[2].
|
| When targeting just the shared business logic and not the UI,
| Skip is, in some ways, the inverse of KMP: whereas they let you
| share Kotlin logic between the iOS and Android app, Skip lets
| you share the Swift logic. Skip operates in two different
| modes[3]: Skip Lite and Skip Fuse. Skip Lite is the original
| version of Skip, and transpiles your Swift into Kotlin. Skip
| Fuse is a later iteration and resulted from the formation of
| the Swift Android workgroup[4], of which we are founding
| members. In both modes, you can share your Skip business logic
| layer between multiple apps, and this is a popular application
| of Skip (e.g., see this talk at NSSpain[5]).
|
| So that's the story for shared logic. Now onto the user
| interface part:
|
| While I mentioned that Skip _can_ be used just for sharing
| business logic, it really shines when you build your whole app
| with it. You write your app in conventional SwiftUI, and Skip
| will translate it into the equivalent Jetpack Compose (which is
| now Android's official recommended way to build apps).
| Launching your app from Xcode will bring up both your iOS app
| in the simulator, and the equivalent Android app in the
| emulator. It is designed to be a single vertically-integrated
| app creation solution, and enables a single team (or a single
| developer) to iterate on both platforms at the same time,
| without any of the coordination overhead of building two
| separate apps for the two platforms.
|
| KMP itself doesn't have an equivalent, but it does have a
| sibling project "Compose Multiplatform" (CMP), which is built
| on top of KMP and sort of does the opposite: it lets you write
| your app in Kotlin and Jetpack Compose and run it on iOS. But
| the way that it achieves this is different from Skip's
| approach: it doesn't use native controls on iOS, but instead
| paints pixels on the screen that mimic the native iOS UI (a la
| Flutter). The results are predictable: an uncanny valley UI
| that doesn't feel _quite_ right, and that struggles to keep up
| with the platform conventions. Notably, like Flutter, they
| won't be able to support Liquid Glass in any convincing form,
| and so apps built with it are going to be stuck on outdated iOS
| UI conventions. In short: CMP is native on Android but alien on
| iOS, whereas Skip is native on both platforms.
|
| That's our take on the difference between the two. In fairness
| to KMP, they do have some distinct advantages in terms of
| reach: whereas Skip is squarely focused on just mobile
| platforms, KMP can target desktops and the web as well. If that
| is a priority for you, or you already have a lot of Kotlin
| experience or are invested in the ecosystem, then KMP might be
| a good fit for your needs. But if you like Swift and SwiftUI,
| and are happy working with the Apple developer tools, then you
| should give Skip a try. It really is magic.
|
| [1]: https://skip.dev/blog/skip-and-kotlin-multiplatform/
|
| [2]: https://talkingkotlin.com/going-from-swift-to-kotlin-with-
| sk...
|
| [3]: https://skip.dev/docs/modes/
|
| [4]: https://www.swift.org/android-workgroup/
|
| [5]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIGl6GOo210
| bbx wrote:
| Interesting. I used Expo recently and loved the development
| experience. I also built a simple iPhone app with Swift, and it
| was a decent experience. I have plans of building another iPhone
| app and was considering Swift again, which would make me miss
| building an Android app, but maybe Skip would allow me to do it
| anyways.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Biggest downside to SwiftUI development is lack of hot
| reloading. You can use the Inject framework but it's fragile.
| This also makes it harder to iterate on with agents.
| hn-acct wrote:
| Small views and the preview canvas are your friend
| agentifysh wrote:
| This is a welcome addition but why should Flutter devs use this ?
|
| Seems like it requires 32gb of ram! Also Flutter is already very
| mature and can produce not only near-native mobile apps (the
| difference is almost negligible) but can target desktop and even
| web applications.
|
| I do wonder how much of a boost skip offers vs Flutter's mobile
| apps. Will give skip a try when dram prices normalize.
| trevor-e wrote:
| Flutter still doesn't support liquid glass on iOS so it doesn't
| seem like a serious contender to me at this point. And due to
| the nature of how Flutter is implemented, it's going to
| continuously be an uphill battle. Maybe it's fine if you intend
| on having a completely custom UI and don't care about platform
| look and feel.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| In general, the "render UI as if it were a video game" route
| feels like a bit of a dead end on mobile to me. On desktop
| it's more workable but still isn't without issues.
| skybrian wrote:
| I've heard bad things about liquid glass and plan to skip
| that OS release, so not implementing it seems like an
| advantage from my perspective.
| eptcyka wrote:
| > Flutter still doesn't support liquid glass on iOS
|
| Literally every iOS developer under the sun will tell me that
| this is a good thing.
| frizlab wrote:
| No. I'm an iOS developer and will not tell you that, except
| to say it's a good thing to have one more reason for the
| people not to use flutter.
| daveidol wrote:
| Why? I'm an iOS developer and, while I don't love
| everything about liquid glass, that is the current design
| language of iOS.
|
| I certainly don't think having my app sticking out like a
| sore thumb, using a design language from old outdated iOS
| versions is "a good thing"
| lawgimenez wrote:
| That's not a good thing if you don't adapt liquid glass.
| I'm an iOS developer.
| marcprux wrote:
| See my response below on the KMP question: the comparison with
| CMP mostly applies to Flutter as well.
|
| > near-native mobile apps (the difference is almost negligible)
|
| Not as of the advent of Liquid Glass on iOS (and, to a lesser
| extent, Material Expressive on Android). Flutter isn't going to
| be implementing these new interface conventions[1], and so the
| UI for these apps are stuck on the last generation and are
| already starting to feel outdated.
|
| Flutter's grim outlook has resulted in a surge of interest in
| Skip, and it was one of the drivers for us to open up the
| platform and catch the wave. If you love Dart, or if your apps
| don't need to look native (e.g., games or very bespoke
| interfaces), then Flutter might continue to be acceptable. But
| everyone else is starting to look elsewhere, especially in
| cases where their business depends on their apps feeling
| premium and native.
|
| [1] https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/170310
| IshKebab wrote:
| > Flutter isn't going to be implementing these new interface
| conventions
|
| To be fair reading those updates it sounds a lot more
| positive than this comment makes it seem. I.e. "they're
| pausing design updates while they figure out the best way to
| do it" rather than "they're not going to bother":
|
| > This strategic pause on design updates gives us the space
| to ensure the long-term health and maintainability of
| Flutter's design libraries. We are committed to being
| transparent with our contributor community as we explore
| these options and will have more to share on our findings and
| future direction in the coming weeks.
|
| and
|
| > The material and cupertino libraries are being decoupled
| into standalone packages to accelerate feature development.
| All new work for iOS26 updates in Cupertino will happen in
| the new packages once established in flutter/packages.
| skavi wrote:
| Dunno about Skip, but I can always tell when an app is Flutter.
| They feel like crap. Everything's a bit off with the native
| looking widgets. And fully custom designs still animate a bit
| weirdly. And they definitely still stutter. Somehow a tier
| below React Native.
| winrid wrote:
| Flutter re-generates the entire layout every tick and diffs
| it (immediate-mode), like a game engine. If your device isn't
| quite fast enough it'll lag, yep. RN is retained mode (but
| written in immediate-mode style and the diffing only happens
| when it has to).
| well_ackshually wrote:
| Flutter is fine if you don't care about performance,
| accessibility, have no need to access native capabilities or
| non-fluttered widgets (ex: the Google map integration is awful)
| and overall just want to make an internal app.
|
| The cost of making an excellent flutter app is about the same
| you'd pay making fully native apps. Except that you're always
| paying for Skia's costs with Flutter.
|
| This recommends 32GB to run _everything_, so xcode, gradle,
| emulators, simulators, etc. Not fully surprising.
| x0x0 wrote:
| And are comfortable making a 1-2 million dollar per devteam
| per year bet that Google won't rug pull you. And they seem to
| have no important or big app on it.
|
| On an unrelated note, in 2024 Google did layoffs on the
| Flutter team.
| elemdos wrote:
| That sounds like the worst parts of native dev + PWAs
| combined
| vishrajiv wrote:
| Thank you for making it open-source (and free!) I looked into
| Skip before because I'd rather write native Swift than the in-
| between tangle of code that React Native tends to become. What
| prevented me from using it was the lack of case studies or apps
| in production. Has that changed? I looked on the homepage and
| couldn't see any. Of course, I understand it might be a growing
| community and targeted to early adopters for now.
| danielhep wrote:
| How is Skip's support for building apps with maps or other more
| complex UIs? Can I build map overlays that work cross platform?
| dtreliz wrote:
| Does it support MacOS as well? I didn't spot any explicit
| statement about that but I guess SwiftUI should support that
| automatically.
| dfabulich wrote:
| Yes, SwiftUI supports macOS automatically.
| nsm wrote:
| > The plain truth is that developers expect to get their tools
| free of charge.
|
| This is an accurate, but damning indictment of how some of the
| most highly paid workers on the planet won't pay for tools.
| Unlike nearly every other profession.
|
| Folks, if you can afford it, please pay for quality software,
| instead of relying on FAANG and VC money to keep the tools going!
| ipnon wrote:
| Paying for things that aren't worth it is noble, but not good
| economics in the long run. If people want to buy a tool not for
| what it produces but for the story it tells, this is fine. But
| just like startups need product-market fit, tools also need
| product-market fit, and if no one is buying, it could simply be
| that the alternatives are suitable replacements.
| fragmede wrote:
| In other markets, that is called dumping, and it is illegal.
| And in fact, Microsoft was convicted of being a monopolist
| and dumping.
| HexDecOctBin wrote:
| I agree. When people bemoan the death of lisp machines and RAD
| and whatnot, remember that we deserve it. We do not want to
| invest in good tools and treat "Worse is Better" as some
| twisted virtue, and then wonder why everything sucks and most
| developer experience is stuck in 80s-90s technology paradigm.
| We deserve this.
| thisislife2 wrote:
| But, as the article points out, developers do pay for the tools
| _indirectly_ - "First-party IDEs like Xcode and Android
| Studio, popular integration frameworks, and essential dev tools
| are all given away at no (direct) cost. The platform vendors
| monetize through developer program fees, app store commissions,
| and cloud services. Framework providers typically monetize
| through complementary services."
|
| And note that the article points out two other hurdles /
| drawbacks to adoption - their product required a subscription
| and developers are unwilling to commit to product from a small
| company that they fear may go under.
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