News
The Flutter Team Wants Your Feedback on Null Safety Migration
Andrew Brogdon of the Flutter team posted this informal survey to the FlutterDev subreddit, asking for feedback on migration to null safety. (Apparently there hasn't been the flurry of bug reports or other feedback the team was expecting, and this may be causing concern that developers aren't yet attempting the migration.)
My take on the responses so far is that code dependencies might end up being a fairly large hurdle here. After all, if the code which my code depends on hasn't yet been migrated to null safety, it's just one more barrier to getting my own code moved over.
Hopefully this will all work itself out fairly quickly, but if YOU have feedback for Andrew and the Dart/Flutter team on this important topic, head on over to reddit and respond!
Flutter Testing Update
Great news here from the Flutter team, which has just released version 1.0 of the integration test plugin.
The new plugin, which is described as "a simpler way to test your Flutter apps that also supports Firebase Test Lab," aims to solve a number of problems with Flutter driver testing.
Assuming it can fulfil its goals, this plugin seems very promising. This article by Chris Sells should help get you started.
Tutorials
Why Do We Event Want Nullable Types?
Not all languages support nullable types, so a fair question is why we might want to go through all of the trouble to support them in Dart?
Bob Nystrom, one of the Dart gurus behind the move to null safety, has provided this thoughtful piece on this very question. If you're at all interested in diving more deeply into the whole move behind providing null safety in Dart, I think you'll find this article helpful!
Managing Your App's Local Data
Want to store some of your data locally rather than bringing it down from the network every time the app runs? Andrew Fitz Gibbon's video tutorial covers some of the basics.
Functioning Chat App Written In Flutter
Diganta Kalita has written this functioning chat app, which I thought might prove helpful as an example for developers who are just getting started in Flutter.
The code here is using MQTT as a messaging protocol, OneSignal for push notifications, and includes code for storing contacts and chats in a local database.
// From Mark
Is the Flutter Job Market Heating Up?
When I first started experimenting with Flutter a couple of years ago, it didn't take me long to conclude that Flutter was going to be a hit among developers. I especially appreciated the fact that Flutter takes control of every pixel on the screen, rather than relying on native elements to render the display. This seemed much less prone to the kinds of display glitches you might run into in the React world, just as an example.
Although I was very impressed with Flutter's capabilities, I was less enamored with the career opportunities that seemed to surround Flutter development. A search on a typical job board or contract-programming site would return very few Flutter job openings.
Maybe it's just me, but it's starting to feel like we may be turning a corner in the Flutter job market. I'm starting to see more (and larger) companies advertising Flutter dev jobs these days. I suppose large companies are somewhat bound by inertia, so if there is a "sea change" toward Flutter, it shouldn't surprise me that it's taking so long to appear. But still, I'm finding this trend encouraging.
Of course, companies with a big investment and large native (or React Native) code base to maintain probably won't be making a switch anytime soon. But I still believe that for a startup looking to maximize development resources, or for a larger company starting a new project, it's hard to beat Flutter in that very important cost-benefit analysis.
To which I say, bring on the Flutter jobs!
Mark Winters