News
BREAKING: Judge Rules in Epic v. Apple: Apple Must Allow Other Forms of In-App Purchases
This news broke just before publishing this week's newsletter so I haven't had time to parse it all yet, but if true, this is HUGE news for app developers!
Watch for more commentary on this in next week's issue!
Flutter 2.5 is Here!
The big Flutter news dropping this week is the release of Flutter 2.5.
In this article, Chris Sells outlines all of the particulars about this update, including:
- Performance improvements (including reduced iOS jank!)
- Dev tools updates
- Dart 2.14 (including new linting support out of the box)
- New Material You support
- Camera and image picker enhancements
- A new app template
As you can see, there are a LOT of exciting new enhancements to take in with this release, so I recommend heading over to Chris' article now for all of the details!
Tutorials
The Best Books for Flutter App Development
Here is an example of one of those great finds on Twitter, where Vladimir Romashkin lays out 25 of his favorite Flutter dev books. These cover a range of topics, from the very basics (Beginning Flutter and Flutter for Dummies) to machine learning (Mobile Deep Learning with TensorFlow Lite, ML Kit and Flutter).
Given the range these books cover, it seems like anyone, regardless of Flutter experience, would find at least one of these books helpful. Very much worth checking out!
Architecture
Flutter Design Patterns - Mobile Application
Google Developer Expert Mangirdas Kazlauskas has put together this cool little Flutter app to highlight some design patterns which Flutter developers might find useful.
These patterns run quite a gamut, including those in the creational, structural, and behavioral design pattern categories.
I think these might especially come in handy if you're struggling with making an architectural decision about some aspect of your application. These patterns can help bring clarity to the tradeoffs you might be making with the approaches you're considering.
Flutter Jobs
Job Openings on the Flutter and Dart Team
One of the important "job resources" I missed in last week's newsletter, which focused on Flutter Jobs, is the list of openings on Google's own Dart and Flutter teams.
These openings cover some variety, including core engineering functions, such as Framework Engineer and Dart Platform Engineer, and an even more public facing role as Developer Relations Engineer, for those of you with the personality for YouTube. :-)
Future Tech
Is This the Future of Programming?
I'm not sure how to begin to do a decent summary of this one, so let me just say that the word "WOW!" came out of my mouth more than once as I watched this demo.
Despite an unfortunate editing choice near the first of the video (where the code is obscured by the presenters' thumbnails), this may be the best 30 minutes I've spent watching a tech video this month.
Regardless of what you may think of this technology in its current form, this could well be one of those paradigm-bending concepts that has implications for developers for years to come.
// From Mark
What's in Your Future?
This week's newsletter contains articles of both short-term and long-term interest to Flutter developers.
First is the news that Flutter 2.5 is here. There is a LOT to unpack with this release, but one of the most interesting -- and easily overlooked -- items to me is that it comes with a new app template. I'm sure I'm not the only developer who started a project with the good ol' Counter App example and eventually grew that into a shipping app. This new sample template adds a list and dark mode support, and includes an opinionated way to organize your app's source files.
Of longer-term interest to developers is the video link near the end of this week's issue. A developer's daily routine twenty years from now could look very different from today, and this video might just give a glimpse into that future.
Enjoy!
Mark Winters