I remember when Linux finally got "good enough" in the early 90s and I switched from SCO Xenix and SCO Unix to Linux. Many people ran Linux on 486 machines. Other than the nostalgia of seeing the old boot loaders and boot screens, there's nothing special about this "feat"
> Many people ran Linux on 486 machines. Other than the nostalgia of seeing the old boot loaders and boot screens, there's nothing special about this "feat"
Many people ran Windows on 486. But it was Windows 3.x, or 95 at most. If you managed to get Windows 10 to boot on one, surely that would be a feat...
My theory on why Flutter is popular in developing countries is a Flutter app compiled in release mode is turned into AOT code. This gives it a performance boost on apps that are constrained by low CPU and memory resources.
I expect that that most HN users probably have a flagship mobile phone with lots of CPU, RAM and reliable mobile data options. The other 90% of the world can not say that and a lot more sensitive to apps that require advanced phones and operating environments to function.
Wouldn't it be more logical to build only for Android then? There probably are few Apple devices in developing countries and native is much faster than Flutter.
There's a video on YT where a guy (from India I think) shows the starting time of a todo app built with RN, Flutter and native. Native is lightning fast.
I work on a Flutter app with a small team that does both iOS and Android from the same code base. It works really well for our use case given the size of our team. I also have experience with both native Android and iOS. The way Android and iOS handle apps is completely different and jumping between the two requires a lot of mental context switching.
Something to think about is all mobile apps come with the typical boilerplate. Think about a screen that displays the results from a REST call. You will need to create the screen for the Android app using either XML or Jetpack Compose frameworks. The iOS will need to create a screen using storyboards or SwiftUI frameworks. That is a lot to maintain. With Flutter you create the screens just once in Flutter and the only framework choice is Flutter. Now at some point in the future when the REST call adds a new field you have twice the work to do with native solutions then you do with Flutter to add it to your screen.
I would also like to correct misconception about Flutter. Flutter doesn't eliminate the need to do cross platform development. You still need to know the native tooling, native build cycles and native programming languages if you want to get a Flutter app out the door.
You will end up writing less code. You won't have to tackle advanced subjects like managing app state in Android and iOS. You can use a Flutter state management solution that works on both platforms. You won't have to feature match your two apps because they will all use the same code base.
If you are a small teams looking to get something out the door, all of these are points in favour of Flutter. It works better for teams will constraints such as team size, budget and time.
The Flutter webview is basically a wrapper for the native iOS and Android implementations. A native Android app using a webview and a Flutter app running on Android using a webview is using the same native webview.
It is like that for a lot of the Flutter libraries. They basically implement native versions of the functionality and make it available to Flutter. The Dart language has FFI so if you want to get "even more native" you can do Android and iOS system calls in your Flutter app using languages like C, C++, Rust or even Assembly.
I was really drawn to Dart when it came out in 2012 and still use it for hobby projects. I know Google uses it internally a lot and is used in the experimental Fuchsia OS. And of course Flutter. I wish Google would put more resources into doing the next version. It appears Bob Nystrom is the only person working on it
I wrote a fairly complicated web app in 2013 in Dart. I just updated it to Dart 2.0 and nullability and it still works, which impressed me. Someday people will catch on to Dart, probably if and when Fuchsia gets popular
Got any advice on how to lay out a design for Flutter? I'm a back end dev mostly, but I'd like to have a go at making a small mobile app. My sticking point is building the interface. Doing it all in code without a layout design tool to help feels pretty agricultural.
If one uses a webview, then typically there is JavaScript running there that does non-trivial things. So the application becomes a mixture of JS and Flutter. That already defeats the goal of using a single language and framework to develop the application. And when there is a mixture of two, the value of Flutter is reduced, as the mixture can be as well developed as JS + Android + IOS.
For me the strong point of Flutter is not to use the webview in the first place delegating the latter to the original cases of showing help pages etc.
I have a lot of fond memories of working with LaTeX in the 90s in my undergrad. These days I wouldn't use LaTeX because I want something quick and dirty.I am not investing a lot of time in writing documents that people are not going to spend a lot of time reading.
That said, The Lamport book I used heavily in my undergrad still has a place on my bookshelf.
Arguably if you spend a lot of time writing a document it becomes more likely that others are going to read it.
I am a peer-reviewer and an editor on a few academic journals. In my field, a mix of authors use [Xe](La)TeX and Word. There's a definite quality bias towards the TeX articles -- not because of the typesetting per se but rather because it's indicative of a lot of time spent carefully preparing a document to a standard. I'm sure others in similar fields have similar experiences.
See, that might be cultural background or whatnot, I don't know, but some people find those cartoons to be a nice touch, and they admire the clarity of exposition of The TeXbook.
I'm the proud owner of the entire 6 vol Computers and Typesetting series (of which the former title is vol A), and have worked through sizable portions of those. I also read mot of the 680 pages of Knuth's Digital Typography monograph. I also owned one LaTeX book at some point. I admire the depth of Knuth's knowledge (typographic and otherwise), the sheer diligence, his quest for quality, all of that. Those lion doodles though, the author's urge to land another witty remark, come up with another finely crafted reference, and how he's prone to hint at stuff instead of writing a proper documentation are not aspects of his work that I enjoy.
I think I am showing my age when I say, I remember when Linux by default came with sendmail enabled by default. You could use your Linux box to send e-mail anywhere without it getting caught up in spam filters. Fun times.
I think you misunderstood. If you fire up a mail server on your Linux box today and try using it for mail the big mail servers are sending your mail to spam due to a bunch of spam rules. These days, you need an organization with a known reputation for sending good e-mail to handle your e-mail so you don't end up in a spam folder. It's how the big players stay big.
I'm sorry that your mother had to go through that. My partner is a neurologist and she hates having to give an ALS diagnosis. It fills her with dread when symptoms align with a possible ALS diagnosis. If she doesn't have a conclusion diagnosis she will sometimes not even suggest that something might be ALS because of the suicide risk. Personally, I think we will have a treatment for it in my lifetime.
>It fills her with dread when symptoms align with a possible ALS diagnosis. If she doesn't have a conclusion diagnosis she will sometimes not even suggest that something might be ALS because of the suicide risk.
This is a huge problem. Someone close to our family spent a lot of money to get a diagnosis because none of the doctors wanted to "go there". They ended up having to visit the MAYO Clinic for 2 weeks and spent a small fortune to find out, it hurt the family financially.
My middle school chemistry teacher offed himself in his backyard with a shotgun when he started noticing symptoms of Huntington's (which his mother died of). I'd taken chemistry with him the previous year and he was easily the best chemistry teacher ever.
It's an issue but without a cure or even viable ameliorative treatment, suicide is 100% a a legit personal choice.
The immediate family member dying with Huntington's disease also clearly affected the rest of the family, that's basically saying her death wasn't personal either. Maybe this is an overly reductive false dilemma.
Knowing an immediate family member died of something that has a genetic component gives people catalysts to watch closely for.
A potential treatment option for ALS, using fetal stem cells, and so why not widely known - especially not in North America; free documentary on the Emcell clinic here - https://stemcellsmovie.com/ - they've been doing research using fetal stem cells for 30 years, and providing clinically for 25.
MS is also apparently stopped and regressed (damage/degeneration healed) if treated/healed if degeneration of the body's healing systems aren't too far degraded.
It it my understanding from talking to the same neurologist that ALS is a diagnosis of exclusion. When everything is ruled out the last diagnosis is ALS.
Generally the exclusion method is used because there is no conclusive direct test (or the test itself is damaging). Alzheimer's has no direct test either to my knowledge, though there is a lot of work going on.
Lived off the Canadian version of MREs for 2 weeks when I was in Haiti after the earthquake. Definitely not a fan. One of the things that always impressed me about the Canadian lunch ones is they had a chocolate bar (candy bar for the Americans) in them. It was 30+ C degrees during the day and as long as the chocolate bars stayed in the sealed packaging they were solid but but the moment you opened the packaging the chocolate would melt in 5 minutes. Not sure, what black magic made it possible to chocolate solid in 30 degree C weather.
I was on call for 5 years at an old job (non IT). Getting paged and yanked out of bed at all hours messes with you in so many ways. Being sleep deprived you turn to high sugar drinks and foods to keep you awake. The sleep deprivation and bad diets causes you to put on weight. Going to bed with the idea you could get paged does terrible things for your anxiety. On top of that all the sleep deprivation changes your personality.
You become highly irritable and it really brings down your mood. Eventually I couldn't deal with it after 5 years and I pretty much walked off the job. I didn't realize the toll it was taking on me and what being on call was doing to me until I was no longer on call.
