This week in Flutter #115: F3 and giant robots
I reported some Flutter-related conferences in the past, but I think I never mentioned Flutter Firebase Festival in Prague. It’s organized by Invertase, a well-known company in the Flutter community. One of the speakers is former Flutter team member Filip Hráček with a curious topic: “Flutter Mad Science”.
Filip is working on GIANT ROBOT GAME, a game made in Flutter using Flame. He recently published an article about the engineering principles behind the game: a delightful article with precious pieces of advice even if you are not a game developer.
- Michele Volpato
🧑💻 Development in Flutter
What’s new in Flutter 3.13
New Flutter release: the performance of Impeller on iOS is improved, but the Android version is not yet ready to be used in production. On the other hand, Impeller on MacOS is now in preview, after all the positive feedback on the iOS version. Many material widgets have also been improved and new slivers have been added, although the package sliver_tools is still providing more than the framework provides.
Dart 3.1 & a retrospective on functional style programming in Dart 3
There is also a new version of Dart, but the changes are minimal, so this article is more of a retrospective of major Dart 3 features that discusses how they can significantly improve code structure and writing.
A new way of listening to the app lifecycle events in Flutter
One of the new features in Flutter 3.13 I did not mention above is AppLifecycleListener. It provides a more granular approach to using WidgetsBindingObserver.
🗄 Backend for Flutter developers
Plug-and-play offline-first and real-time data for apps with SQL backends
I bumped into Powersync recently: a cloud service and SDK that automatically keeps backend SQL databases in sync with on-device SQLite databases. It is still in beta version, and it is interesting to see that Flutter is the first “platform” they are supporting, even before Swift or Kotlin. In the current beta, the team recommends using it in combination with Supabase.
🎥 Flutter videos
Observable Flutter: Hit boxes and pathfinding
with Craig Labenz
Craig continues to work on his infinite zombie shooter game. It’s now time to set up hit boxes!
Flutter for iOS developers
with Leigha Jarett
For iOS developers, Leah talks about the architecture and integration abilities of Flutter. She draws attention to Flutter’s flexibility in terms of generating unique aesthetics and emphasizes the available pre-configured widgets. She describes the fundamental elements of the Flutter architecture as well as how the Flutter tools produce native iOS apps. Leah also discusses how Flutter plugins make it possible to seamlessly integrate with Apple’s APIs and frameworks, as well as the use of Swift or Objective-C APIs in Flutter apps. She also emphasizes how Flutter handles dependency management for integrating native SDKs, facilitating developers' inclusion of additional libraries and frameworks without manual administration or compatibility concerns.
👨💻 Software engineering
In defense of simple architectures
by Dan Luu
Maintaining a simple application architecture allows businesses to allocate complexity budgets towards areas that benefit their business. This approach has allowed Wave to build a large business with minimal engineers, despite facing challenges.
The Source of Readability
How can you make your code more readable? In this article, you’ll learn a few action points that help you write code that other people, or your future self, can easily understand.
That’s it for this week.
If you want to comment on any of this week’s entries, you can do it in the comment section below.
Have a bug-free week,
- Michele Volpato
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