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Motivation for this Package

Matt Carroll edited this page Oct 24, 2023 · 2 revisions

Flutter can paint any pixels you can imagine, animate those pixels into any motion you can imagine, and interact with every touch event that flows into the system.

But many new and inexperienced Flutter developers might not realize the extent of Flutter's UI capabilities. Why? Because for quite some time, there's been a surge among social media programming influencers promoting Swift UI code snippets, as if other UI toolkits can't accomplish similar goals. In fact, many of these influencers have directly contrasted Swift UI code snippets with Flutter, suggesting that Swift UI has solved some fundamental problems that persist within Flutter. These posts are legion, but their message is bunk.

Mission 1 - Correct the Record

The misleading contrast between Flutter and Swift UI may have a negative impact on Flutter adoption and confidence. Everyone in the Flutter community should want to see this trend reversed. This package is aimed at refuting the social media messaging so that the Flutter community is equipped with direct evidence to the contrary.

Building a package for marketing purposes might seem like overkill. But when you consider that the cost of not building such a package might mean the end of Flutter as we know it, it's a cost the Flutter community should be willing to pay.

Mission 2 - Eliminate Community Frustrations

Of course, by building a UX clone of Swift UI, the Flutter community accomplishes more than just marketing benefits. Nearly every mobile app needs to target iOS, and those apps likely expect some amount of iOS-styled UI. Flutter offers some iOS-style replication with the built-in Cupertino widgets, but these widgets have always been lacking, and many Flutter developers find themselves frustrated by what's missing from Cupertino.

A successful delivery of the swift_ui package means providing the Flutter community with a complete and accurate set of iOS-style widgets, themes, and motion. The Flutter community wouldn't need to worry anymore about running into iOS use-cases that they can't build into their Flutter iOS apps.

Mission 3 - Free the Framework

Not only can a swift_ui package eliminate community frustrations with Cupertino widgets, but it could also free the Flutter framework from spending time on Cupertino widgets, at all! The Flutter framework is inundated with problems that are much more critical to resolve than pixel perfection for the latest iOS button, or list section, or navigation title animation. There are very few framework developers. Those developers are solely responsible for the foundation of all Flutter user interfaces in the world. Some of those developers currently spend their time fine-tuning curves, colors, and motion to match the latest iOS release. It's a terribly regrettable use of limited labor. A swift_ui package can fix that.

These are the missions of the swift_ui package.

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