Flutter summer project

As a summer project, I helped out a team at my local university in a project combining open data with students seeking an apartment to rent, especially when moving to a new city. They designed a mobile app for this task, and I was to implement it.

I decided to try out Flutter this time instead of react-native.

Again, there are several blog posts and even official documentation on how to transform from native or react-native development into using Flutter. Here are my two cents though

Dart. Google's solution for building UI:s. The syntax is familiar looking. I like the way how it is not limited to any particular form of programming, but the guideline for Flutter enforces a specific declarative style. One of the best parts of Flutter development is the named arguments.

Development environment. One of the better setup experiences. A self-contained diagnostic tool which alerts if something is not set correctly. Updating is a simple git pull and some installation scripts. I had no trouble in running the application in either IOS and Android simulators.

Flutter library. Out of the box, Flutter contains all the necessary UI elements (with Material design) for your simple Todo app. The elements or widgets in Flutter terms are split into stateless and stateful. The stateful ones have a well thought, although a bit verbose, manner of separating the state from the UI logic in a declarative way.

Testing. I only wrote plain old unit tests for the business logic and some UI tests using the flutter_test framework. I would say it is on par with react-native testing. I have yet to see a unit test framework for UI components which would work intuitively, and while Flutter certainly worked ok, I had some problems with gestures.

If I had to choose between Flutter and react-native, I would undoubtedly choose the former, especially if new to mobile development. Main reasons are, in my opinion better, typed, UI widgets, better development environment (including an excellent vscode plugin) and an overall faster and snappier app as a result.

Comments

I'm not a passionate developer

A family friend of mine is an airlane pilot. A dream job for most, right? As a child, I certainly thought so. Now that I can have grown-up talks with him, I have discovered a more accurate description of his profession. He says that the truth about the job is that it is boring. To me, that is not that surprising. Airplanes are cool and all, but when you are in the middle of the Atlantic sitting next to the colleague you have been talking to past five years, how stimulating can that be? When he says the job is boring, it is not a bad kind of boring. It is a very specific boring. The "boring" you would want as a passenger. Uneventful. Yet, he loves his job. According to him, an experienced pilot is most pleased when each and every tiny thing in the flight plan - goes according to plan. Passengers in the cabin of an expert pilot sit in the comfort of not even noticing who is flying. As someone employed in a field where being boring is not exactly in high demand, this sounds pro

Extracting object properties from an IFC file with IfcOpenShell

Besides the object geometry information, IFC files may contain properties for the IFC objects. The properties can be, for example, some predefined dimension information such as an object volume or a choice of material. Some of the properties are predefined in the IFC standards, but custom ones can be added. IFC files can be massive and resource-intensive to process, so in some cases, it helps to separate the object properties from the geometry data. IfcOpenShell is a toolset for processing IFC files. It is written mostly in C++ but also provides a Python interface. To read an IFC file >>> ifc_file = ifcopenshell.open("model.ifc") Fetch all objects of type IfcSlab >>> slab = ifc_file.by_type("IfcSlab")[1] Get the list of properties >>> slab.IsDefinedBy (#145075=IfcRelDefinesByType('2_fok0__fAcBZmMlQcYwie',#1,$,$,(#27,#59),#145074), #145140=IfcRelDefinesByProperties('3U2LyORgXC2f_hWf6I16C1',#1,$,$,(#27,#59),#145141), #145142

Hubristic developer

Almost half of any Finnish generation goes through a shared experience: the conscript army. An integral part of that experience is learning military slang, a set way people in the army talk. The stories told with said jargon often spread outside of the barracks. It is not uncommon to hear strangers bonding together over beers reminiscing and feeling nostalgic about freezing cold nights spent in tents. There is a similar phenomenon detectable among us coders. To be part of the coder tribe, there is at least one type of story that one must master. That is - of course - ranting about legacy codebases. "Can you believe how much of a mess the previous coders left? Hear, hear!" There is no better way to onboard a new team member than to blame some previous B-team for all the murky parts of the system at hand. This can be seen as harmless, a subject for a good meme . Rarely do we hold real grudges against "the legacy folk" and can be the best of friends in a social gather

Koodihommia

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