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Building a cross-platform GUI toolkit takes an incredible amount of work & time, especially at the systems level.[0]

A robust cross-platform ecosystem for the underlying programming language is a necessary but insufficient piece of the puzzle.

Given the proliferation of HTML and WebView/web-tech wrappers (Electron, Tauri, React Native etc.) there are now enough "good enough" solutions that most organizations that would underwrite the in-house R&D of a new Neuron Data or Delphi or Flash simply don't feel the need.

When it does happen — say Google Flutter — it's almost statistically impossible to keep the hydra of VPs and biz folks aligned over the decades of ongoing investment it takes to mature & form community around this kind of technology — see the recent Flutter team layoffs at Google.

[0] speaking from my experience building a cross-platform GUI solution in Rust for several years now; see pax.dev



Exactly. Many programmers don’t want to worry about edge cases, and cross platform GUI frameworks are essentially coding an “oops all edge cases” project.


Maybe Google execs watched Theo’s JS frameworks review? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WJRf7dh5Zws


Isn't the whole "Flutter team layoffs" narrative somewhat debunked at this point? My understanding is that some positions were cut and some were moved, but no more than any other engineering area at Google.


Budget was cut because priorities were stacked and Flutter wasn't high enough. That's exactly the existential risk when beholden to "the hydra."


Yes. Layoffs were across all departments.




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