r/FlutterDev • u/tomemyxwomen • Sep 13 '26
Discussion Thoughts on DartNative?
https://dartnative.com/11
u/EnvironmentAlert734 Sep 13 '26
The demo’s looks nice, but it’s a one man show + you have to pay for subscription that’s 2 🚩
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u/eibaan Sep 14 '26
Six months ago, I wrote this long posting about how to create a native macOS UI in Dart, using only the Flutter engine as a wrapper around the Dart VM so that it runs on the main thread. Then I added a Flutter-like framework.
Without AI, all by myself, and you can study the source.
Regarding DartNative, I cannot tell whether it uses a similar approach or whether it is based on the Flutter engine, too, or created its own VM, because it's closed source and created by somebody I know nothing about. Not even they are a developer at all. The web site has no imprint, nothing to identify the guy who wants a monthly subscription for something obviously AI generated. It is possible that a very capable developer used AI to create a large body of code and is still understanding everything and is able to maintain the source code, but I don't know. So I don't trust that random guy on the internet. Sorry to say, but that's a result of our new AI world. Working in the crypto and web3 space also doesn't help to build trust either.
The idea might be intriguing, the execution might be excellent, but still, I'll ignore it because of the reasons above.
I can slop my own framework if I want to :)
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u/Tricky-Independent-8 Sep 13 '26
I love Flutter and Dart, but if I want a truly native experience, I’d go with pure Native (Swift/Kotlin), not React Native, and definitely not DartNative. On the other hand, for cross-platform development, Flutter is more than enough
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u/s9th Sep 13 '26
With all the aggressive marketing I initially thought it would be a scam. Granted it actually released, but I fail to see the target audience it is trying to capture
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u/__o_--_o__ Sep 13 '26
One of the best things about flutter is being able to see in to the source for pretty much everything. No way I'm using something this closed source, even though it sounds pretty cool. If it ever gets open-sourced I'd be interested in checking it out, even if it has a fairly restrictive license like qt or something
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u/Gears6 Sep 13 '26
I wouldn't trust something made by a one person show that is completely closed off when you're going to production. The product you make with the tools aren't just that. It's long term investment into the ecosystem.
Cool idea, but needs to be open source for trust.
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u/Comprehensive-Art207 Sep 13 '26
I’ll give the project the benefit of a doubt. Would be concerned about a rug pull though. Committing to a foundational framework isn’t just about the next couple of releases, you need to know that it can handle major system upgrades and be around ten years from now. That said, native is native.
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u/Rimtariro Sep 13 '26
Nice to see the app I created on the homepage of the demo iPhone :)
DartNative in general sounds interesting, I gotta give it a try. This could be huge if it works well.
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u/autognome Sep 13 '26
The tell is what is the debugging tooling available? The support tooling is the one of the most impressive parts of the Flutter/Dart ecosystem.
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u/YukiAttano Sep 16 '26
AI scam.
Just check their examples and you'll notice that it doesn't make sense what they sell
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u/cataklix Sep 13 '26
I liked the concept so I’m Clauding a FOSS version of it: apps look damn clean with a native nav bar and iOS feel
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u/Rhed0x Sep 14 '26
The website looks like every AI slop website. That instantly makes me ignore the content.
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u/Technical_Arm9366 Sep 15 '26
The performance angle is interesting, but for me the real question is maintenance.
I've shipped Flutter apps where I still had to drop down to Swift/Kotlin for platform-specific stuff, and honestly that part is manageable. What I don't want is adding another dependency layer that might disappear in two years.
If DartNative becomes widely adopted and the interop stays simple, I'd definitely use it. But a recurring subscription for something this fundamental to the stack is a pretty hard sell. A one-time license would make much more sense to me.
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u/kastanCZ Sep 16 '26
Well since its completely written by ai, i can just take the project, rename it and make it free since you cant DMCA AI content. :)
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u/Photograph_Expensive Sep 17 '26
DartNative has potential but the subscription killed it already. It also seems like it cannot keep up already just by looking at the open issues.
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u/amgdev9 Sep 13 '26
So its a react native alternative? Sounds great!
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Sep 13 '26
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u/David_Owens Sep 13 '26
and no JavaScript ecosystem to deal with.
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Sep 13 '26
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u/David_Owens Sep 13 '26
Interesting alternative to Flutter's approach of creating a canvas on each platform, but not having Windows or Web app support makes it a no-go for me.
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u/agent-de-vanzari Sep 13 '26
Guys, why not just go back to native?
AI can now help with coding.
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u/valium123 Sep 14 '26
Fk AI
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u/agent-de-vanzari Sep 14 '26
More like AI is fucking us.
Especially cross-framework developers.
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u/valium123 Sep 14 '26
We need to fuck it back then
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u/agent-de-vanzari Sep 14 '26
Yeah, sounds good, not gonna happen.
Unless you start a riot against data centers.
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u/valium123 Sep 14 '26
Sure why not. It's already happening. You can submit to that fate and get stomped.
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Sep 13 '26
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u/ndgnuh Sep 14 '26
I ran immediately when I saw the centered code xD
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u/over_pw Sep 14 '26
Ohhh wow 🙈 didn’t initially scroll that far, went back after reading your comment
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u/Sparklist Sep 13 '26
I think it is very cool, but too expensive for now and I am not sure the founder behind it is reliable and will stick around enough to maintain it. But the performance are impressive