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> I believe Fuschia and usage of Dart for projects like Flutter grew out this back-and-forth legal rigamarole between Google and Oracle over Java.

I'm guessing nowadays Kotlin plays this role? Its multi-platform nature means that the Android world can eventually be detached from the JVM backend, if I understand correctly.



No, reimplementation of the Java standard library was the core issue in that lawsuit, and Kotlin akso uses the Java standard library.


Indeed, people keep telling Kotlin was a way out of the lawsuit, while forgetting Kotlin, Gradle, Android Studio, and whole whole Android SDK run on Java / JVM.

Even with ART, Kotlin withouth the richness of the Java ecosystem at Maven Central is worthless, hence why after the whole Kotlin push, now ART is modular and updated to more recent versions, currently Java 17 LTS. Via Play Store updates from Android 12 onwards.

Kotlin was pushed by a couple of folks with managment powers, given the team marriage with JetBrains, and a way to push common interests with Android tooling.


In the mid to long term I think Kotlin and KMP are likely to be where Google puts its effort. Flutter is likely toast but it will be some time before KMP is polished enough to replace it.


I've used Flutter and Kotlin MP. There's zero reason for me to believe Kotlin MP is superior, so why would it replace Flutter???


I like Flutter a lot and I think right now it's much more capable and mature than KMP is. The problem is Google is in aggressive cost cutting mode and it's not clear how Flutter contributes to their bottom line in a meaningful way. It's not hard to make the business case that they should shift the considerable resources they now invest in Flutter to focus on Kotlin/Compose and let JetBrains do the heavy cross-platform lifting.

I hope this doesn't happen but as long as Google is willing to cut engineering resources even while they're recording record profits it's hard to be confident.


> it's not clear how Flutter contributes to their bottom line in a meaningful way... focus on Kotlin/Compose and let JetBrains do the heavy cross-platform lifting.

Why do you think Kotlin MP would contribute to JetBrains' bottom line when at the same time you think Flutter does NOT contribute enough to Google's?

I get it, Google's bottom line is on another level, but at the same time, if someone can afford to invest on technologies that do not bring in any profit, that's Google if it thinks it increases its reach, which Flutter/Dart do in a way that Kotlin cannot, given Google controls them but not Kotlin (though you could make a case Google effectively controls Kotlin, at least somewhat?).


JetBrains sells very expensive tooling around Kotlin & KMP. If it takes off their path to profit is pretty clear.

That said, building a really good cross platform UI toolkit and framework is really hard. It remains to be seen if JetBrains can pull it off.


The thing is, KMP might make money for JetBrains, but Google has not yet bought them yet, for reasons I still cannot fathom.


Indeed, their little marriage is the only reason Kotlin matters in first place.


Because of flutters lack of success and company politics.


I mean Kotlin has actually been adopted outside of Android. Maybe it's my bubble but I've never come across an actual Dart / Flutter job.


for the simple reason that with dart / flutter you don't need a huge team. 1 - 2 people are enough.

one codebase to cover web, android, iOS and desktop apps.

and for that simple reason, flutter won't go away. no other UI development framework comes close to the productivity of flutter.




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