<![CDATA[Triskell's wanderings]]>https://Triskell.github.iohttps://uglyduckblog.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/cat-with-cosmos-glasses-animal-hd-wallpaper-1920x1200-1233.jpgTriskell's wanderingshttps://Triskell.github.ioRSS for NodeFri, 15 Nov 2019 13:01:28 GMT60<![CDATA[What's up Flutter? March 2018]]>

Forewords

Here we are, a new month, a new season, and fresh flutter news! Like I said last month, I will try something new, more personal. In this issue, I will not try to read and sum up every links I found, but dive deeper into articles which attracted me more. I hope you will enjoy this experiment. You can still give me your opinion on twitter[https://twitter.com/triskeon].

What to do after Helloworld?

I was crawling the r/FlutterDev channel on Reddit, and I stumbled on this post:

Simple state management using Flutter/Dart way from r/FlutterDev

Whether you like Redux/Flux or not, this is a basic architecture to know. If you are a beginner, and you want to go further the classical Helloworld tutorial, you should read the code on the GitHub repository.

I enjoyed it quite a lot. It shows you Redux is not mandatory, and you can afford using Flutter with no particular dependency. You will discover InheritedWidget usage in a project really easy to understand.

To sum up, I discovered that not using Redux can be quite clean and OK. And the idea of rediscovering simple code architecture hyped me a lot.

Embedding a Flutter app on Linux desktop

This GitHub directory attracted my eyes. After MacOS last month, this month, Linux desktop. Yay!

Here is an extract of the README file:

The Flutter Linux Desktop Embedder

This framework provides the basic functionality for embedding a Flutter app on the Linux desktop. This currently includes support for:

  • Drawing a Flutter view.

  • Mouse event handling.

That’s still under heavy development, but that’s great news, isn’t it ?

How fast is Flutter?

While I was on Twitter, this post ticked me:

In his article, Andrea Bizzotto experimented Flutter execution’s speed against a native iOS application using Swift. If you are fond of optimisation and performance, this one should tick you too. But be careful! That’s just one use case, Flutter may have different speed on your project.

However, I was glad to see someone writing about Flutter performances without saying it is far better that other solutions. This bit of objectivity was like some fresh air to me, as I love both native and Flutter development. Flutter is not perfect for every usage (but performances seems to be quite good anyway), keep this is mind and adapt yourself.

Charts

I was waiting for my colleague Aloïs Deniel to port his cool C# library Microcharts (based on Skia, yay!) to Dart/Flutter, and the charts_flutter package came to me.

You can discover it through this article written by Michael Thomsen. No more excuses not to include charts in your apps!

(BTW, Aloïs, if you read this: I’m still greedily waiting for Microcharts for Flutter)

Conclusion

That few links where the ones which made me tick, I hope you will find some interest reading them, and you will learn as much as I did.

I found this new way of summing up my month in Flutter more pleasant: by writing about my favourite articles, I am way more involved and I can go deeper. I will try to follow this path and improve next month.

See you in April!

I hope you enjoyed this new issue of What’s up Flutter. If I was wrong on some point, or if you want more information about what I just wrote, just let me know on my Twitter.

Cover picture by Andrea Reiman

]]>https://Triskell.github.io/2018/03/30/Whats-up-Flutter-March-2018.htmlhttps://Triskell.github.io/2018/03/30/Whats-up-Flutter-March-2018.htmlFri, 30 Mar 2018 00:00:00 GMT<![CDATA[What's up Flutter? February 2018]]>

Forewords

Flutter community is expanding, more and more great content is appearing online. I’m so delighted about it.

You will see in this listing that February was rich. Very rich. That was a lot of reading for me, but I learned a lot. I hope you will, too. You can send me a word on twitter to give me your thoughts about this report.

News and events

Februeary was short, but full of surprises. To me, the biggest one was the announce of Flutter beta:

Now, you can attract your colleagues to do Flutter dev. No more "But, it’s still alpha" excuses. You will achieve to convince them with this video:

You can fin this video on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fq4N0hgOWzU

And finally, Google created a Github repository: Desktop Embedding for Flutter. Yep, that’s great news, but be careful: it only target macOS for now, and it’s still under heavy development.

Some resources to discover and learn Flutter

Some package releases

  • geocoder v0.0.1 by Alois Deniel. Access to forward and reverse geocoding functionalities.

  • fluttie v0.1.1 by simolus3. Display animations created in Lottie. (No iOS support for now…​)

  • contacts_service v0.0.4 by Clovis Nicolas. Access and manage the device’s contacts.

  • dioc v0.0.1 by Alois Deniel. Inversion of control based on dependency injection through containers.

  • dioc_generator V0.0.1 by Alois Deniel. A generator of code for dioc containers.

  • tts v1.0.1 by Alex Blount. Convert your text to speech.

  • flutter_facebook_login v1.0.2 by Iiro Krankka. Use the native Facebook Login SDK in your app.

  • flutter_twitter_login v1.0.1 by Iiro Krankka. Use the native TwitterKit SDK in your app.

  • audio_recorder v0.0.1 by Jordan Alcaraz. Record audio and store it locally.

  • https://pub.dartlang.org/packages/f_grecaptcha v1.0.0 by simolus3. Verify that the user is human using SafetyNet API on Android devices.

  • flutter_staggered_grid_view v0.1.1 by Romain Rastel. A Flutter staggered grid view which supports multiple columns with rows of varying sizes.

Conclusion

Whoa! February was short, but the community is more productive every day. I hope it will continue to grow that way for a long time. However, collecting links and reading every articles was a lot a work, and I wonder if it is still pertinent. Next month, I may give a try to a more personal and less time consuming form of this report. I’m not all decided about it, you will see it at the end of March.

See you next month !

I hope you enjoyed this second publication of What’s up Flutter. If I forgot something, made some mistakes, or if you want to appear in next What’s up Flutter publications, just let me know on my Twitter.

Cover image by Noah Silliman

]]>https://Triskell.github.io/2018/02/28/Whats-up-Flutter-February-2018.htmlhttps://Triskell.github.io/2018/02/28/Whats-up-Flutter-February-2018.htmlWed, 28 Feb 2018 00:00:00 GMT<![CDATA[What's up Flutter? January 2018]]>

Forewords

This news report on Flutter is just a gathering of links and information about what happened this January. You may find lots of links on Twitter, Reddit, and newsletters, my first sources of information. This is just a way for me to stay up-to-date on Flutter technology, by browsing and reading things about it.

This is the first publication, like a proof of concept for me :) As it is not perfect and I need to improve it, I will gladly appreciate to get some feedbacks on it.

News and events

Flutter plugin version 21

The Flutter plugin has been updated to version 21.

It comes with the first version of Flutter Inspector, which adds widget tree visualisation, widget selection between tree and UI, and properties display. There are some improvements with app launch and run, like a message when reloading was successful, some more hyperlinks in console to restart and access files more easily.

DartConf 2018

DartConf 2018 took place on January 23-24. You can find their dedicated open source Flutter app.

You can watch it now on the dedicated Youtube playlist, or if you prefer to watch the live version, you’ve got Day 1 live recording and Day 2 live recording.

Keynote by Tim Sneath

Tim started with quick presentation of Flutter, no surprise here.

He spoke about Dart and why they used it: hot reload, native compilation, language optimisation, open source, ECMA standard. They also officially announced Dart 2 with its strong mode type inference, optional new and const keywords, common behaviours and error messages on all platforms.

We had a presentation of the Hookle application, which was built using Flutter. They choose Flutter to accelerate and ease development on iOS and Android.

Then, some numbers about Flutter, Dart and contributions. In one sentence: Flutter community is impressive.

Evolving Dart: Leaving the ocean and learn to fly by Leaf Petersen

A Dart history: past, now, future. At the beginning, Dart was design to be a great JIT language to replace the flawy JavaScript in the browser. Then they adapted the language by creating Strong Mode. Then, came AOT with Flutter and the new version, Dart 2.

To extends the language to Dart 2, main challenge was to make a static typing system, who is both developer-friendly and as easy to use as the dynamic typing of Dart 1. Core libraries and tools have been updated to work with Dart 2.

In the future, Dart will include 64-bits integers, optional new and const keywords. They would like to introduce Generic constructors, smarter type promotion, support for language and library evolution, ease between typed and untyped code, and non-nullable types.

Let’s Live code in Flutter by Emily Fortuna & Matt Sullivan

Emily and Matt are live coding from scratch (with Visual Studio Code, not Android Studio) a Flutter app which finds restaurants around you. Sources are hosted on the nomnom github repository.

Flutter & Web: Unite your code and your team by Matthew Smith and John Ryan

AppTree needed to build an app for Android, iOS, and Web. As their Web version was already written in Dart, they tried to move their mobile native application to Flutter, sharing as much Dart code as possible between Flutter and Web.

Their strategy use layers, with abstract views and services to handle platform specific operations. They are using View-Controller-Service layers. Views are simple and only know rendering and user inputs, controllers handle app’s logic, and services are accessing to external data, like JSON or HTTP requests. They are using dependencies injection to avoid coupling to ease layer swapping between platforms.

Making Dart fast on mobile by Vyacheslav Egorov

Actually, modified title is Making Dart fast everywhere where Dart VM runs, you are warned. As Flutter uses Dart VM, we are fine.

Dart performances vary between Debug and Release mode. Vyacheslav explains how to monitor performances, and what Dart 2 brings to AOT performances.

SPOILER: There is a second part on Dart VM garbage collection and memory.

How to build good packages and plugins by Kevin Moore

Kevin gives advices on writing, publishing and maintaining great Dart packages and plugins. He goes through coding styles, versioning, files needed to publish and how to maintain your package.

Flutter Inspector by Jacob Richman & Phil Quitslun

Discover the brand new Flutter Inspector, with its widget inspection, widget tree and property visualiser, and how it could help you to develop faster.

Keep it Simple, State: Architecture for Flutter Apps by Brian Egan

States in Flutter are not that easy to use : StatefulWidget is great, but it can be hard to maintain. InheritedWidgets can solve a part of this, but it is not that optimised. Setting up tests can be hard with in some cases, too.

A solution is to use layers :

  • Data layer : retrieve and parse data.

  • Domain layer : up-to-you to choose your preferred solution. In this talk, we are looking to Redux. This is way more easier to test.

  • UI layer : widgets, using flutter_redux in this video to optimise the rendering process with StoreConnector.

Effective Dart + IntelliJ by Alexander Doroshko & &Jaime Wren

It starts with how to be faster with IntelliJ using shortcuts. Then, there is an overview the IntelliJ’s Flutter/Dart interface usage to be more effective.

From Zero to One: Building a real world Flutter Application by Faisal Abid

Faisal built Ven Chat, an app for singles, using Flutter in 5 days, working 2 hours a day. He used :

  • Websockets to connect app to the server.

  • InheritedWidget to handle app’s state.

  • jaguar_serializer plugin to serialize JSON.

  • GestureRecongnizer to handle user interactions combined with Dialog to interact with user.

  • Fluro to handle routes.

  • flutter_image to ease image loading from network.

  • async_loader to load data asynchronously and show a spinning animation.

Flutter/Angular code sharing deep dive by Paolo Soares

Paolo managed to share code between a Flutter and AngularDart. He went up to 50% sharing. In this talk, you can learn that those two frameworks are great, but not that easily compatible if you already have an existing AngularDart app. You’ll learn how to share code with some live coding, and some guidelines.

It’s bigger on the inside: Mind-bending scrolling in Flutter by Vyacheslav Egorov

Flutter’s scrolling is built on top of a lot of things. You will get here an overview: views, controllers, physics…​ That’s definitively a big thing. In this talk, you will discover how to use and create scrolling views, from simple to custom widgets.

Flutter lets you do whatever you want with scrolling, that’s huge.

Some resources to discover and learn Flutter

Some package releases

  • camera v0.0.2. A Flutter plugin for iOS and Android allowing access to the device cameras, by the Flutter team.

  • flutter_billing v0.1.0. Flutter plugin to enable billing on iOS and Android, by Volodymyr Lykhonis.

  • proxymity_plugin v0.0.1. A flutter dart plugin to access the device’s proximity sensor, by ManojNB.

  • lamp plugin v0.0.1. Handle your device’s lamp, by Clovis Nicolas.

  • screen plugin v0.0.2. Manage the device’s screen on Android and iOS, by Clovis Nicolas.

  • vibrate plugin v0.0.1. Use device vibration, by Clovis Nicolas.

Conclusion

With DartConf, the Flutter community seemed to be boosted and posted a lot of interesting stuff. Personally, I enjoyed reading all of this, and learned a lot. A big thank you to all those wonderful people who are creating are sharing great content.

I hope you enjoyed this first publication of What’s up Flutter. If I forgot something, made some mistakes, or if you want to appear in next What’s up Flutter publications, just let me know on my Twitter.

Cover image by Maxime Le Conte Des Floris

]]>https://Triskell.github.io/2018/01/29/Whats-up-Flutter-January-2018.htmlhttps://Triskell.github.io/2018/01/29/Whats-up-Flutter-January-2018.htmlMon, 29 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMT<![CDATA[Reviews on F# resources]]>

I started learning F# recently, and I’ve been a bit short on resources to learn it. I had nobody to recommend me some resources. I lost maybe too much time finding resources that fit me. So, to help you, here are some reources, with my review.

I will fill this list as I discover new resources.

Lessons

  • Xamarin University : Xamarin University has some classes about learning F# for beginners. There are some videos (5 for now) af about 30 minutes, and some materials to practice. I found clear explanations, and a preview of F# power. That is not a complete learning of F#, but you will find all the basics needed to get started and write your firsts apps. There will be no link with Xamarin and Mobile development.

  • F# for fun and profit : Lessons (chapters of an ebook) covering a great part of F#. Maybe a bit too complete for beginners to get started, you will find a great resource to get answers about your F# coding questions.

Community

  • F# Software Foundation : It’s one of my favorites. You should definively join the foundation. It’s free and you get access to a great community with a Slack channel. I’ve been warmly welcomed, and there are friendly people to help you. From beginners to specialists, from programming to data engineering and mobile development, you will find the help you need. Even if you are shy, just try it and say them hello. That’s worth it.

]]>https://Triskell.github.io/2017/02/05/Reviews-on-F-resources.htmlhttps://Triskell.github.io/2017/02/05/Reviews-on-F-resources.htmlSun, 05 Feb 2017 00:00:00 GMT<![CDATA[Inky Machine Learning]]>

Welcome to my series of posts Inky Machine Learning or just InkyML. It does not aim to be exhaustive nor specific, but to be fun and easy to understand.

This will be a first approach to Machine Learning (or ML) explained simply and drawn using ink by a guy with inky fingers (that’s why it’s called "inky"). It just mean to be fun, and to explain the very basic concepts and vocabulary of ML.

Here are the parts of the series :

I will update this list when I will publish new posts.

I hope you will enjoy it, and have fun with Machine Learning. Just because Machine Learning is fun !

Drawings in those posts are under Creative Common license (BY-NC-SA).

]]>https://Triskell.github.io/2016/11/15/Inky-Machine-Learning.htmlhttps://Triskell.github.io/2016/11/15/Inky-Machine-Learning.htmlTue, 15 Nov 2016 00:00:00 GMT<![CDATA[Supervised Learning and Unsupervised Learning]]>

In the first part of InkyML we discovered what is Machine Learning. You can find some explanations about the series and the list of posts on this page.

Now, let’s have a look to Supervised Learning and Unsupervised Learning. Enjoy !

Disclaimer: I’m not pro in Machine Learning and English is not my native language. So, I woud appreciate comments and advices to improve. ;)

ML101 SLUL 1
ML101 SLUL 2
ML101 SLUL 3
ML101 SLUL 4
ML101 SLUL 5
ML101 SLUL 6

While I’m drawing next part, you can follow me on twitter @triskeon to be notified about next publications and give me your opinion about it!

I would love you to share this all around you. Thanks!

Those drawings are under Creative Common license (BY-NC-SA).

]]>https://Triskell.github.io/2016/11/13/Supervised-Learning-and-Unsupervised-Learning.htmlhttps://Triskell.github.io/2016/11/13/Supervised-Learning-and-Unsupervised-Learning.htmlSun, 13 Nov 2016 00:00:00 GMT<![CDATA[What is Machine Learning ?]]>

This is the first post in a series which aims to explain Machine Learning concepts with simple words and fun drawings, named InkyML. You can find some explanations about the series and the list of posts on this page.

Disclaimer: I’m not pro in Machine Learning and English is not my native language. So, I woud appreciate comments and advices to improve. ;)

ML101 WiML 1
ML101 WiML 2
ML101 WiML 3
ML101 WiML 4
ML101 WiML 5

Next time, we will learn about Supervised Learning and Unsupervised Learning.

Those drawings are under Creative Common license (BY-NC-SA).

]]>https://Triskell.github.io/2016/10/23/What-is-Machine-Learning.htmlhttps://Triskell.github.io/2016/10/23/What-is-Machine-Learning.htmlSun, 23 Oct 2016 00:00:00 GMT