Finally getting around to another post
... and I'm baaaaack
After getting through a nasty bout of Covid around the new year, it has been a busy few months. I've spent some time upgrading the Roundslogging Mobile app to the latest versions of Vue, Vuex, and Quasar. I really enjoy Quasar, and the documentation is excellent. However, there are some aspects with app development that I have issues with.
Quasar
Quasar is excellent in many ways. It allows me to write for mobile while still writing Vue and JavaScript, both of which I feel comfortable with and enjoy. There are some issues, however, that have led me to look at other options:
- The general app look. This one is hard to put a finger on, but I feel like the app often looks like a website compressed to mobile size, instead of something built for mobile.
- Connecting to phone APIs. Quasar uses Cordova or Capacitor to connect to native phone APIs. I find myself running into trouble and spending a lot of time working out seemingly small issues (such as copying text to the clipboard).
- Debugging. While the Quasar docs are great, and Vue DevTools are awesome when I'm testing in the browser, I often find that digging around to find errors can be a pain. Is it an error in my JavaScript or Vue? My Quasar? A Cordova plugin?
Flutter and Dart
I recently (finally) decided to give Flutter a go. I signed up for several courses on Udemy and I've been moving through them quickly. I'll share thoughts on some of these courses in a post later on. Flutter is a blast! I haven't had this much fun coding in a while - and I say that as someone that thoroughly enjoys their job. Logic in Flutter feels comfortable because it seems so familiar in many ways. The basic structure is similar to JavaScript, which is my strongest programming language. It is strongly typed and has other features that remind me of C#, which I've used quite a bit as well. Designing the app layout is very intuitive. You can really tell it was made for mobile, rather than incorporating mobile as an afterthought.
Moving forward
My original plan was to just try and learn some Flutter on the side for fun or a hobby project. Now that I've gotten a taste of it though, I think I may be able to rewrite the Roundslogging app in Flutter before the next big update!