Paul Allard

Relaxing by the hot tub #PumpkinSelfie

@FlutterDev The missing choice on this survey is, ask AI. AI provides overviews and helps connect the dots between highly focused reference docs.

How do you best learn a new skill in Flutter?

@FlutterDev Android Studio with Gemini 3 AI. Ctrl B doesn't always find references, Ctrl S doesn't always reload the code, but I keep finding workarounds. Stability in a crazy changing world.

What's your preferred IDE for Flutter development?

@dlboardman Say, did the Mariners run take you back 25 years?

Which offense is worse: Phillies or Eagles?

@FlutterDev In 50 years of programming the worst one was a 512 line COBOL program with 125 GOTO statements. It broke an automated refactoring program and took a week to desk check. Robert L Glass used to write funny stories about extreme programmers like that. Who will write today's stories?

@FlutterDev In package three_js, an undocumented utility function triangulates vertices. Very handy. It also, as an unexpected side effect, shortens the input parameters (List<T> passed by reference), which stopped rendering, no error msgs, and was hell to debug. Not SOLID!

👻 In the spirit of spooky season, share your worst bug ↓

@FlutterDev This is now my technique for finding badly behaving packages. For instance, the three_js package has a triangulate() function that shortens its input lists as a side effect. It was hard to debug that without UnmodifiableListView but using it produces a clear compile time error!

The UnmodifiableListView class helps encapsulate your data, and prevents bugs in your Flutter application. 🙅‍♂️🪲 Get the details in this previous #TechniqueOfTheWeek. #ThrowbackThursday

@FlutterDev Both for me and for users it depends on the lighting conditions. In bright sunshine, lettering can be hard to see in Android dark mode so I or the user will tend to use light mode. Otherwise dark mode to save power and battery life.

Simple question: 🌕 Light mode or 🌑 Dark mode?

@FlutterDev I started in 2019, 50 year career, 15 languages. I've learned -You can write flutter like Cobol -Visual Basic operators (EQ, OR) do not work in Dart. -Dart has fewer symbolic operators than APL. -Method parms are passed by reference and can be altered by the method (C++).

Whether you're new to the framework or a seasoned pro, we want to hear about your Flutter journey 🩵 How long have you been building with Flutter? What's the most valuable lesson you've learned along the way?

@FlutterDev I use an opengl package called three_Dart. It works fine under dart 3.8 but everything goes haywire under dart 3.9. textures not being updated, severe timing issues, and loaders seemingly swapping textures. Has anyone else experienced anything like this? I am back on 3.8 for now.

What's new in Dart 3.9? 🎯 Dive in → goo.gle/47H3il6 With key updates to null safety, performance boosts to the Dart CLI, and the exciting addition of the Dart and Flutter MCP Server to empower your AI assistants, there’s a lot to love.

@FlutterDev On another app the asset loaders appear to be swapping textures. All three of my issues are on a page that uses a package called three_dart. That package has not been updated in 2 years. I just need to confirm that the package was not the cause. Has anyone else seen any of these?

@FlutterDev I have 2 issues. Before I report them, I will clarify the cause. In the last week while running on Windows, several enums suddenly failed to recognize the name method. Even Gemini said that was "incredibly strange." On the same page I have a texture widget that is not updating.

Flutter 3.35.1 was released, containing 1 fix: 🩹 flutter/173785 - Fixes an issue that prevented downloading the Flutter SDK for Windows from flutter.dev See the changelog ⬇️ goo.gle/4mlfnRH

@FlutterDev Three_dart lets me render OpenGL 3D images in flutter. I can move the camera around. I can rotate the object. I can wrap them in various skins and I can drop different backgrounds behind them.

What's a pub package you can't live without? 📦🩵

@earthquakeBot I'm curious. NBC nightly News reported a 7.3 earthquake near Alaska at 4:30 p.m. Eastern daylight Time today, July 16th, or 12:38 p.m. local time today. That did not show up in Earthquake Robot. Does Earthquake Robot not report every earthquake or was that misreorted by NBC News?

A 5.0 magnitude earthquake occurred 42.25mi ESE of Atka, Alaska. Details: eqbot.com/42j Map: eqbot.com/42w

@ESPNFANSUPPORT I hate Marketing people. After four searches on Google for "how to watch the college football playoff games?" Did I FINALLY get an AI summary "Some ESPN network content is only available [on] a participating TV provider." Fubo, Hulu, Disney all hid this info!

@caseycrogers @DaneMackier Trust me, there were times when my Dart code looked more like COBOL: Data division, with all the properties defined at the top, no objects, lots of methods, lots of if statements and for statements. Everything spelled out, no functional programming!

@paultallard @DaneMackier ...you're coming from decades of coding experience. Lots of "best practices" are just cargo cult programming. For example, I see a lot of use of interfaces in Dart that look like Java devs working around limitations of Java even though Dart doesn't even have those limitations.

PSA: if your #Flutter/#Dart interface only has one implementing class, delete the interface and use the implementing class directly. Inheritance complicates your code so only use it where its needed. Don't use it just because some YouTube tutorial told you it was "Clean" Code.

@caseycrogers @DaneMackier The extra layers means I have less to write when I create a new app. I copy templates, generate code, modify tests, and I am up in a flash! Instead of an encyclopedic knowledge of language features, I start from an encyclopedic knowledge of packages and use cases. Boom!

@paultallard @DaneMackier You'd be strictly faster if you familiarized yourself with coding without the interfaces. The extra layer of boilerplate and indirection wastes time writing and makes reading/debugging much harder

@peteralexbizjak I think the goals are to manage complexity and control maintainability. Complex or rapidly changing code needs more structure. If code is to be maintained or enhanced by someone else, then structure and style are bases for common understanding of the underlying code.

Been seeing conversations about "clean architecture" in my Flutter circles here on Twitter for the past few days. Pretty much everything that had to be said has been said, not much more I can add to the conversation.

@ThomasBurkhartB I feel I can mature as a coder in Dart, but docs & compiler msgs must recognize & address different coding styles. Still many old cookbooks & examples in docs, simple syntax errors now yield incomprehensible compiler error msgs. A Best In Class language must have BIC services.

Is Dart losing its way? Is it only me who feels that the recent additions to Dart makes it less readable and increases its learning curve? To me the beauty of Dart was its simplicity but with patterns and class modifiers as just an example it's no longer the case #flutter