Author: Karsten Silz
Mar 19, 2021   |  updated May 8, 2021 15 min read

Permalink: https://betterprojectsfaster.com/learn/talks-vjug-long-2021-how-to-build-front-ends/

Part of the Talks series

VJUG Talk: "How Should Java Developers Build Front-Ends for Web, Mobile & Desktop Today?"

VJUG logo

Table Of Contents

Talk

Venue

The Virtual Java User Group (VJUG) regularly hosts online talks. On April 7, 2021, I presented “How Should Java Developers Build Front-Ends for Web, Mobile & Desktop Today?”. I looked at various frameworks from a Java developer’s perspective and suggested which one to use in three common scenarios: Building a web app from scratch, building native iOS and Android apps, and what to do on desktop when you have a web application.

Abstract

Users access applications on PCs and mobile devices today. There are two obvious ways to build front-ends for these devices: Web applications and native applications. Cross-platform UI toolkits combine advantages from both approaches. Examples are (in alphabetical order) Google’s Flutter, JavaFX, Facebook’s React Native, and Microsoft’s Xamarin. Important web frameworks are Google’s Angular, JSF, Facebook’s React, Thymeleaf, Vaadin, and Vue.js. I will look at various frameworks from a Java developer’s perspective and suggest which one to use in three common scenarios.

In 2019, I developed a mobile app prototype with Flutter and a progressive web application prototype. The videos are below. I then decided to use Flutter for native mobile apps in my SaaS start-up. Based on my experiences, I will highlight typical Flutter issues and how to solve them.

I’m neither affiliated with the projects I’m discussing nor selling books or training courses. I share industry analysis and my project experiences to give you options for your next project. I use 12 criteria for my evaluation. You may use my criteria or pick your own or weigh my criteria differently than I do. But you need to apply your criteria in your own environment and make your own choices.

Summary

Here is my advice for “Building a Web App From Scratch”:

Building a Web App From Scratch
Building a Web App From Scratch

Here is my advice on “Building Native iOS and Android Apps”:

Building Native iOS and Android Apps
Building Native iOS and Android Apps

And this is my advice on “What to Do on Desktop When You Have a Web Application”:

What to Do on Desktop When You Have a Web Application
What to Do on Desktop When You Have a Web Application

Feedback

If you’ve seen my talk, then please rate it!

This is the feedback I got on my talk. Please note that you can view the second page with the arrow button in the bottom left.


Slides

Here are the slides as PDF. They are 3.1 MB:

You can also get the slides in their original Keynote format. “Keynote” is Apple’s presentation application. Why would you do that? My slides have less text than the PDF version, so you can see what I cut. I also animated the slides, so they are more pleasant to watch. Or maybe you want to peek under the hood to see how I achieved specific effects. These slides are 15 MB in size.

Videos

Talk

Here’s the video of the talk on YouTube. My presentation starts at 3:51 into the video. It runs for 50 minutes, with 8 minutes worth of questions and answers afterward.



Flutter Hot Reload

Flutter Hot Reload makes code changes go live in the device/simulator immediately. It’s the main reason why working with Flutter can be such fun! I showed it in the talk, but here it is again:



Mobile App Prototype with Flutter

Although it’s a bit old, this is still a decent example of what a native Flutter app can look like. I’m not ready to share the app I’m working on - sorry!

In the summer of 2019, I built native iOS/Android apps with Flutter to validate a business problem. It took me about six weeks, and it was my first Flutter project. I used Google’s cloud service Firebase for login, No-SQL database, and file storage. I also built my own back-end with Java, JHipster, Spring Boot, and Angular.


Progressive Web Application Prototype

At the end of 2019, I built a progressive web app (PWA) to speed up app development. A PWA uses the “Service Worker” in a browser to install on your device and cache data. That was about four weeks, and it was my first PWA. I used Google Workbox for this but developed my own offline storage solution in the browser. I built my back-end with Java, JHipster, Spring Boot, and Angular.




Java Tech Popularity Index Q1/2024:
Developer job ads down 32% year over year, Stack Overflow questions dropped 55% since ChatGPT. I now recommend IntelliJ Community Edition because many AI code assistants don't run in Eclipse. Job ads for Quarkus hit an all-time high.

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Looking For Project in October 2022!

And now for some shameless self-promotion: I’m looking to join a project in October 2022, in Milton Keynes, London, or remote. I’ll work as a contractor or fixed-term employee but don’t take permanent positions. Interested? Then check out my resume & work samples!



Additional Talk Information

How Can We Build Front-Ends Today?

Declarative Front-Ends
Apple’s SwiftUI

SwiftUI is Apple’s take on declarative front-ends. Here’s the counter example from the talk, with slightly changed formatting:

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@State var count: Int = 0

var body: some
View {
  VStack(alignment: .center,
    content: {
      Text("Counter: \(count)").padding()
      Button(
        action: { self.count++ },
        label: { Text("Increment") }
      )
    }
  )
}
Google’s Flutter

Flutter is Google’s cross-platform implementation of declarative front-ends. It reached the stable version 1.0 for mobile in December 2018. Here’s what the SwiftUI counter sample looks like in Flutter:

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int _counter = 0;

return Column(
  mainAxisAlignment: MainAxisAlignment.center,
  children: [
    Text( 'Counter: $_counter' ),
    TextButton(
      onPressed: () =>
        setState({
          _counter++
        }),
        child: Text( 'Increment' ),
    ),
  ],
);
Google’s Jetpack Compose

Jetpack Compose is Google’s Android implementation of declarative front-ends. So Google has two different horses in this race: Jetpack Compose and Flutter. Of course, it’s Google! 😒

Jetpack Compose entered beta on February 24, 20201. According to Google, it now has stable APIs and is feature-complete.

I adopted the counter sample in this tutorial to look like the SwiftUI sample above:

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val count = +state{0}

Column(Spacing(16.dp)) {
  Container() {
    Column() {
      Text(
        text = "Counter: ${count.value}",
        modifier = Spacing(8.dp)
      )
      Button(
        text = "Increase",
        onClick = {
          count.value++
        }
      )
    }
  }
}
Microsoft’s .NET Multi-platform App UI (MAUI)

.NET MAUI is part of .NET 6, expected for November 2021. And if “Maui” rings a bell for you - it’s the second-largest island of Hawaii.

Microsoft calls its implementation of declarative front-ends “Model-View-Update” (MVU). Here’s what I think the SwiftUI sample from above will look like in MVU. I adapted the sample from the announcement post:

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readonly State<int> count = 0;

[Body]
View body() => new StackLayout {
  new Label( "Counter: {count}" ),
  new Button(
    () => $"Increment",
    () => count.Value ++
  )
};
Facebook’s React

And finally, here’s what the counter looks like in Facebook’s React for web applications. I adapted it from this Stackblitz sample. You see some HTML code in there because I don’t use components to keep things simple. If I did, it would look as declarative as the other examples:

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class App extends React.Component {
  state = {
    counter: 0
  }

  render() {
    return <div>
      <p>Counter: {this.state.counter}</p>
      <button onClick={
        () => this.setState({
            counter: this.state.counter + 1
          })`
        }>Increase</button>
    </div>
  }`
}

Web Applications

Popularity

I recorded all numbers on Wednesday, April 7, 2021.

Here are the terms I used with Google Trends:

  • Angular: Web framework
  • Jakarta Server Faces: Topic
  • React: JavaScript library
  • Thymeleaf: Software
  • Vaadin: Topic
  • Vue.js: Topic

Here’s the link for Stack Overflow Trends: all web frameworks

Here are the search queries for the Udemy course data:

I restricted the Amazon U.S. book data to English books in the category Computer & Technology Books.

Here are the links for Stack Overflow Jobs:

Unlike the Stack Overflow search, the Indeed job search is a primitive full-text search in both the header and the body. I searched manually and then adjusted some values:

  • A job with the title React Developer could still have Vue in the body. This is counted both as a result for React and Vue.
  • Searching for React also shows results for React Native. I subtracted the number of React Native from the React results.
  • About half the search results for Flutter in the UK are for Flutter Entertainment, the world’s largest online betting company. This may inflate results in other countries, too.
  • About a third of the JSF results are defence industry job that reference the Joint Strike Fighter aircraft. This may slightly inflate results in other countries, too.
  • “Vue” has multiple meanings in French and Spanish. So in France, Canada, and Spain, I searched for “vue.js” instead.

You can find the detailed search results with links here:

Ranking

I ranked React fastest for two reasons:

  • React has an experimental feature called Concurrent Mode. If it makes it into production, it will improve data loading with multiple components on a page.
  • ReactDOMServer lets us send HTML from the server to the browser before the React application is ready. The other frameworks may have something similar.

Native iOS & Android Apps

Popularity

I recorded all numbers on Wednesday, April 7, 2021.

Here are the terms I used with Google Trends:

  • Flutter: Software
  • JavaFX: Topic
  • React Native: Topic
  • Xamarin Cross-platform Application Development - Second Edition: Topic

Here’s the link for Stack Overflow Trends: all cross-platform frameworks

Here are the search queries for the Udemy course data:

I restricted the Amazon U.S. book data to English books in the category Computer & Technology Books.

Here are the links for Stack Overflow Jobs:

Please see the previous section for general information on the Indeed search.

Flutter is at a special disadvantage on Indeed. Often, you find the following in job ads there: “Experience with a cross-platform framework like Xamarin or React Native required”. Now Flutter is a cross-platform framework, and it’s the new kid on the block. But if you just have “Flutter” in your resume, you still may not get the job:

  • First of all, most big companies today use Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). These systems scan your resume automatically for keywords. So if “Flutter” isn’t an approved keyword, you’re out.
  • The next stage is the agency or HR department. They typically have no clue about programming. And how could they? They hire people in all sorts of professions. So if they don’t know about “Flutter”, you’re out again. It’s not all sunshine and roses, you know!
  • Hopefully, the developers at the end of the process do know Flutter.
React Native Vs. Flutter

React Native always uses a JavaScript VM to run our applications. Flutter uses a Dart VM during development and compiled native code when deployed. That’s faster. And it’s what GraalVM does in Java with Ahead-of-Time compilation (AOT) to produce native binaries.

React Native manages the native iOS/Android UI elements through a JavaScript bridge. That’s slower than Dart: Dart uses the Google open-source Skia Graphics library. Chrome and Firefox, Chrome OS, and Android also use Skia. But this also means Flutter only paints pixels: It has to recreate all native iOS/Android UI elements in Flutter.

React Native doesn’t officially support Windows or macOS. But Microsoft does: react-native-windows and react-native-macos. I’m not sure how production-ready they are. And react-native-macos is a fork of the official React Native.

Flutter Plugins

The Flutter plugin portal is awesome! It gives you example code, popularity metrics, and code quality information:

The main plugin page
The main plugin page


The plugin changelog
The plugin changelog


The mandatory example program
The mandatory example program


The version history
The version history


The code quality
The code quality

Will Google Kill Flutter?

In 2019, Flutter was the project with the third-highest number of contributors at GitHub (section “Top and trending projects”). It had 13k. Azure Docs had 14k, VSCode had 19k. I couldn’t find these numbers for 2020.

Toyota, one of the biggest car makers in the world, picked Flutter to power future car entertainment systems. I’m not sure if this is just a test by Toyota or if they already decided to go ahead with Flutter for production.

Canonical is the maker of the popular Linux distribution Ubuntu. They announced in March 2021 that Flutter will be the default choice for future Canonical mobile and desktop apps.

Responsive Design

Flutter gives us little help on responsive design: Find out the screen width and change your UI. Wonderful! So no grid, like in Bootstrap or the more powerful, but also more complicated HTML version. Anyway, I went with flutter_bootstrap for now.

Does Flutter Do Too much?
  • Animations on iOS can stutter when first used. There’s now a project for that in Flutter.
  • Flutter has more than 8,500 open issues. But the team claims that they close at least as many as are being opened. Seems true for February 16, 2021 – March 16, 2021: 1,210 closed, 695 opened.
  • “Sound Null Safety” is a feature of Dart that’s new in Flutter 2.0. It does away with NullPointerExceptions. But we need to update our code. And the plugins we use also need to be null-safe. And so do their dependencies… It’s clear to me that this will take a while and that some plugins will not be updated and fall by the wayside. Now Flutter has a migration tool for null safety that’s stunning: It’s a web server that can automatically update your code! Watch it here:`

Notable Flutter Plugins

Getting Started

React & JavaScript

The React website is a good starting point. React uses JavaScript to create web applications.

Learning JavaScript
Learning TypeScript

TypeScript mixes “some Java into JavaScript”, such as types. Hence the name! You have to use TypeScript if you use Angular. And you can use it with React.

You can take a peek in the “TypeScript for Java/C# Programmers” article. If you like it, then the TypeScript handbook is your friend, also in Epub and PDF.

Learning React

Flutter & Dart

The Flutter website is an excellent place to get familiar with Flutter. Flutter uses the Dart programming language to create natively-compiled applications for mobile, web & desktop. Both Flutter and Dart can use plugins that have a great portal.

Learning Dart

You start with the Dart language tour. Java developers take the “Intro to Dart for Java Developers” next. Then you have options:

Installing Flutter

Here are the instructions, straight from the Flutter website:

Learning Flutter

Here’s a selection of Flutter tutorials and courses:

Part 10 of 15 in the Talks series.
« GDG Milton Keynes: "What I Learned from Building a Flutter App for Cat-Sitters" | LJC Community Talk: "How Should Java Developers Build Front-Ends for Web, Mobile & Desktop Today?" » | Start: LJC Lightning Talk: Eclipse OpenJ9: Memory Diet for Your JVM Applications

Java Tech Popularity Index Q1/2024:
Developer job ads down 32% year over year, Stack Overflow questions dropped 55% since ChatGPT. I now recommend IntelliJ Community Edition because many AI code assistants don't run in Eclipse. Job ads for Quarkus hit an all-time high.

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