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Google lays off staff from Flutter, Dart and Python teams weeks before its developer conference | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)

submitted 8 months ago by catculation@lemmy.zip to c/programming@programming.dev

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[-] ericjmorey@programming.dev 90 points 8 months ago

Disinvestment into Python, Flutter, and Dart is a clear signal that those tools are unimportant to Google. I won't be recommending that anyone use Dart or Flutter on new projects.

[-] huginn@feddit.it 55 points 8 months ago

You shouldn't have ever been recommending dart or flutter.

Python ain't going anywhere tho

[-] ericjmorey@programming.dev 10 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

You shouldn’t have ever been recommending dart or flutter.

Why not?

[-] Ephera@lemmy.ml 38 points 8 months ago

I would argue so, because Google has quite a reputation for killing projects: https://killedbygoogle.com

Especially with a programming language or framework, you don't want to invest in it, only to find out that it's going on the chopping block.

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[-] huginn@feddit.it 20 points 8 months ago

I'm mostly just biased because I do native mobile development but flutter has always seemed like a false economy to me. You're trying to build cross platform but it'll take more than 2x as long as building each platform to get the same quality of experience. So either you have a shittier experience or you take even longer than true native dev.

But I'm obviously very biased here.

[-] jacksilver@lemmy.world 14 points 8 months ago

I've used it before and it's got it's pros and cons. Ultimately the big thing is not all apps need to be the "killer app". Some apps are pretty simple, so a one size fits all can be nice. It's definitely not the same as developing natively, but for small teams/apps it's not too bad.

[-] GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml 4 points 8 months ago

If you're prioritizing cost, you should probably already be building a web application imo. There's very few cases where I would recommend cheaping out and building a native app, it's just kind of unsound.

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[-] magic_lobster_party@kbin.run 27 points 8 months ago

Has anyone used Dart the past decade?

[-] adam@doomscroll.n8e.dev 33 points 8 months ago

Aside from everyone who's using flutter?

[-] frezik@midwest.social 5 points 8 months ago

I sorta forgot it existed.

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[-] DeprecatedCompatV2@programming.dev 5 points 8 months ago

I won't be recommending that anyone use Dart or Flutter on new projects.

You seem to think Google cares at all. Android has been languishing and Flutter is lightyears ahead. KMP is junk compared to what Flutter has accomplished with a fraction of the bells and whistles.

[-] ericjmorey@programming.dev 9 points 8 months ago

You seem to think Google cares at all.

Odd conclusion to draw. I'm simply not inclined to recommend tools that are not going to be supported by the organization that created them. Development ecosystems are important when planning a project.

[-] DeprecatedCompatV2@programming.dev 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

What I mean to say is that Google isn't invested in native android either. It's been repeatedly strip mined by first-timers looking for a quick promotion and left to burn.

Things got so bad that Google gave up on native Views and created Jetpack Compose, which has been a source of many complaints related to performance.

In 2024 Flutter has instant hot-reload, and the "native" (but 100% bundled) solution still requires a complete reinstall on the device. In fact, Dart can compile to native code (or JIT) without an issue, yet Kotlin Native ~~is barely in GA in the new compiler~~ support has been lagging while the new compiler isn't out of beta and is still poorly supported by tooling.

Consider the absurdity: React Native is the only true native framework out of RN, Jetpack Compose, and Flutter. And all of this barely scratches the surface of the tooling problems that Flutter 99% avoids by allowing development on desktop, web or iOS simulator.

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[+] seth@lemmy.world 74 points 8 months ago

[deleted]

[-] GarlicToast@programming.dev 23 points 8 months ago

If I'm reading their CEOspeak right, their objective is to fire the very experienced people, that costs a lot of money, and replace them with people that costs less.

I never worked at Google, so I don't know for sure, but it sounds like the Python team is important and that this will backfire. As the people that costs less will also be less skilled, and Python is an important piece for AI/ML research, where Google is already lagging behind. The AI people in Google will get lower quality help with Python, and Google will lag even further behind.

That what happens when the CEO is an MBA and not an engineer.

[-] ericjmorey@programming.dev 8 points 8 months ago

Engineers over index in their own ways, but I think you're spot on with decoding the PR speak.

The Python team was very involved with the Python Software Foundation and was influencial with directing priorities for the Python programming language reference implementation (which is by far the most widely used implementation of Python). Google just gave up their say in how the language will evolve. Seems like an incredibly bad strategy. But then again, Google has been, from a financial perspective, nothing more than a digital classified ads platform for decades. If a smart MBA were running Google they'd start spinning off divisions into new IPOs and cashing in with dividends like other large conglomerates have done in the past when they have stopped inovating or actually commit to their projects long term.

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[-] porgamrer@programming.dev 21 points 8 months ago

They are not stupid at all. Their interests are in conflict with the interests of tech workers and they are winning effortlessly, over and over again.

The big tech companies are all owned by the same people. If these layoffs cause google to lose market share to another company, it's fine because they own that company too.

What matters is coordinating regular layoffs across the whole industry to reduce labour costs. It's the same principle as a strike: if the whole industry does layoffs, workers gradually have to accept lower salaries. In other words, the employers are unionised and the employees are not.

This process will probably continue for the next 20 years, until tech workers have low salaries and no job security. It has happened to countless industries before, and I doubt we are special.

I'm sure the next big industries will be technology-focused, but that's not the same as "tech". They won't involve people being paid $200k to write websites in ruby.

[-] nephs@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 8 months ago

That's why we need to negotiate in block, likely through unions.

[-] boyi@lemmy.sdf.org 18 points 8 months ago

It's going to be more expensive to hire and train new people when the dumdums in upper management finally figure out the mistakes

Unfortunately that's not the case. Those who have been laid off are those paid high salaries to build up the foundation. Now that the foundation is already there, they future work won't be as complex as before and need less training. So why would they still pay the very high salaries? They'll just get rid of the used-to-be-important programmers and hire the can-be-hired-for-a-lot-less programmers from India. It's sad, but that's the reality.

[-] MonkderDritte@feddit.de 7 points 8 months ago

Those who have been laid off are those ... to build up the foundation. Now that the foundation is already there, the future work won't be as complex as before and need less training.

Small-to-medium companies see you at least as investment. So this is where i work.

[-] ericjmorey@programming.dev 5 points 8 months ago

They're hiring replacements in Germany, not India.

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[-] porgamrer@programming.dev 25 points 8 months ago

“As we’ve said, we’re responsibly investing in our company’s biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead,” said Google spokesperson Alex García-Kummert. “To best position us for these opportunities, throughout the second half of 2023 and into 2024, a number of our teams made changes to become more efficient and work better, remove layers, and align their resources to their biggest product priorities. Through this, we’re simplifying our structures to give employees more opportunity to work on our most innovative and important advances and our biggest company priorities, while reducing bureaucracy and layers”

There was this incredible management consultant in france in the 18th century. Name eludes me, but if he was still around Google could hire him and start finding some far more convincing efficiencies.

The guy was especially good at aligning resources to remove layers

[-] odium@programming.dev 13 points 8 months ago

Robespierre?

[-] JustBrian7872@feddit.de 16 points 8 months ago

I also cannot name him from the top of my head...interesting

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[-] DmMacniel@feddit.de 5 points 8 months ago

You could make a religion out of this.

[-] odium@programming.dev 5 points 8 months ago

No don't

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[-] eveninghere@beehaw.org 22 points 8 months ago

I am a manager at a big tech and I hate capitalism. CXOs really only care about profits, and thus everybody high-level proposes new enshittification strategies.

[-] onlinepersona@programming.dev 19 points 8 months ago

Can't really make heads of tails of this. I thought they were really into AI and Python is a big part of that. Which other languages are they going to invest in? Rust for Chromium?

Anti Commercial-AI license

[-] ericjmorey@programming.dev 19 points 8 months ago

Python is in essence the interface for AI tools that are optimized with languages that are easier to get high performance results with.

[-] Tikiporch@lemmy.world 12 points 8 months ago

They hired cheaper talent from elsewhere for python.

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[-] Artyom@lemm.ee 11 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I spent thr last 10 minutes reading the flutter docs, and I have no fucking idea what it is, what language it is written in, or generally anything useful about it. I think we'll be fine.

Also, Google's contributions to Python are mostly obsolete. optparse was replaced by argparse which is .mostly replaced by click. Yapf was never successful and black has taken a commanding lead. Python will be just fine.

[-] icesentry@lemmy.ca 29 points 8 months ago

If you couldn't figure out what flutter is in 10 minutes that reflects poorly on you much more than anything else.

[-] SrTobi@feddit.de 27 points 8 months ago

Flutter uses dart. It's one of the best ui building frameworks I have used. Not that it is perfect...

[-] realharo@lemm.ee 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Flutter - the framework - is great. Dart as a language is tolerable - lot of ugly boilerplate, manual codegen, and things you can't quite express correctly are everywhere, but if you're not too much of a stickler, Flutter is still worth it (at least until Compose Multiplatform matures - if ever).

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[-] AMDIsOurLord@lemmy.ml 26 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Flutter is a UX/UI framework for Dart programming language. Dart is a statically typed (optionally dynamic possible), completely type safe, soundly null-safe compiled programming language. It can compile to JS to run on the web, or compile to x86_64 or Arm assembly to run on hardware.

Combining Dart, which is honestly an awesome but underrated language with Flutter which is a declarative UI framework, I have found a new love for app development. It's very pleasant.

And now I get shot in the dick with this news....

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[-] GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml 9 points 8 months ago

Looks like my Lemmy-client of choice did some retrying when I had poor connection, sorry about that.

I think trying to go cheap on native apps was always kind of a fool's errand, tbh. Cordova, Xamarin, React Native and so on - all pretty sub-par solutions leading to poor experience without actually materializing the desired savings.

[-] MonkderDritte@feddit.de 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Aren't a lot of Android apps made with Flutter?

[-] ericjmorey@programming.dev 4 points 8 months ago

Yes

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this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024

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