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I decided to learn Flutter, because the idea of a common code base between Android and iOS sounds nice. I'm late to the party, I know.
So I install everything and start typing in the tutorial. TAB... two spaces. I absolutely hate that so let's change it. In the settings, it sends me to a FAQ which more or less says this is the way it is, deal with it. But I want my tabs to be four spaces, every code editor since the dawn of time could do this... I'M PAYING FOR THIS SHIT!!!!!!!
Ok, let's check the JetBrains website, I'm starting to lose my patience, but let's do it. At this point I should also mention that I'm feeling pretty stupid. I mean, I'm checking on the internet about how to do something which obviously must be obvious, why am I not seeing it?
I find a page on the official website. JetBrains' replies are along the lines of "Why would you want that?", "The holly wars between tabs and spaces are over", "Most people like it this way", "The overlords said this is the coding style to be used" (Ok, the last one was me reading between the lines). At the end of the thread, they provide a "hackish solution" (their words, not mine). Which doesn't work. Because why should it?
Not even when PyCharm's debugger randomly shat itself and I had to use print statements I got so angry. That was relatively fine, bugs are a fact of life, and the overall package is good, so I kept paying.
But now you're telling me that I cannot use what should be a common feature of every code editor just because you and the overlords know better?
Well, fuck you and the horse you came in on JetBrains, you've just lost a customer.

Comments
  • 5
    Can't you use any other editor?
  • 1
    @electrineer Apparently yes, I can also set up a Flutter project on the command line. I'll just have to check a bunch of editors. Maybe I'll get back to Atom. Or see if there's something better.
  • 0
    @yowhatthefuck I've tried both Android Studio and Idea (both installed through the JetBrains Toolbox). The only settings option for Dart formatting was the line length. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll definitely try vscode.
  • 0
    @frogstair I wouldn't go as far as calling it "absolute lack of usability", at least not from my experience. But I agree, it's annoying when you pay for something so that you wouldn't have to go troubleshooting, and then guess what? Troubleshooting you go.
  • 2
    🎶🎶🎶
    I've lived all my life in this weird wonderland
    I keep buying tech that I don't understand,
    'Cause they promise me miracles, magic, and hope,
    But, somehow, it always turns out to be SOAP
    🎶🎶🎶
  • 2
    Also, editorconfig, for real. This is the way.
  • 1
    you're digging your own grave with cross platform development. trust me. it's a shitshow
  • 5
    trust me. you DO WANT tab to be two spaces in flutter.

    when you get to write an actual app and see how much nesting it involves, you'll understand.
  • 1
    also when you've been trying to use it for a while, let me know if it's actually usable now, or if it's still just a nice idea, in theory.
  • 2
    @SortOfTested I wish I'd found out about that a long time ago, thank you. Nice song :)

    @codecrow @K-Hole @Midnight-shcode

    It's starting to sound like one of those situations where I look for ways to make things easier, only to end up with a hot mess on my hands.

    Hmmm... Let's see where this takes me.

    @K-Hole I've only played around with Kotlin, this makes me think I should give it a serious try.
  • 1
    @thewanderer yeah, that was precisely my experience.
    "oh, this sounds cool! could make things a lot easier!"

    (2 hours later)

    "oh, this uses a completely different paradigm... my brain hurts, but... cool to be learning something new again... i guess? i did hello world right, cool, let's try and do something real. "

    (4 hours later)

    "who the fuck thought that this way of error management and (basically absent) debugging is in any way acceptable?! i've been stuck on the same idiotic syntax error message for 4 hours and I STILL DON'T EVEN HAVE AN IDEA WHAT IT WANTS FROM ME!!!"

    (4 hours later)

    "phew, ok, i think i got it. you guys really need to work on your explaining-stuff skills... "

    (2 hours later)

    "nope, not got it. same context, same thing i'm trying to do, same syntax, ANOTHER FUCKING SYNTAX ERROR THAT DOESN'T EXPLAIN ANYTHING WITH NO WAY TO PROPERLY EXAMINE IT AND NO PLACE TO FIND A PROPER EXPLANATION!
    fuck this shit, i'm out. "

    ^ literally my whole first day with flutter
  • 1
    oh and the tutorials. the golden standard of pointless. overexplaining every single of the most obvious things, COMPLETELY GLOSSING OVER OR OUTRIGHT IGNORING ALL THE NON-OBVIOUS, NON-INTUITIVE STUFF THAT ACTUALLY NEEDS EXPLAINING, FOR WHICH I WENT AND SEARCHED A TUTORIAL FOR.
  • 1
    @Midnight-shcode So, after going through the tutorials and trying the examples... the tutorials are still "the golden standard of pointless". Repeating the same basic things ad nauseam. When I got to "background processes" I was kinda expecting a few pages about processes, threads, IPC, services, the works. Instead they have three paragraphs and a link to a Medium article. At this point my brain was screaming like Shorty: "RUN BITCH! RUUUUUUN!" Not because it's Medium, I heard some people dislike the platform, but I don't know it well enough to have an opinion about it. I just I don't feel comfortable with the idea of using a toolkit with badly written documentation scattered all over the place. It will most probably bite me in the ass further down the road.
  • 2
    This also begs the question of why a project backed by a multi billion dollar corporation doesn't have proper docs and tutorials and has to rely on Medium...

    Anyway, thanks to everyone for the early warning, I think I'll use my free time to learn something else.
  • 0
    @thewanderer maybe the proper useful docs (and debug library or whatever) are proprietary to keep the competetive edge
  • 0
    @SortOfTested I imagine that set to " Jose Cuervo you are a friend of mine."
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