Flutter on VS Code with Neverinstall - A review from Aditya Thakur

At Neverinstall, we always try to improve our product and regularly engage with users from diverse backgrounds to get valuable feedback. In this article, we would like to introduce Aditya Thakur. He is a Developer Advocate for 100ms and runs a successful Discord community with over 1000 developers.

Aditya is a public speaker and runs a YouTube channel, covering topics around the software development landscape. So we deemed it fit to ask him to try our product. Earlier this month, we reached out to Aditya to compare his experience of using Flutter on VS Code on his native machine with the experience on Neverinstall.

This exercise aimed to understand how well our platform can replace the local installation of IDEs and code editors for a user and which use case the platform best serves a user.

Here are Aditya’s views on the platform and what he loved about it.

Setup

One of the aspects brought to our attention was the setup of the code editor, i.e., VS Code. When we built our platform, this was always one of our primary focuses, where we wanted to reduce the complexity and duration of setup for IDEs and code editors.

Ease

Aditya found the setup of the VS Code and Flutter easy and effortless. The platform only requires users to launch the code editor and select the development kit, in this case–Flutter, and the pre-configured and pre-installed application begin to run.

Developers do not need to download or install a code editor or a dev kit on their local machine and can simply log in to the platform to get instant access.

Time

VS Code started pretty quickly as compared to the local machine. The Flutter installation and the required IDE setup would have taken time on the native machine. However, it took only a few clicks to select VS code, choose the Flutter development kit, and get started with the project.

Aditya noted that creating a new project in Flutter was also a charm. He created a project by running the command – flutter create newapp – getting him started with his development exercise roughly 2 seconds from launch.

Writing code

The primary role of a development environment is to help write code, and at Neverinstall, we are trying to bring that experience closer to a native machine as much as possible. With ultra-low latency and faster setup times, we are trying to deliver the best experience to developers. Here is Aditya’s experience writing code on the platform.

Familiarity

Since a large number of developers are familiar with the Linux operating system, we choose it to be the backbone of our platform. When Aditya set up his dev environment on our platform, he found that VS Code running as a Linux app delivered a very familiar approach, allowing him to code even on the cloud comfortably.

Collaborative coding and code reviews

Neverinstall allows users to share their workspace with other users to work on the same project, browse together and even watch something together. This is one of the things we wanted Aditya to review for us from a coding perspective. He noted that collaborating with the other users was easier over the cloud, allowing different developers to work on the same project in real-time.

Since the same instance is shared with a user, code reviews also become easier. Aditya noted that review code within the instance of the developer was made possible through the platform, preventing the need to move the code to a repository.

Coding from anywhere

One of the use cases that set Neverinstall apart for Aditya was our ability to carry an entire personal computer on the cloud. Since users can log in to the platform from anywhere and using any device, developers can use the platform to code from anywhere.

Mobility is a big win for Neverinstall since it allows users to take their workspace and dev environments anywhere with them, even on their phone or tablet with the same native desktop experience, and code from virtually any place on the planet with an internet connection.

The overall experience

Here is how Aditya summed up his overall experience using Flutter on VS Code with Neversintall.

Neverinstall for Aditya

Using VS Code with Neverinstall was great, and the performance of the code editor was fairly good, considering it is streamed over the internet. The platform allows users to take their work anywhere and even switch devices without the need to download or install IDE repeatedly.

The project was running on the latest version, which goes to say that all the updates and upgrades for IDEs and dev kits are handled on Neverinstall’s end, further reducing efforts for developers.