devtools.fm: Developer Tools, Open Source, Software Development Eric Seidel - Flutter, Shorebird
6 snips
Dec 8, 2025 
Eric Seidel, co-creator of Flutter and founder of Shorebird, shares insights from his impressive tech journey. He discusses the challenges of web performance for mobile apps and contrasts Flutter's self-rendered widgets with React Native's native controls. Eric reveals how Shorebird addresses Flutter's code-push issues, allowing for seamless app updates. He also reflects on his startup lessons and offers a pragmatic view on AI-assisted coding, predicting a future with more multi-platform demands and portable software.
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How An SVG Demo Changed His Career
- Eric Seidel accidentally entered browsers after building an SVG demo at Apple and was asked to join the Safari team.
- That detour led to years on WebKit, then Chrome, Blink, and eventually Flutter and Shorebird.
Talk To Your Users Early
- Talk to your users; Eric credits lack of user conversations for his first startup's failure.
- Customer conversations reveal real needs and prevent building unwanted products.
Why The Web Couldn't Be The Phone App Platform
- The web failed as the uniform app platform because subtle platform cruft and main-thread work caused visual and performance gaps.
- Those gaps motivated building a new, portable rendering stack (which became Flutter) to reach native-quality mobile UX.