Eric Seidel - Flutter, Shorebird

Quick Overview

Eric Seidel, a key contributor to Flutter and Shorebird, recounts his journey from working on Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome to co-founding Shorebird, emphasizing the challenges of cross-platform development, particularly concerning UI consistency and performance, which ultimately motivated the creation of Shorebird's unique Hot Reload solution for Flutter web.

Key Points: Seidel previously worked on Apple's Safari, Google's Chrome (including WebKit), and the development of the first native iOS calculator app. His experience highlighted the difficulty of achieving consistent UI behavior across platforms, especially noting that iOS often had stricter rendering rules than Android or web (e.g., CSS cascading vs. native form controls). The desire to solve the poor developer experience of slow hot-reloading on the web, particularly when dealing with complex rendering like SVG, led to the creation of Shorebird. Shorebird focuses on providing fast, high-quality multi-platform tooling, exemplified by its code-push product that allows instant updates without waiting for app store releases. Seidel notes that the initial challenge was making Flutter web perform well enough to feel native, as interpreted JavaScript was significantly slower than compiled code. The company's success, including securing $18,000 from Y Combinator (up from a previous $12,000 batch), validates their focus on solving these core developer experience problems.

Context: This interview features Eric Seidel, co-founder of Shorebird and former engineer at Apple (Safari) and Google (Chrome/WebKit), discussing the technical and motivational journey that led him to found Shorebird. The conversation centers on the difficulties of cross-platform development, specifically performance bottlenecks in Flutter for the web, and how his past experiences informed the direction of his current company.

Detailed Analysis

Eric Seidel details his career trajectory, starting with 20 years at Apple working on Safari and later moving to Google where he worked on Chrome and WebKit, including building the native iOS calculator app. He expresses that early web development, especially compared to native iOS, felt frustrating because achieving consistent UI behavior was difficult, often requiring workarounds for platform differences (like iOS being stricter on rendering). This frustration motivated him to seek an alternative to the slow hot-reload cycle for Flutter web apps, which was a major pain point. He mentions that early attempts to make Flutter web fast involved complex solutions like custom SVG renderers and networking stacks. After leaving Google, he co-founded Shorebird, which aims to solve these developer experience issues. He notes that the initial goal for Shorebird was solving the fast hot-reload problem for Flutter web, which he describes as a 'golden nugget' issue. He contrasts the web experience with the native platforms where performance was generally better, citing that when he worked on Chrome's WebKit team, they focused heavily on performance, but the web still lagged behind native apps in user experience fidelity and speed, especially regarding things like form controls and complex rendering. Seidel explains that Shorebird's code-push product directly addresses this by allowing instant updates across all platforms without store reviews. He also mentions that the Dart language, being AOT-capable, was a strong advantage over interpreted JavaScript for performance, which was a key motivator for their move to Dart.