Lightweight Isolates in Flutter and Dart with Maksim Lin

In this episode, I talked to Maksim Lin. Maks is a Google Developer Expert in Flutter, and he’s an Android and Flutter Developer. He’s a passionate contributor, user, and supporter of open-source software. He’s also a regular speaker at technical conferences and local developer group meetups.

Today, we are going to talk about isolates, isolate groups, the actor model, improvements and limitations of isolates, concurrency, and we will even talk a little bit about "the soul of Erlang and Elixir".

It’s Maks’s second episode on the Flutter 101 podcast. In Episode 21, Maks and I were talking about WebAssembly, Dart, and his Dart-WASM project. In both episodes, I had these "wow" moments, as I realized how important WebAssembly will become in the coming years in software development, I had these "wow" moments, as I realized the potential behind the improvements to the Isolates, how the isolates make Dart such a powerful language... so I really hope that you will be just as excited when you are listening to this episode as I was when we recorded it.

Guest: Maksim Lin

• Twitter @mklin
• GitHub @maks
• Web manichord.com: "Flutter and Android App development and consulting"
• Dart, WASM and AssemblyScript - Oh my!
• Featherweight Isolates in Flutter (Flutter Engage)

Host: Vince Varga

• Twitter @vincevargadev
• GitHub @vincevargadev
• LinkedIn @vincevargadev
• Web vincevarga.dev
• Flutter 101 Podcast on Twitter @flutter101dev

Most relevant past episodes from Flutter 101

• WebAssembly and Dart with Maksim Lin (Episode 21): I invited Maks to chat as I saw a very interesting post written by him about WASM and Dart. In this episode, we'll clarify what WebAssembly is and why it's important for Flutter and Dart developers.
• Dart in the Cloud, Backend, Command Line, and Shelf with Kevin Moore (Episode 14): Kevin Moore is a Product Manager at Google working on Dart and Flutter. Dart in the cloud, on the backend, and on the command line. Functions Framework for Dart, Google Cloud Run, Docker and Dart, Shelf, and many many other useful packages.
• Dart Server Framework Alfred with Ryan Knell (Episode 11): Ryan Knell is the author of the performant, Express.js-like Dart server framework Alfred. We talked about the state of full-stack Dart, ORMs, backend frameworks, Flutter, and many more!

Mentioned packages

• pub.dev/packages/shelf: A model for web server middleware that encourages composition and easy reuse

Other resources

• Featherweight Isolates in Flutter (Flutter Engage)
• Lightweight Isolates & Faster isolate communication #36097
• The Soul of Erlang and Elixir - Saša Jurić (GOTO 2019)
• Actor model (Wikipedia)