I wasn’t excited about Jetpack Compose. There. I said it.

When it first came out, it felt like Flutter in a different outfit. Kotlin instead of Dart. Same declarative energy. And look, I didn’t have anything against Flutter. Once you get comfortable with it you can build a solid multiplatform app.

I just didn’t feel the need to adopt something new. XML worked. Views worked. We were shipping.

And then there was the terminology. <insert multiple facepalms> mutableStateOf. derivedStateOf.

It sounded like I needed an encyclopedia just to build a button. I wasn’t eager to relearn concepts I already understood — definitely a lot of “get off my lawn” going on.

Back in 2017 at Google I/O, I ran into Dave Burke. He was leading Android at the time. I asked him what he thought about Flutter. Was it the future? Should we all be paying closer attention?

He didn’t tip his hand. But he mentioned that declarative UI had clear advantages. I remember nodding politely. It was Dave after all. But I wasn’t fully sold.

Years later, however, that comment made a lot more sense.

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