“Instead of freaking out about these constraints, embrace them. Let them guide you. Constraints drive innovation and force focus. Instead of trying to remove them, use them to your advantage.”
Hey developers, How's your coding camp going on? Hope you are enjoying and exploring your journey with late night popcorn.
There are a lot of hot debates on Flutter vs React Native , Comparisons about performance, market, community, resources, documentation , scope etc. The demand for Mobile Apps is increasing day by day, and be updated learning with the Trending Technologies coming to market with new innovations satisfying the business needs and develop faster with satisfied user experience and performance is big deal.
If you are confused between what to choose or to get started, you are at right place . In this blog let us have a Insight of Two Trending frameworks for Cross Platform Development(Flutter, React Native). Let us discuss the comparisons, and the facts we should know before getting started with or choosing between Flutter or React.
So ladies and gentlemen without further ado let us start the Discussion
1. Overview of Flutter and React Native
Flutter Flutter is Google’s UI toolkit for building beautiful, natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single code base. Dart is used for Cross Platform Reactive Programming.
- Release Date : MAY 2017
- React Native React Native is an open-source mobile application framework created by Facebook. It is used to develop applications for Android, iOS, Web by enabling developers to use React along with native platform capabilities. JavaScript is used for Cross Platform Reactive Programming
- Release Date : JUNE 2015
2. Performance
Flutter and React Native provides the best Performance Experience of 60 Frames per second and Rocks, to Choose instead of Web based Tools. React Native and Flutter both provides the Native Performance and Experience to their Users.
Flutter Apps are developed using Dart and Dart VM management takes care of integration of code with Native Libraries
React apps are developed using JavaScript(Dynamically Typed Language) the Integration of code with Native Libraries are much faster.
In Flutter whole application code is compiled to c/c++, as it is closely compiled to machine language it provides Fast and best User Experience whereas in React Native only the components are compiled to c/c++ and JavaScript code runs at Parallel Thread. thus provides better performance and adopts to platform very quickly compared to Flutter.
Need to know more of performance profiling and debugging visit Flutter performance profiling , React Native performance
3. Hot Reload
- Both Flutter and React Native rocks with the Hot Reload option where the native app developer's call it as Instant Run. Hot Reload helps developer get rid of the debugging burden of the app. Hot Reload combines the updated code by reflecting instant changes. helps Developers to debug app with Previous State.
4. Stability
React Native gained its popularity for developing large scale applications. from its Initial Release, there is also a very steady increase in the number of production and open source apps written using React Native from 2017 Happy customers of React Native
Initially when Flutter release Flutter did not support for Large scale applications thus led React Native a Key Player in Market for its Stability. But over past release of Flutter. Now Flutter Supports Large Scale Applications and Flutter is Taking over Market steadily , Happy customers of Flutter
5. Development and Time
- Flutter comes with a large number of ready-to-use widgets, most of which implement the material design concepts. There are two types of widgets, stateless widgets, and state full widgets, just like class and functional components in React, Unfortunately, Flutter’s widgets are not adaptive, so you have to make the platform-specific adaptation manually
import 'package:flutter/material.dart';
void main() {
runApp(
Center(
child: Text(
'Hello, world!',
textDirection: TextDirection.ltr,
),
),
);
}
- React Native uses component, but instead of using the web components that you have in the web. The number of widgets provided by React-Native is not as big as Flutter’s yet it’s quite inclusive, in addition, some of these components are adaptive, so they can figure out which platform they’re running on, whether IOS or Android and render the compositions suitable for that platform.
import React, { Component } from 'react';
import { Text, StyleSheet } from 'react-native';
export default class TextInANest extends Component {
constructor(props) {
super(props);
this.state = {
titleText: "Bird's Nest",
bodyText: 'This is not really a bird nest.'
};
}
render() {
return (
<Text style={styles.baseText}>
<Text style={styles.titleText} onPress={this.onPressTitle}>
{this.state.titleText}{'\n'}{'\n'}
</Text>
<Text numberOfLines={5}>
{this.state.bodyText}
</Text>
</Text>
);
}
}
const styles = StyleSheet.create({
baseText: {
fontFamily: 'Cochin',
},
titleText: {
fontSize: 20,
fontWeight: 'bold',
},
});
- When it comes for Development time for Flutter and Reactive both ranks the same. the Fast Prototyping and Iterative Development puts the market on fire. React Native Provides best fast development time cycle to publish to Market soon.
6. Architecture
Business Logic Component architecture was depicted by Google in the DartConf2018 and it states that the business logic should be taken out of the presentation layer and placed in the business logic components. The Bloc pattern heavily relies on streams and Rx-dart ( Reactive Dart).
There are two main patterns in building React/React native applications, which are Flux and Redux. Flux is the one created by the framework creators, Facebook, while Redux is the community’s most popular option. These frameworks are about unidirectional data flow and storing your application’s state in one central place called Store, and make your app components as stateless as possible. You can also use the Context API which is a new feature of React for managing state.
7. Documentation
Flutter Documentation is Amazing. The precise explanation, the code snippets and the document tree is very well organized. There is a Catalog for Widget , Animations etc describes with example and supported parameters. it makes the mobile app developer’s life easy by allowing them to use them while documenting their applications. Hence as far as documentation and Toolkit is considered Flutter is the best option when compared to the counterpart.
React Native Documentation is not well structured and Organized. Most of the Time when framework deletes the Components then Developers have to refer 3rd party documentation, blogs etc . Hence it is evident that tools bring a tough competition between the two frames
8. Community
- Flutter and React Native both are Open Source. To make the Development more Fun and Productive the Community support on contributing plays a huge role and it is the main pillar to take the framework to the next level. Both Flutter and React Native have a huge Fan following across the Developer Communities like Stack Overflow, GitHub, reddit etc. . But React Native gained huge customers and success at initial stage the Community is Huge across the world. and Flutter community is now gaining more visibility and center of attraction at Present.
Conclusion
Both Flutter and React Native are the leading key players at present world. Both have marked the success stamp by leveraging and ease of Development of Cross Platform Applications. We should wisely select which Framework to use based on the Time, Budget, Purpose. Both the Frameworks have their own Pros and Cons. hence it is hard to title the winner between Flutter and React Native
Flutter has a Precise Documentation for React Native Developers to Get Started with Flutter.