Newton Munene
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I am a Mobile and Web Developer, Ask Me Anything(anything Flutter, anything Javascript)!
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Top comments (16)
Hi Newton.
How long have you been a developer? How do you balance keeping up with all things web and mobile? Which one did you first start with?
Hi.
I've been a developer for two years now and I'm still fairly new to a lot of concepts.
Keeping up with both worlds. Yes things are always changing in both Web and Mobile. My way of dealing with this is working on random projects just for fun. Whenever I'm free, maybe on holiday or a break from school, I like to work on projects from both Web and Mobile to Sharpen my skills.
I started out with web development. HTML, CSS then moved on to Javascript and PHP as I advanced. Along the way I got to learn different frameworks like React, Angular, working with Node Js.
After a while I got into Mobile development with Java/Android. For me it was a bit complex as I had no prior knowledge of Java. After struggling with it for two months I switched to Ionic Framework/cordova. Which uses html,css,js to build Hybrid mobile apps. A lot was still missing in Ionic Framework and the performance was not as good as native apps. That's when flutter was released publicly and I jumped on that train and have never looked backed.
That's great!
I'm in the same boat now. I started learning web dev in late 2016 then had to do a mobile app for my graduation project, so I used Android Studio. It was not difficult, having previous experience with Java, and ended up being fun. Now I'm looking to try React Native.
Do you think learning PHP is relevant nowadays?
I believe PHP is relevant in some way which I have no idea about. I switched from PHP a long time ago and now use NodeJS for everything server side
I 'learned' PHP at university but never used it. I can't wait to start learning Node.
Thank you for your answers!
Happy to help
Hi Newton! Flutter or React Native?! Pros and cons?
Thank you!
Flutter is still fairly new so a lot of stuff still needs to be implemented either personally or wait for the Google team to do it. React Native, on the other hand, has been around for a while so it's fairly stable. This doesn't mean you can't use Flutter for production. There's already a large community and it's growing daily. There's also a lot of third party packages you can use if a feature isn't implemented yet. So it's a win-win there.
Performance. Flutter uses it's own renderer (Skia) and the code is compiled to C/C++ so it's much faster communicating with the underlying platform and/or hardware. React Native, however, converts the components to their native equivalents. It's a thin line here because the performance difference is minimal but if you're using a lot of high fps animations and graphics then flutter can handle this better.
Documentation and Community support for both is great. You can get Android and Ios from the same codebase on both with flutter adding full support for desktop soon.
There might be a learning curve to Flutter/Dart but it fairly easy coming from a Web background and being familiar with OOP.
Flutter uses widgets, React Native uses components. It's all almost the same.
It all comes down to your own preference. For me its Flutter.
Awesome! Thank you! At the moment my preference is React Native, thank you for your comparison!
Glad I was of help
What is your preferred method for state management in Flutter? Which is the best for scaling an application?
There's a few like Redux, Bloc, Scoped, and Provider.
I've been using bloc for a while but after Google I/O 2019 I've switched to Provider. I haven't actually used Provider yet.
Why the switch? Ease of use or just efficiency?
Ease of use. Bloc had a lot going on. And also efficiency. Provider is right in the middle. Apps that don't require complex state management but are also a bit complex for scoped model, Stream builder etc
How are you liking Flutter so far? Have you shipped anything using it?
Flutter is amazing. I've used Java/Android, Ionic Framework, React Native...All sorts of SDKs and Frameworks but Flutter is what I've decided to settle for. It's a good balance of simplicity, performance and robustness(if there's such a word). I've built an internal inventory app for a local business with it but I'm also currently working on a public project which I hope to ship in about a month or two.