My first talk on Flutter vs. Other Frameworks
I recently shared with you about Pakistan’s first Flutter meetup in Karachi. Well, it happened on 10th November, 2018.
It was organized by Flutter Karachi in collaboration with 10 Pearls University as venue partner. There were about 40+ persons who attended the meetup. More than 75% were professionals in various tech such as web development, mobile development, backend etc.
There were three talks as shared in this article. Mine was the second talk. And it was about the comparison between Flutter and other frameworks available to create mobile apps.
My major focus in the talk was to compare the frameworks which compiles the code base into native apps. But for purposes of showing where these frameworks lie, I also added native Android and iOS along with the hybrid app frameworks Cordova/Ionic in the comparison. This made a comparison of Android/iOS Native vs. Cordova/Ionic vs. React Native vs. Xamarin vs. Native Script vs. Flutter.
Now all these tools are widely different from each other. So for me it was like comparing oranges with apples. So I put two major goals for comparison.
- Creating best possible app for both iOS and Android using the same code base.
- Answering developers’ issues and questions in best possible way.
So each framework has different advantages and disadvantages. In my talk, winner was the one who answered above goals in best way. And the winner was Flutter and runner was the React Native.
Slides and Video
You can check the slides of my talk here.
Also, the talk was live streamed through Facebook. You can check the streaming on this link.
References
- https://hackernoon.com/react-native-vs-flutter-which-is-more-startup-friendly-c6e412d0b9ab
- https://hackernoon.com/react-native-vs-flutter-which-one-is-better-21e576b56b41
- https://blog.novoda.com/react-native-flutter-xamarin-a-comparison/
- https://dzone.com/articles/flutter-vs-react-native-how-to-choose-the-best-hyb
- https://academind.com/learn/flutter/react-native-vs-flutter-vs-ionic-vs-nativescript-vs-pwa/
The Flutter Pub is a medium publication to bring you the latest and amazing resources such as articles, videos, codes, podcasts etc. about this great technology to teach you how to build beautiful apps with it. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Medium or learn more about us here. We’d love to connect! And if you are a writer interested in writing for us, then you can do so through these guidelines.
Top comments (6)
Why should I use Dart, a language that no one (at least I know) knows, and a language which is not competitive on the backend (thus forcing a multi-language env), when I can simply use the free and open web (PWAs, WASM etc.) and leverage the gigantic TS/JS/React ecosystem with a single unifying language?
Yes, this is a valid question that PWA are a good alternative if we want to use JS ecosystem.
But the main objective of the talk was to tell which CrossPlatform mobile platform is good. So, PWA are still web apps not mobile apps compiled natively.
Regarding Dart, well its more like JavaScript and Swift/Kotlin mix. And is very understandable and getting traction and popularity day by day. So its just a matter of time.
I definitely agree with you, mobile cross platform stuff is awesome, and Flutter is nice for sure! But why would I want a mobile cross platform app when I can just use the web/PWAs? The average end user installs 0.25 apps/month here in Germany, so the "discovery" argument for proprietary distribution mechanisms such as the Play Store or the App Store doesn't count all that much anymore, you have to pay fees to release the apps, they can be censored, you have to setup a compiler toolchain & runtime (i.e. Dart VM, i guess), tooling etc. ... If we put the development of a Web Browser in Flutter aside, why would I want a native mobile app over a PWA?
(in fact, I even wrote this comment from the dev.to PWA)
Yes you are right about the facts for mobile market situation. Also mobile app discover ability is also a major issue.
But there are some things which PWAs can't solve. Such as we cannot create Uber or ride sharing kind of app in PWA or the apps with augmented reality or high usage of device hardware. That's where mobile apps usually come in.
Well Uber does have a PWA I guess
Javascript was popular because it is the only language that is being used in the web browsers. Dart on the other hand, did not compete because it only supports on the chrome browser and nothing else. Therefore they removed the Dart VM and made dart2js library to transpile dart code to minified js.
I like PWAs to be as SPA(No native apis being triggered) for both Android and iOS. Heavy and complex apps that triggers native api features should be in native likewise.
When I heard someone says "Why Dart?", "Dart is dead, why should I use it?"
it feels like they didn't bother to learn and benchmark the capabilities of the language itself.
Dart can be in PWA too, using AngularDart
Dart has great ecosystem with rather less active community. It keeps growing internally at Google.