React Native or Flutter — What Should I Pick To Build My Mobile App?
--
Building cross-platform mobile apps is trending these days, with the advent of frameworks that can build native apps without using swift for iOS or Java for Android.
React Native and Flutter are the two most popular cross-platform mobile development frameworks that are being used to build thousands of mobile apps today. If you have to pick React Native vs. Flutter which one should you pick?
There is no right answer to this question. The answer to this question depends on your business needs and use-cases. Both React Native and Flutter are powerful contenders with their own set of pros and cons.
Being a React Native developer myself, I have tried to write this article without bias.
Both React Native and Flutter come with a lot of similarities like, building cross-platform apps using one codebase, hot reloading, excellent UI, awesome tooling and native features. But, they do have their differences.
Let’s explore React Native vs. Flutter against several factors.
Language
React Native:
React Native is written entirely in JavaScript using React. This is a huge perk for React Native since JavaScript consistently ranks as one of the most popular and used programming languages in the world. Finding developers to code in JavaScript is easy and hence learning React Native is quite easy for any JavaScript developer.
Flutter:
Flutter is written in a language called Dart. Although, Dart is relatively easy to pick up and is a good programming language, it does not have the popularity that JavaScript has. A developer getting on the Flutter boat, would need to learn Dart. Typically, developers from a C++/Java background can relate to Dart more than a JavaScript developer.
Nevertheless, in my opinion because of the learning curve that comes with learning Dart, and it being a relatively newer language the winner here is React Native.
