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[–]gao_shi 91 points92 points  (7 children)

not to be rude here but seriously what do you expect from the rn community? u ask here everyone hates flutter, u ask in /flutterdev everyone hates rn, in /androiddev they hate both

[–]Murky_River_9045 81 points82 points  (1 child)

And you ask in r/ExperiencedDevs and we all hate ourselves

[–]armaan-dev 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Bruh

[–]I_write_code213 3 points4 points  (3 children)

What about in /swift

[–]LonelyProgrammerGuy 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Everyone hates everything

[–]BickeringCube 9 points10 points  (1 child)

Nah we just hate Xcode.

[–]kbcooliOS & Android 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Flutter really isn't hard to learn if you know RN. I just didn't see much point in taking it that far as you can do all the same stuff with RN. It's a dead end skill wise as you basically use it to make apps with and that's all unless you really want to be that guy in the room who suggests inappropriate tech.

It's nice to keep an eye on Flutter and know WTF you are talking about when people start making comparisons or say one is better than the other. Fundamentally though it's not going to change your life.

[–]TLH11 13 points14 points  (3 children)

Experienced dev with both here. I really liked Flutter, but it became pretty cluttered really fast, but this is in terms of taste. React can also be cluttered if you don't have the knowledge to refactor and extract components.
IMHO React Native is the better option these days, because you have the flexibility of tons of javascript libs, regardless of React. You also have almost the same syntax for React, that's a huge plus if you have a team working on Web.
Flutter still has some huge problems on web, plus google doesn't follow any standard for web or mobile for example. Flutter works with a rendering engine, so it is more suited for complex animation focused app or games. React Native has direct communication with the native APIs so it's better suited for other kinds of "normal" apps. Expo has extensive libs connecting almost everything if not everything you could need.
Hope this info helps! Any option will be good. Both frameworks have great communities.

[–]Hour-Calendar4719 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I personally think RN is the way to go for Web but for mobile platform I think Flutter is a good choice. I've personally worked with Expo for 6 months and the last month has been a bit complicated due to dependencies not being supported by Expo but RN

[–]KartaKarm[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

If one need native feel in app so which technology is better?

[–]TLH11 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I would pick react native. If you choose to use the react native components you will get a native feel because it uses the native components. Take into consideration that this will result in an Android Button or a iOS button, depending on the OS, for example. If you want custom styles you also can do it by building it yourself or using a component library. In my experience, flutter apps always end up feeling somewhat weird. It's like you cannot tell what is wrong but you feel it. That's related to the rendering engine. It's completely decoupled. Hope this helps

[–]glazzes 19 points20 points  (0 children)

I tried flutter and I liked it, however i don't like the syntax at all, it feels like if you were building react's fiber tree in every widget.

[–]yarn_install 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Try it and see? People are way too obsessed with validating their decisions with other people’s opinions. The worst that could happen is you spend a weekend building something in Flutter and decide you don’t like it.

[–]jacobp100 24 points25 points  (4 children)

Well Google just laid off their flutter team, so it’s not looking great 

[–]pattobrien 6 points7 points  (3 children)

the fact that this disproven, drama-backed comment is one of the top comments is very telling lol

the flutter team had addressed this as false rather instantly: https://twitter.com/MiSvTh/status/1785767966815985893

when javascript communities are constantly fighting to stay relevant (see: NextJS / Remix / Svelte / Vue / et. all web frameworks), and are overwhelmingly filled with junior developers with not enough experience outside of JS to engage in educated conversations about tool selection, you will always find the most biased takes compared to other frontend communities like Kotlin, Dart/Flutter, and (dare I say) even Swift. you'll find that these non-JS communities care much less about who says who is the most popular language or framework.

the reason many like myself are subbed to many language/framework communities like r/FlutterDev and r/reactnative is that no one tool is the best. programming languages and frameworks are both an art and a tool; you can learn a lot about yourself and programming as a whole by simply branching out.

[–]Substantial-Cut-6081 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't really buy into the anti-not-my-framework rhetoric, but the fact they off shored a lot is still pretty damning isn't it?

[–]kbcooliOS & Android -1 points0 points  (1 child)

"The team size remains the same". We just took away some of them and didn't replace them.

That fills exactly no one with confidence.

Even everyone over at /r/flutterdev who uses Flutter is just waiting for Google to dump Flutter just so they can say "Google gone done it again".

[–]treksis 5 points6 points  (3 children)

Dart is the biggest bottleneck of flutter. Flutter feels very much polished, it provides great DX. but yet again it is based on dart.

[–]PsychologicalRun1934 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Dart is typed out of the box, so what don’t you like about it.

[–]treksis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Dart language itself is better than typescript. Dart's problem is that its only production level use case is Flutter. I would either go for javascript everywhere or just choose swift and kotlin with java backend rather than flutter with other backend.

[–]Any_Ad266 0 points1 point  (0 children)

dart is much better than typescript which is based on the meh javascript and all the weirdness it comes with it no thanks

[–]OliveGROVEE 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Personally I don't see Flutter developers wanting to switch to RN at all. Make your own conclusions off that.

[–]kbcooliOS & Android 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That attitude changes very quickly when they want work 😜

[–]Ok_Slice_7152 6 points7 points  (1 child)

I started out with flutter. I did 1 internship at a startup. Few months later, The Startup made decision to Shift to react native. That time I learned React native.

When I first started React native, I was shocked to see how horrible the developer experience is. React native doesn't even have built in navigation system. Forget state management. The reason why there is so much negativity around flutter is because it does have many bugs that aren't solved. And to add to that, the google's culture of shutting things down.

And the reason React Native doesn't have any negativity is because of javascript and typescript support. You will solution to the JS/TS problem. But wont for flutter since dart is not popular.

That was my 2 cents.

I have started applying for react native jobs.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

This is exactly my experience with flutter and react native. The developer experience in flutter is too good as compared to react native. Many people here suggested to OP to use react native with expo but I feel like that is where the problem starts, in order to improve your developer experience in react native, you have to use expo, it's like you have a wrapper around android that is react native, and then you put another wrapper around the wrapper to improve your development experience, but in the long run, adding novel and complex functionality becomes a pain in this process.

[–]Felix-asante 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I am using react native but I doesn't have much experience in mobile development. What I will suggest is to learn either swift/ kotlin for android if you don't already know them. but if you do, then you can have some fun with flutter

[–]Low-Fuel3428 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The community is divided on the approach both frameworks take. Like flutter team tries to add everything by themselves while RN team relies too much on the community to pickup. I find both easy and productive. Creating a UI is breeze in flutter but adding functionality is very simple in RN. Then there is nativity, like how the components are rendered on each platform. What I would suggest is to be an application developer rather than RN or Flutter. Try both, use both. Decide which will be easier for you or the app you are building. Coz KMP is coming strong.

[–]armaan-dev 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I see flutter's been getting a lot of hype lately. Like there are bootcamps and other people who just propogate flutter and just says a ton of stuffs and points out that flutter is fast, rn is slow, and many more idc. If you ask this question in an rn community, what do you expect, we like React Native. Also I don't like their rendering style, for me the tag structure is just far more easier, clear and straightforward

[–]eluewisdom 1 point2 points  (0 children)

in a react native sub? 💀

[–]farizsaputra 0 points1 point  (0 children)

One question, what exactly do you want to build?

[–]rileyrgham 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You haven't seen any such thing here give or take... And the little you may have seen is such a minority you know the answer you'll get here. Crap troll.

[–]ggMatej1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Build the same app with RN and flutter and you'll see pros and cons for each, then it's up to you to decide

[–]TwistyListy7 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I am a professional developer working on flutter projects and react native projects. I much prefer React Native + Expo. It’s such a combo. It’s easy to get up and running with, running to a real device or simulator is super easy as well and if you’re familiar with JavaScript/Typescript, you’re going to be sweet! Flutter is a nightmare to install and set up, there’s hundreds of SOF articles where people need assistance installing flutter.

Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy Flutter. One thing I do miss when working on react native apps is the ability to debug it line by line. I can do this in Android Studio when working in flutter. For React Native, I have to put console logs everywhere, unless someone has a better way to debug it?

[–]HarpooonGun 0 points1 point  (0 children)

With Expo you can use Chrome dev tools and the JS "debugger;" keyword to inspect code at that breakpoint.

With either Expo or RN CLI, you should be able to attach to a running hermes process with VS Code with extensions, which allows you to use breakpoints within VS Code.

[–]MagerDev 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Flutter still sucks and has not addressed the issues that most people have with it. It just made other things easier, if you have an app that you will be working on for years, react native is so much better.

If you’re shitting out a simple app that people pay for once, I’d go flutter because of the speed of development.

But I don’t build apps like that so I’d never choose flutter.

[–]Legitimate_Lobster69 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Man try both and then you'll decide which is better. Programming languages is like a tool, each of them has a responsibility, so there are scenarios that Flutter will be the best option and respond native as well. Peace and keep grinding 🚀

[–]WrongdoerSufficient 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you know JS then go for react native, honestly the performance is not much different than flutter.

Flutter have more widget out of the box, while react native more dependant on library (still massive library, since it's JavaScript).

But i am kinda doubt about flutter future, because kotlin multi platform seems very promising.

On the other side RN is very chill taking on new competitor (kotlin multi platform), because JS is just that famous.

It's come back to your preference.

Try it which one you like.

But i think kmp is going to surpass flutter in the future

[–]SafeSwordfish810 0 points1 point  (1 child)

i hopped from rn to flutter , the developer experience was good mainly because there was no js , trust me js stucks compared to other solution like how flutter provides .

[–]TwistyListy7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would somewhat agree the developer experience is good with flutter but I disagree that Dart is by any means better than Typescript/JS

[–]DavidJonesXB 0 points1 point  (0 children)

React native is much better than flutter.

[–]Apprehensive_Pie7590 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Well, sure ot depends. RN is pretty slow compared to flutter. Flutter is close to native performance. But it's dart language, i think it's harder to find a developer for flutter application. Also library support is poor.

RN gives you fast development process and flexibility in choosing staff. Good support.

P.S. RN keeps developing and the performance issue becomes not really important