The choice between Flutter and React Native can come down to their main differences. Read this article and learn the 5 most important!
What is the right choice when developing a mobile client application?
In this digital age when mobile applications are ubiquitous, serving every need, and with the widespread adoption of smartphones, more than 5.6 million specific software applications can be downloaded via app stores such as the Google Play Store, the Apple Store and the Microsoft Store. Knowledge of niche technology is essential if you want to improve your ability to develop applications. Businesses need robust and efficient mobile applications. For this, they prefer developing multi-platform mobile applications to take advantage of all essential functionalities.
As far as mobile application development frameworks are concerned, React Native and Flutter compete with each other at the technological forefront to prove their worth. React Native was introduced by Facebook and Flutter is Google’s new start.
Now, to gauge the pros and cons of both, it is essential to have in-depth knowledge of the important features of these two cross-platform mobile application development applications – Flutter for hybrid application development and React Native for native applications.
To find out more, check this article: Flutter vs. React Native Comparison.
Differences between Flutter and React Native
1. Programming language
Flutter is a multi-platform framework used for the development of mobile applications. It uses the Dart language and is reactive, i.e. it solves the problem of responding to incoming asynchronous data.
React Native is built on the React library and uses the Javascript data stream. Javascript is unidirectional and makes components stateless by managing all incoming data in one place. This javascript framework works on a single code base for iOS and Android applications.
Key point: React Native adopts Javascript, which is easy to learn and adapt. On the other hand, Dart is less and less adopted by the developer community. React Native is the clear winner.
2. The architecture
With more than 1450 packages available, Flutter seems to be growing. The main architecture of Flutter is the business logic component or BLoC. The Dart framework adopted by Flutter uses a Skia C++ engine that includes all protocols and content.
React Native is not a beginner and the main architecture models are Flux, from Facebook, and Redux, the preferred option of the user community.
Key point: React Native relies on a Javascript bridge to connect to native modules, while Flutter uses the Dart framework. Most of its components are integrated and therefore do not always require a bridge to communicate with its native modules.
3. Development
Flutter utilizes ready-to-use widgets, but as they are not adaptive in nature, the difficulty lies in the need to create an adaptation manual.
React Native, on the other hand, provides a library of web components for development purposes. Development with React Native is fairly simple, as the create-react-native package that needs to be installed contains a layout for Expo Integration .
Key point: React Native allows you to write code once and different components will need to be loaded depending on the operating system.
4. Performance
Flutter is entirely compiled by the C / C++ library of the arm group and offers good performance despite many factors.
React Native on the other hand, is not compiled by C / C++. React Native is much faster and more powerful than other hybrid applications such as Cordova.
Key point: The main difference lies in the way Flutter and React Native compile their code. Flutter can be considered less complex as it compiles the Dart library to C / C++, which tends to communicate faster with native code rather than having to link to Javascript. However, React Native is a more mature application development framework, as it uses Javascript to handle Android, iOS and Web applications, making it a better choice, especially for the development of smaller mobile applications.
5. Level of ease to start learning
Flutter’s documentation is pretty good and useful, but it is difficult to start learning, which is pretty obvious if you are new to development and you just google How to Learn Flutter.
React Native, on the other hand, is much easier to learn and is child’s play for developers, especially for those who’d had their hands on React or Javascript beforehand.
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