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Ask HN: React Native or Flutter for a new app in 2023?

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Re: Ask HN: React Native or Flutter for a new app in 2023?

#81

Post by lockhouse »

winrid wrote: post #80
lockhouse wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an end user, Qt apps do not feel particularly great. There’s just a lot of weird behavior in them and they just really feel off. At least that’s how the official demos from the Qt Company feel. I’m not sure how a real production level app feels. I’m not aware of any major apps that use it.

Interesting. A lot of open source software uses it via the python bindings. What do you mean by feels? Slow? Look? Layout? Isn't it all os-native widgets?

On mobile I don’t believe it uses native widgets. I think the official Qt Company demos are done with Qt Quick. They just look off, the rendering of the controls isn’t quite right and some of them don’t handle screen rotation well.

It’s been a while since I’ve tried them though, maybe it’s improved but about a year or 2 ago I wasn’t impressed.

Re: Ask HN: React Native or Flutter for a new app in 2023?

#82

Post by dimal »

nwienert wrote: post #60
dimal wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks really cool. FYI, the Silkscreen font on the website is completely illegible at smaller sizes like in the menus. Looks like a rendering glitch. Might want to choose something a little more legible.

Are you using a very dense resolution? I've turned off anti-aliasing, but if you scale your monitor to be more dense than natural resolutions it will appear quite odd. At "normal" resolutions it looks fine. I could turn aliasing back on at the cost of a bit of visual niceness for most.

Yeah, probably. I’m not sure exactly what the pixel density is, but it’s 1440 vertical pixels. Maybe try a resolution media query to toggle the antialiasing?

Re: Ask HN: React Native or Flutter for a new app in 2023?

#83

Post by matthewwolfe »

jconley wrote: post #32

React Native. TypeScript. NestJS backend, NextJS frontend. The ability to easily share code across the full stack is underrated. Of course you need someone that thinks at that high level building it.

Finally I have a relevant blog post!

Reflecting on Code Sharing React and React Native

https://matthewwolfe.github.io/blog/code-sharing-react-and-r...

Re: Ask HN: React Native or Flutter for a new app in 2023?

#84

Post by matthewwolfe »

ctvo wrote: post #55
simlevesque wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you find you can share the most? Types.

Types (interface contracts) are already easily sharable with an IDL and code generation. There's no need to stick to a common programming language to share types. I'm highly skeptical of code sharing for other scenarios, and rarely (never) have seen the effort worth the payoff. - https://protobuf.dev/ - https://smithy.io/2.0/

See my other comment above, but I was able to share basically everything that was not UI code. Types, request hooks, utils, configs/constants. Probably about 60% of the app, and you wouldn’t want to share UI code anyway because web and Native are so different.

Re: Ask HN: React Native or Flutter for a new app in 2023?

#85

Post by flax »

I've been building a game in Flutter for the last couple of years, and I absolutely love the dev experience. Dart is the best language I've used professionally in 20 years (for reference: Dart, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, ActionScript3, Kotlin).

I do web stuff for my day job, and I just HATE the javascript/typescript house of cards build system and npm. Flutter's pub is great, and the builds just work.

I chose Flutter because I already liked Dart, and I was building a game to play with my wife, so it had to be cross-platform from the beginning. That was difficult since I don't have any Apple hardware. But I was able to get things going by borrowing hers for a minimal setup then offloading production builds to codemagic.io.

Shameless self-promo: https://MarkMyWordsGame.com

Re: Ask HN: React Native or Flutter for a new app in 2023?

#86

Post by mkss »

joshuawright11 wrote: post #6

Purely curious; why not start natively with iOS or Droid (depending on which one your target audience uses more)? You'd have the easiest native API access and fewer headaches. Once you hit PMF & have proven the idea, add the second platform. Is there a benefit to launching on both platforms out of the gate? Unless perhaps there are specific React web assets you'd like to reuse to get up and running faster via React n…

Because you'll still want to support both OS's sooner rather than later and then you'll be re-inventing the wheel by rewriting all your code a second time on the other platform. Plus using Flutter from the start means you have the option of seeing a much wider world than just Android or iOS: you can build the same app for Linux, MacOS, Windows and the Web.

Re: Ask HN: React Native or Flutter for a new app in 2023?

#87

Post by mkss »

scarface_74 wrote: post #46
a_wild_dandan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why target one platform when your project can target all major platforms (web, iOS, Android, MacOS/Windows/Linux)? Especially if you're already experienced with React and can later hire from that monstrous talent pool? Hell, instead of casting that wider net for users, you could still only release/focus on iOS, but still have tons of work done when you're ready to move your React app to those other platforms.

Because your app will equally suck on all platforms?

Because your app will work on all platforms and the rest of the billions of app users outside of this little niche-of-a-niche-of-a-niche forum just want to do whatever they need to get done on a app in their normal lives and don't even know what you are talking about when you say the app "sucks" because it doesn't use exactly the right rounded corners on a button or the listview scroll physics are exactly same as a "native" app.

Re: Ask HN: React Native or Flutter for a new app in 2023?

#88

Post by winrid »

lockhouse wrote: post #81
winrid wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. A lot of open source software uses it via the python bindings. What do you mean by feels? Slow? Look? Layout? Isn't it all os-native widgets?

On mobile I don’t believe it uses native widgets. I think the official Qt Company demos are done with Qt Quick. They just look off, the rendering of the controls isn’t quite right and some of them don’t handle screen rotation well. It’s been a while since I’ve tried them though, maybe it’s improved but about a year or 2 ago I wasn’t impressed.

Yeah QT Quick is not using native widgets. If you use native qt components then it uses native widgets cross platform.

I think they do the demos in qt quick to appeal to auto makers.

Re: Ask HN: React Native or Flutter for a new app in 2023?

#89

Post by fakedang »

dvh wrote: post #17

I really don't see flutter surviving long term. As it matures it will accumulate hard to solve issues and making shiny new thing will be easier. Does Google have track record of maintaining these kind of projects?

That was true 3 years back, but with all the recent developments (especially the new impeller upgrade against iOS jank), there's a lot to be optimistic about the longevity of flutter. Meanwhile I haven't seen much development from React Native, although granted I didn't bother checking either. Flutter is so much easier to work with than React Native or even React.
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