App has typical requirements plus some interactions with OS native APIs.
This is a startup so the returns of using a single development platform to target iOS/Android seems unquestionable.
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?
#2Why not a PWA using Ionic (or similar)? A PWA can be packaged as a hybrid app if your need to access native APIs beyond what PWA supports.
Re: Ask HN: React Native or Flutter for a new app in 2023?
#3Why not a PWA using Ionic (or similar)? A PWA can be packaged as a hybrid app if your need to access native APIs beyond what PWA supports.
Because you might want to give your users a somewhat decent experience.
Re: Ask HN: React Native or Flutter for a new app in 2023?
#4React native imo. Expo is terrific and the library ecosystem, while it might feel like it’s one step down from web JavaScript, is still robust enough for what you need since there are more than enough people out there shipping rn apps.
Re: Ask HN: React Native or Flutter for a new app in 2023?
#5Nothing beats native.
2nd best is what you know.
I'm using egui right now for quickly putting together a native cross platform tool. For a startup, again I'd pick what you know. RN and Flutter will provide similar experiences for most apps. Flutter will perform better with charts etc.
Re: Ask HN: React Native or Flutter for a new app in 2023?
#6Purely 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 native.
Re: Ask HN: React Native or Flutter for a new app in 2023?
#7I would use Kotlin multiplatform and Jetpack Compose multiplatform. But mainly because I already know Kotlin. It's definitively nicer than typescript though.
Re: Ask HN: React Native or Flutter for a new app in 2023?
#8Flutter is an awesome developer experience and would probably also make sense for small team that needs to support many platforms.
I think I would target flutter if I had to support desktop OS.
React-native would probably be preferable if you are just doing iOS/Android/Web due to the maturity of the ecosystem and wide use in the industry.
Re: Ask HN: React Native or Flutter for a new app in 2023?
#9Why not a PWA using Ionic (or similar)? A PWA can be packaged as a hybrid app if your need to access native APIs beyond what PWA supports.
Because you might want to give your users a somewhat decent experience.
Depends on the specific experience you're trying to create but there are fewer and fewer cases where what you want to achieve with a mobile app cannot be done with the mobile web. I can only think of one case in my career where native was actually necessary and not the vanity of the manager having an irrational disdain of the mobile web.
Or stated differently: unless it can be articulated why mobile web/PWA/hybrid cannot work for a specific technological reason, starting with PWA/hybrid is always the best approach. If it needs to be native then go with the vendor-recommended manner of development (unless you love painting yourself into a corner 95% of the way through the project -- been there, done that, don't want to go back).
Re: Ask HN: React Native or Flutter for a new app in 2023?
#10React native imo. Expo is terrific and the library ecosystem, while it might feel like it’s one step down from web JavaScript, is still robust enough for what you need since there are more than enough people out there shipping rn apps.
My only concern with Expo is once you're using it, you're going to get charged per user and per update. It's $0.005 per user per update (plus additional bandwidth and storage charges). So if you have 100K users, that's $500 per update. One update per month would be $6K per year. So you have to factor in the economics of your app.