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Flutter is better than React Native in all the ways that don’t matter

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Re: Flutter is better than React Native in all the ways that don’t matter

#61

Post by edwnj »

wiradikusuma wrote: post #5

I think Flutter is better _because_ it uses Dart. I used to hate that decision ("Not another language to learn.."), but Flutter and Dart are like Mac and macOS (I'm aware people complaining about macOS quality going down the hill.. but that's another story). They're both from the same company, seemingly built for each other, and the language (Dart) improvements are _relevant_ for the platform (Flutter). Flutter still…

I went through the exact same experience. Choosing dart felt like silly to me but after a using flutter for years now it makes 100% sense.

The way both flutter and dart adapts for each others needs is super cool.

Re: Flutter is better than React Native in all the ways that don’t matter

#62

Post by onion2k »

JimDabell wrote: post #51
onion2k wrote: post #24

This article highlights one of the things that really bugs me about tech hiring. The availability of developers who know a language or tech isn't a limiting factor if you're willing to hire people and give them the time to learn. Yes, it's expensive, but if there really are productivity benefits from using a particular tool then you should end up better off in the long term anyway. The expectation that another compan…

> The availability of developers who know a language or tech isn't a limiting factor if you're willing to hire people and give them the time to learn. It is a job satisfaction risk though. Just because a person is capable of learning a language or technology, it doesn’t mean that once they have learnt it they will find satisfaction in using it every day. Surely most people with a decent amount of experience has at le…

it also means that you are selecting only the people who know they want to work with it every day whilst filtering out people who would end up disliking it

Doesn't that imply that we all like the languages we use every day? I'm fairly sure that's not the case for a lot of developers. In fact, I'm certain loads would like the opportunity to use what they think is a 'better' language, but they can't because too few companies hire for it.

Re: Flutter is better than React Native in all the ways that don’t matter

#63

Post by UnpossibleJim »

vbezhenar wrote: post #35
onion2k wrote: post #24

This article highlights one of the things that really bugs me about tech hiring. The availability of developers who know a language or tech isn't a limiting factor if you're willing to hire people and give them the time to learn. Yes, it's expensive, but if there really are productivity benefits from using a particular tool then you should end up better off in the long term anyway. The expectation that another compan…

You will spend year teaching someone then he leaves for another company who gave him 20% rase. You're net negative, they're net positive. You'll lose the race in the end. This could be a good approach for someone huge like Google or government. Asking that from an ordinary company will not work.

I think a lot of companies are figuring out, right now, that it isn't all about money (and crappy snacks) that equal employee retainment. Mentoring and proper training in decent platforms, not to mention a decent work/life balance go a long way when you start comparing them to different company cultures.

I might grind away at Amazon for a couple of years (personally - no offense to the people that love it, it isn't for me), but that sort of job first, life second - everyone move up metric isn't for everyone. Some people are "professionals" and some people are "craftsmen"... I guess? Neither one is good or bad, they're just different mindsets and goals.

There are companies (though few, I suppose) that want "craftsmen". There are companies that want "professionals". A good company, wants both.

Re: Flutter is better than React Native in all the ways that don’t matter

#64

Post by a4isms »

evan_ wrote: post #12
intrasight wrote: post #2

Hiring is certainly very important. But I disagree that JavaScript developer availability is the most important criteria in this decision. After all, we're talking about "quality developers" not script kiddies. Experienced developers will hit the beach running with Dart. It's just another C-style language like many others that experienced developers will have used extensively.

Did you just fall through a time portal from 2008? JavaScript hasn't been the exclusive domain of "script kiddies" for a loooong time.

What's very interesting about your comment is this:

Let's say that JavaScrip was a language for "kiddies" in 2008. Let's call them people in the age group 17-22. That was fourteen years ago, and those "kiddies" are now 31-36.

In 2008, they were in entry-level positions. Today, they have over a decade of industry experience and are lead engineers, engineering managers, &c. It's not like they "grew up and switched to adult languages."

They brought JavaScript with them, and as they recognized its shortcomings... They fixed the language and its ecosystem.

(For some debatable definition of "fixed," but the general point is that even if it was a language for script kiddies a decade and a half ago, those kiddies grew up and to a certain extent, the language grew up with them.)

Re: Flutter is better than React Native in all the ways that don’t matter

#65

Post by alexashka »

If you're smart enough to learn Flutter, you're smart enough to learn Swift/Kotlin.

So, just do that.

The appeal of React Native is that you get to stay in the javascript ecosystem. If you're going to move away, move away to native.

It's a no brainer. The very premise of these cross platform tools is flawed, frankly - if you can't afford one dev per platform - your problem isn't tooling, it's money.

So, just fix the money issue.

Also, as an iOS dev - the second I see mention of Rx, Flutter, React Native or some other third party 'thing' - I don't even bother applying. Apple/Google produce enough new 'things' every year to keep everyone busy. I don't need some third party 'thing' on top of it all.

Re: Flutter is better than React Native in all the ways that don’t matter

#66

Post by ajdegol »

Maybe things have changed since I last used it, but the styling was very boilerplatey. I didn't enjoy using it. I really liked Dart, was easy to learn.

Is there some sort of template-library/style-system that y'all are using? Or is it still one widget in another widget in another widget..?

Because if that latter then optimising for some syntactic sugar over that would be very much a game changer.

Re: Flutter is better than React Native in all the ways that don’t matter

#67

Post by jbaudanza »

I've been using react native heavily for the past 18 months.

Because there's no JIT, Javascript is slow on mobile, especially on Android. I spend a lot of my creative energy trying to optimize the render function. I often times wonder if I should have chosen Flutter instead.

Each framework has its bullshit you don't discover until it's too late. So, I'm sure if I had chosen Flutter I'd be complaining about something else.. but boy am I tired of stuffing things into useMemo, useCallback, and stressing about the identity of things in dependency arrays.

There's some exciting stuff coming up this year with React/React Native: Hermes, React Native "New architecture", react concurrency mode (although I still don't 100% understand what this is). I hope one of these things improves the current situation.

Re: Flutter is better than React Native in all the ways that don’t matter

#68

Post by flinkit-lars »

stragio wrote: post #54
flinkit-lars wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are building our native app off from our web app, using Capacitor. One single codebase, 3 platforms targeted. Using very well established technologies that have a very good DX.

Great to hear you're having a similar experience. It became extremely easy for web devs to release mobile apps now.

I did native app development on-off from about 2010-2018, with at larger apps. Today I see little reason to have 3 code bases with the same features. You got 3x the same problems. Ok, there's Flutter and React Native, but their web code transpilation isn't great. Web Views (both in browsers and in apps) are just a super major technology with excellent developer tooling such as live reloading. Capacitor would always be my first choice today.

Re: Flutter is better than React Native in all the ways that don’t matter

#69

Post by NicoJuicy »

vbezhenar wrote: post #35
onion2k wrote: post #24

This article highlights one of the things that really bugs me about tech hiring. The availability of developers who know a language or tech isn't a limiting factor if you're willing to hire people and give them the time to learn. Yes, it's expensive, but if there really are productivity benefits from using a particular tool then you should end up better off in the long term anyway. The expectation that another compan…

You will spend year teaching someone then he leaves for another company who gave him 20% rase. You're net negative, they're net positive. You'll lose the race in the end. This could be a good approach for someone huge like Google or government. Asking that from an ordinary company will not work.

What if your don't teach them and they stay?

Re: Flutter is better than React Native in all the ways that don’t matter

#70

Post by aaronmu »

It's a lot easier to catch a fish in a small pond if you're the only one fishing. Was a lot easier to hire a competent F# developer than it was to hire a competent C# developer.

No one ever got fired for buying IBM. Technology that is unknown to the buyer is significantly harder to sell. You will lose sales because of your exotic technology choice. If you told me this 4 years ago, I'd have argued that the implementation details don't matter but it turns out that they do.

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