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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

#51

Post by JimDabell »

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 least one language or technology they dislike?

Only hiring people who have experience with the language or technology doesn’t just mean that they can be productive much sooner, 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.

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

#52

Post by ramesh31 »

The argument applies equally well to React vs Vue. Ultimately it doesn't really matter if you slightly prefer the ergonomics or API of one over the other. There is simply no argument whatsoever from a standpoint of community support, tooling, documentation, libraries, and hiring pool that React has a 10x advantage over Vue. If it were the other way around, I would just as happily use Vue. But it isn't, so I use React.

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

#53

Post by klodolph »

mwattsun wrote: post #7

I've programmed a lot in both Dart and C# and my take is that Microsoft looked at Java and decided they needed a Java-like language like so they made C#. Google was into Java but Oracle sued them over it so they decided they needed a Java-like language so made Dart. Edit: Dart is ridiculously easy to learn because it's very familiar so if someone complains about having to learn Dart it means they don't want to learn…

I don't have inside information here. My reading of the narrative is that Dart was created originally as an alternative to JavaScript, because JavaScript did (and does) have just tons of problems all around. It pivoted from being primarily a JavaScript alternative to supporting use-cases like Flutter.

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

#54

Post by stragio »

flinkit-lars wrote: post #40
stragio wrote: post #32

Once in a while the Flutter/RN discussion shows up on Hackernews and I'd like to remind you all that Capacitor community is also alive and kicking. For the past months I've been building an E-commerce with Capacitor/NextJS and its been quite a pleasant experience. If you're familiar with JS/TS and React, it's a great option for an e-commerce or a b2b SAAS app. If you don't need many native components or a super slick…

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.

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

#55

Post by flax »

I do React (web, typescript) for my job, and Flutter for my hobby/side-projects. I chose Flutter specifically because Dart is far superior to javascript/typescript, and the fact that I do not have to deal with the absolutely bullshit JS build ecosystem.

Choosing React Native because you can find "Javascript developers" in 2022 is like choosing PHP in 2010 because it was popular.

If you're hiring above entry-level, you should expect a developer to be able to pick up a new framework, non-exotic language fairly quickly. And if you are hiring entry-level, you should expect to need to teach the new hire anyway.

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

#56

Post by jayd16 »

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…

That's fine but if the job description is explicit about a technology, they probably need the mentor not the mentee.

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

#57

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

klodolph wrote: post #46
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…

Dart is also surprisingly nice, in a lot of ways. I don't want to get down too much into the details because much of language design is subjective. I found it very easy to work with because it has a lot of the edges sanded off, relative to JavaScript. The developer experience is pretty good.

One of the things that always surprises me about Dart is that Google continued to invest in it for so long without any real returns until fairly recently. Dart came out in 2012 and to my knowledge had basically no usage for several years. Flutter came out in 2017, and then it took a decent amount of time to start picking up steam. Very uncharacteristic of Google to invest in something like Dart for 7+ years before it really started seeing any returns on the investment.

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

#58

Post by devadvance »

clintonb wrote: post #19
devadvance wrote: post #13

My primary hesitation with posts like this is that it mixes engineering points (performance, developer experience, code sharing) with a more general business point: hiring. Hiring is a cost. There are costs to any decision. Opportunity cost, risk, business continuity, operational costs, etc. Hiring is generalizable so it makes for an easy example here. I would hope that experienced folks making decisions like "React…

Your first and last paragraphs seem contradictory. You Hope experienced folks weigh all costs, but a post mentioning the cost of hiring gives you hesitancy?

The fact that the post mentions hiring (cost) isn't my hesitation. It's that bringing cost into a conversation about the technical merits of a given technology can be a heavy-handed way of shutting down the conversation. In some cases, technical merits very much do justify the cost, but that can only happen by creating the space to find out.

Said differently: I believe it's often worthwhile to discuss the deeper technical merits of options without hastily jumping to a cost discussion.

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

#60

Post by mrtksn »

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…

>Flutter still has its quirks, but hands down, it's the best platform for the majority of "standard" apps

How is the market for "standard" apps doing? One would think that by now "UI for a Database/API" should have died out already? Even if companies do need an UI for a DB or an API, that job must have had become really simple with all the frameworks and libraries.

On Twitter I keep seeing people building the millionth water tracking app, so I guess there's still market for everything but I feel like "Coding regular UI with a login form and stuff" kind of jobs must be vanishing, aren't they? Surely design tools must be able to extract functioning UI's or a bit of coding know how should be able to enable anyone put together a decent UI using components libraries?

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