Flutter Vs React Native

Flutter Vs React Native

For cross-platform app development, we are using the React Native framework widely. But in May 2017 a new cross-platform app development framework came into the market that was Flutter. I hope everyone knows about the flutter framework now. Now the question arises why we should choose flutter over react native? So here we are going to talk about some nutshell about the Flutter framework and what are the differences between Flutter and React Native which affects the App performance.

So first we need to know about the Flutter framework and what features are provided by the Flutter.

What is Flutter

Flutter is a free and open-source mobile UI framework created by Google and released in May 2017. In a few words, it allows you to create a native mobile application with only one codebase. This means that you can use one programming language and one codebase to create two different apps (for iOS and Android).

That’s not all, we can also develop WEB applications as well as Desktop applications with a single codebase.

Flutter consists of two important parts:

• An SDK (Software Development Kit): A collection of tools that are going to help you develop your applications. This includes tools to compile our code into native machine code (code for iOS and Android).
• A Framework (UI Library based on widgets): A collection of reusable UI elements (buttons, text inputs, sliders, and so on) that we can personalize for our own needs.

To develop with Flutter, we use a programming language called Dart. The language was created by Google in October 2011, but it has improved a lot over these past years.

Dart focuses on front-end development, and we can use it to create mobile and web applications.

If you know a bit of programming, Dart is a typed object programming language. You can compare Dart’s syntax to JavaScript. So that will be an advantage for a react native developer familiar with the dart language. He or she can adopt the dart programming language very fast.

Simple to use and learn

Flutter is a modern framework and you can feel it. Flutter provides very simple designing pattern code, so you can easily create some beautiful UIs in a few seconds. The Hot Reload functionality allows the users to see the UI changes in real-time. So no need to build the whole code, again and again, your updated UI is just a click away.

Why choose Flutter over React Native

Now here comes the most important question that why we should choose flutter for development rather than choose React Native.

A Growing Community
Flutter has a robust community and it’s just a beginning.
You don’t have to worry about creating all the functionality from scratch. All the basic functionality packages are available on the official site. You just have to import those packages in your current project. All the flutter packages are available on the below link.

https://pub.dev/

Supported by Android Studio and VS Code
Flutter is available on different IDEs. The two main code editors for developing with this technology are Android Studio (IntelliJ) and VS Code.
Android Studio is a complete software with everything already integrated. You have to download Flutter and Dart plugins to start.
VS Code is a lightweight tool, and everything is configurable through plugins from the marketplace.
You are free to choose your preferred IDE!

Now talk about some stats that define the advantages of the flutter.

Popularity

Flutter is the fastest growing community as compared to the react-native. According to GitHub, Dart is the most popular and growing language in 2019-2020. Flutter already got 116K stars on GitHub.
We continue to see fast growth in Flutter usage, with over two million developers having used Flutter in the last 3 years since its release. Despite these unprecedented circumstances, in March there was 10% month-over-month growth, with nearly half a million developers now using Flutter each month.

Analyzing performance

The metric that has picked for the analysis is FPS in time (Frames per second).
Analysis has been done on the scrolling of a list as much as can do on both android and IOS phones.
When started analyzing the performance, first, I can look at the app FPS on startup and when the app becomes actually usable:
For ReactNative – 2 seconds in and we’re still on 1 FPS.
For Flutter – 2 seconds in and we’re good to go at 39 FPS.

When the app started scrolling, Flutter seemed smoother, and it can also be seen when you compare the charts and how ReactNative’s FPS is more unstable. It’s worth noting that once we picked up the scroll speed on React Native, I started to see how items are mounted, which caused a bit of flickering (really tiny, but noticeable).
Here you can see how FPS is much more unstable in ReacNative. The Y-axis shows ranges from 0 – 60 FPS.

Companies using Flutter

Here some companies who already start working on flutter are:

• Google
• Alibaba Group
• ebay
• Tencent
• BMW
• Dream 11
• GROUPON
• Capital One
• EMMAR

Conclusion

The Flutter framework is new and the community is making a consistent effort and it’s looking more promising than react native. Both the frameworks are in equal and strong competition.
But we can say Flutter is the future of development but the result yet to be declared.